Don't Let Rejection Mess With Your Head

Use Rejections To Reinvent Your Impression

I’ve been rejected hundreds of times.

I’ve been rejected even when the market was easy and not as tough at it’s now.

I even pulled off getting rejected for positions where I would have done an awesome job.

I even have been rejected in the sixth round. That was a devastating experience. That shit stings hard and is difficult to not take personal. It feels extremely personal. You’ve invested so much time in preparing and you’ve gotten so close that it feels like they are rejecting you.

I’m writing this to tell you:

Don’t ever let those rejections mess with your head.

They never reject you, they reject the faint and fleeting impression you left on them.

And it’s never final. Some of the companies that rejected me hired me later.

They’ve forgotten you the moment after they press send on that rejection e-mail (if they even send one).

When your resume is rejected, they are not rejecting you, but an oversimplified representation of your career they examined for a long and boring 2 minutes right before having their coffee and while being distracted by Slack notifications. This is assuming you got lucky they even glanced that long.

Remember: your resume isn’t your whole career, it’s a miniscule and polished slice of what you’ve chosen to show them.

Reviewing resumes is like scrutinizing the business card of a restaurant to assess how good their food will taste.

And they’re not even reading the whole damn thing, They’re simply scanning the summary to extract a highly biased summary of a summary.

It comes as no surprise so many qualified candidates get rejected.

When you’re rejected during a job interview, that’s often like a chef who gets rejected because how good they are at talking about cooking food. Job interviewing is a messy and ugly affair, that at best provides a weak signal of what you’re capable of in the kitchen.

They haven’t seen you on the job, or how you perform in the kitchen. During an interview they’re relying on a proxy - how good you’re at talking about cooking.

But that means the interview is heavily skewed to how good you’re talking and presenting yourself - how good you’re at interviewing - the Gordon Ramsays and Jamie Olivers of this world (who happen to be great cooks too).

An interview is an extremely limited situation to assess someone's full capabilities. It's a tiny snap shot we are trying to deduce all kinds of conclusions from where we simply lack enough information to draw these conclusions.

People who are good at presenting and selling themselves, are often perceived as being better than candidates who are actually... better.

People who are less nervous and more relaxed, perform better than people who get extremely stressed during interviews. Someone might be talking a lot not because they are a talker, but because they are super nervous.

Someone who gives fuzzy answers without being concrete, will be perceived as less capable as someone who gives clear, brief and concrete answers. Confidence is brevity.

Being rejected doesn't even necessarily mean you couldn't do the job well or didn't nail your interview.

There's a large element of luck and chance involved too. There just might have been a candidate who appeared stronger during the interviews or you failed to adequately convey why you would be awesome at the job.

As frustrating as it may sound: focus on what you can control which is trying to understand the impression you're giving off during interviews. Work on getting better at interviewing, as that’s a skill you can learn, much like presenting.

And remember, the impression you leave is something you can influence and control, but don’t let it ever define you as a person. You’re so much more than the impression you leave during an unnatural and stressful situation like a job interview.

So, for all the folks that are doing interviews: it's a tough market and keep on going. Don’t let the rejections define you, use them to reinvent the impression you’re trying to leave.

As hard as it is: don't let the rejections get to you and crush your self-confidence.

Focus on what you can control, and try to let go of what you can't control.

Easy to say, extremely hard to do.