Mindset and habits

How to handle rejection

I read applications for a living, so I know how much of a rejection has nothing to do with the person receiving it.

1. Assume it was the process before you assume it was you.

   Roles get frozen, budgets move, someone internal applies. From the inside these look like nothing and land like a judgment.

2. Ask for one specific piece of feedback.

   Not "any feedback", which gets a polite nothing. "Was it the technical depth or the experience level?" sometimes gets a real answer.

3. Separate the pattern from the instance.

   One rejection is noise. Twenty with no interviews is a signal about your CV. Twenty interviews with no offers is a signal about the room. Different problems.

4. Keep the count.

   A record of applications and outcomes turns a mood into data. It also shows you the ratio, which is usually better than it feels.

5. Do not rewrite everything after one no.

   The temptation is to change your whole approach on a single data point. Wait for three before you conclude anything.

6. Give it a day, not a week.

   Some time to be annoyed is reasonable. The cost of a long stall is the applications you did not send while you were stalled.

7. Send the next one before you feel like it.

   Momentum matters more than mood here, and the next application is the only thing that changes the situation.

8. Stay decent in the reply.

   A gracious response gets remembered, and people move companies. I have interviewed the same person twice, three years apart.

9. Notice what you are afraid of.

   Usually it is not the no. It is what you think the no says about you, which is a story you are adding for free.

10. Keep applying to the ones out of reach.

    Panels take people who missed a criterion all the time. The application you talk yourself out of has a nil success rate, which is worse than any rejection.