Job Hunting — Navigating Job Rejections
It took me 1,400 rejections to land my dream job
There must be a reason you’re reading this article. Perhaps you just graduated college? Maybe, you have been recently laid off? Or, perhaps you have taken a few gap years to deal with other things? Whatever the reason, when you start job hunting, you need to have thick skin.
Breaking News — Everybody has a degree in this day and age.
It has become increasingly difficult, especially for the newest generation, to stand out from the crowd. As someone who has dealt with rejection several times before landing her dream job, I can tell you that the road has several bumps.
Let me tell you about my story:
I graduated from one of the top universities in the country with honors. I thought to myself that finding a job wouldn’t be a problem. One of the strongest selling points of any Top University is when they tell you “XX.XX% of our students accepted job offers within YY months!” — I truly believed that I would not have any trouble making an income after graduating. To be honest, not only did I think that finding a job would be a piece of cake, but I also thought that I would have a generous compensation right off the bat.
Little did I know, life was about to humble me.
I spent months after graduation trying to figure out what I would do next. My whole summer was a nightmare. When other students were planning to follow a master’s degree overseas, I did not have that luxury. I had to jump into a pool of sharks and face the real world. While people I knew at the time were posting Instagram Stories settling in their new schools, I remember feeling left out. I could not afford to pay the tuition fees for a master’s degree. Even if I got a scholarship, I was thinking about how to afford life expenses, visa fees, plane tickets…etc. Getting a master’s degree started looking like something only the privileged could enjoy. But come to think of it, those people who went abroad to further continue their academic journey were only delaying the process I was going through. Buying time wasn’t going to spare them.
At first, I tried to apply to jobs that best aligned with what I had studied. I thought that applying to 50 jobs on LinkedIn was enough to land something that could get me into the doors of corporate life. However, for every application I sent, I received only one message: “Thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, we will not be moving forward with your application, but we appreciate your time and interest”. In the beginning, I felt embarrassed, I started thinking that maybe something was wrong with me.
“Have I chosen the wrong field?”
“Maybe I should have picked a different domain?”
“Should I just throw in the towel and become an influencer on social media?”
“Is this the true return on investment of a bachelor’s degree in Engineering?”
Each day, my inbox was filled with the same message. At first, I did not handle it very well. I even started having panic attacks. For the first time in two (2) decades, for the first time in all my life, I did not know what was next for me. What’s easy about academia is that you always know what the next step is. This was a situation where I found myself lost, depressed, and facing a high level of ambiguity. I was in uncharted territory.
So I started reaching out to alumni or other fellow graduates that had already found jobs to refer me or help me out. But I got shut down by each and every one of them. Those who promised to help me had completely ghosted me and started ignoring my text messages.
I couldn’t see myself staying at home, unemployed, and broke, with no plan for the next few years of my life.
The only person that was going to save me, was me.
I had developed a strategy: Apply to all jobs, any job, even the ones I am not qualified for.
Soon, I started getting calls, interviews, and people reaching back. Don’t get me wrong, I got rejected 99% of the time, but at least that 1% thought that I could be a great addition to their team. Knowing there were people who wanted me to work for them gave me hope. Remember, for every job you apply to, there are hundreds of other applicants that are competing with you.
I got a few interviews here and there, and I realized there was another beast I had to tame:
“The art of selling yourself to employers as THE best hiring option.”
This time, I did not get rejected because my resume was not good. This time, I got rejected because I tanked the interview.
“What did I do wrong to be rejected after the interview?”
My first interviews were not the best. I had a few horrible ones that still make me cringe to this day. I made a lot of mistakes, said the wrong things at the wrong time, and went unprepared for some. I was not aware of the work that needed to be done prior to any meeting. Nobody was there to teach me anything, I had to teach myself how to be appealing to hiring managers and recruiters. In addition to that, I had learned firsthand that there were different types of interviews; the ones that only required phone screenings, the ones for which you needed to take a test, the ones for which you had to send videos, the ones with MULTIPLE ROUNDS, …etc. I learned the hard way, and I learned by doing.
Do not take rejections personally, companies are NOT rejecting YOU; they’re rejecting your APPLICATION.
So, how did I end up landing multiple jobs after so many rejections?
The answer is RESILIENCE.
Yes, resilience. Before getting accepted at my first job, I had applied more than 1,000 times. Am I insane? No. I just do not take “No” for an answer. Do not take rejection as a negative; take it as a redirection to a better future.
Keep in mind that once you start landing jobs, you build confidence. After that first job, I ended up landing my dream job only after another 400 more rejections (instead of a thousand). You build experience, knowledge, confidence, and learn to depend on yourself.
Your career is going to be a long journey. Do not get discouraged when faced with a “No”. There are still millions of companies out there that would feel more than lucky to have YOU!
