Seeking advancement in work or being interviewed for a job can be a stressful and nerve-rackingly challenging task. The pressure is intensified as the market gets more and more competitive. About sixty million Americans have filed for unemployment, several more are underemployed or have completed reaping benefits, and have fallen out of the government’s official data coverage. Hence, the competition keeps getting more intense.
You are likely to deal with rejections in your professional career and now it is even worse. As businesses are concerned about what may happen in the future, it is challenging to get noticed at the office, especially as everybody is struggling to hold onto their positions or get a better one. Moreover, it is harder to deal with rejections when you are worried about paying the rent, bills, or mortgage. After submitting several CVs and completing annoying, extensive, applications daily without hearing back, it gets extremely difficult to stay hopeful and positive. When you consider you did exceptionally well in an interview and did not hear anything back after dozens of days, it is heartbreaking. If you are stuck in a similar position at work and no one is giving you a chance, it is challenging to keep making it through the week every month.
This article will help you cope and manage the situation if you keep facing rejections throughout your career.
You are not facing this Situation Alone
You can take some comfort in knowing that almost everybody is facing a similar situation. We shall all be in this together. There are certainly some people who are getting all the big breaks, but they are the few exceptions. Realize and accept that most people are facing similar emotions of stress, fear, and depression episodes. Everybody at some point gets rejected for some competitive role, let’s go of the positions after several stages of interviews.
It was Not Meant to Be
Once in a blue moon, you may catch a break and you will be in the right place at the right time. Most of the time, you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, which fails. Not getting selected to move on in the interview process and getting a big bonus or promotion may have nothing to do with your credibility and credentials. It could be due to several factors. The job may have been placed on hold or the organization went in a different direction. There may have been an internal candidate that scored the job offer.
Time for some self-reflection and analysis.
If you keep getting rejected day in and day out, it may be a time to do some self-reflection and self-analysis. You need to invest some time and explore the difficult questions like are you applying for the position out of your core competencies? Does your social media footprint reveal something about you that the company does not like? How was your tone and body language in the interview or at the office?
When you have been rejected, it is easy to start feeling resentful and angry. Such unattractive traits can come out and alienate people. If a hiring manager feels that you are resentful and blame others for your shortcomings and for everything bad that happened in your past, they won’t be interested in hiring you or giving you any responsibilities. In the job market, the hiring managers believe that there are several other intelligent, creative, and level-headed candidates with positive attitudes available at any given time.
Make Manageable Compromises and Adjustments
If you keep lucking out, you may consider sharing your presentation style with your coach, mentors, or trusted friends. Ask them for their honest evaluation, constructive feedback, and criticism. Consider each comment they give you and enact the relevant alterations to your strategy.
You also need to take a step back and analyze other factors. Review and revise your CV, LinkedIn profile, networking, and social media sites and postings. Managers and companies look at these platforms and make snap judgments based on the posts. Make sure that you are presenting yourself in the best light.
Additionally, revise and enact your elevator pitch unless you are fully satisfied with it and it is perfected. Consider all the questions that can be asked from you and rehearse your answers.
Keep Your Expectations Realistic
You may consider keeping your expectations realistic and manageable. For instance, before the pandemic, your goal was to land a job within three months or get a raise and compensation. Now, in a powerful market, it is fairly logical. Nonetheless, you may need to adjust your definition of success in the testing times. Landing a new job is quite hard and may prove to be time-consuming.
Keep your focus on the victories along the journey and make sure to celebrate them. Feel contented and satisfied when you hear from the hiring team. Pat yourself on the back when you score an interview. Get excited about each next round. Realize that the odds are always going to be against you. Hence, if the offer does not come into existence, it won’t crush you.
Keep your Confidence in Check and Don’t Lose Hope
It is easy to get ripped off your self-confidence and question your worth when you keep getting rejected from every interview. You may start revisiting all the bad breaks that disappointed you in the past. Left unnoticed, you can go down the slippery slope of self-doubt and second-guessing all the decisions you ever made in your life.
Try to substitute the negative feedback with telling yourself your brilliant qualities and great achievements. When an intrusive thought comes up, quickly replace it with an instant in which you stood against the adversity. Mentally recall all your achievements, whether big or small. It will serve as a reminder that you have succeeded in the past and you can stand against all adversities in the future, as well.
Positive Affirmations and Mantras can be Advantageous
Self-talk yourself into a success-driven mindset. Make a list of positive affirmations and repeat them on loop to fight against the hurdles in your path. “Just because this company rejected me does not rip me off my self-worth and value.” “I won’t give up and will make it work eventually.” “I am intelligent, capable, and have a lot to offer.”
Handling Job Rejections
- Ask For Feedback
The key to getting through the rejections is to think about what happened, and what you can learn from the mistakes. Asking for and listening to feedback is a brilliant way to handle job rejection. Self-analysis alone can’t help in improving your presentation, hence, detailed feedback from the manager can prove valuable in this pursuit.
- Review and Reflect
Rank your performance at each stage of the hiring process and list the areas where improvement is required. Rate your positive points and shortcomings and think of the ways that can be done differently to score a job.
Improvement is mandatory, so use any shortcomings to shine a light in these areas.
- Build a Personal Development Plan
Turn the job requirements and preparation into a personal development plan. You can fix the gaps in the performance. Based on the issue, there might be some training or informal coaching you can help to develop.
- Refine the Search
The feedback from your job interviews can be beneficial in the reflection process. Look in the job specification and ask yourself if you can truly see yourself in the role, then there is a chance the interviewer may have also seen it.
Use your previous experience to refine your job search. Seek the keywords that match your ambitions and goals. Look for the role that goes with your expectations. Ponder over these matters and you will be able to get what you are looking for.
- Build Resilience
The workplace is rapidly changing nowadays and companies are transforming themselves creating a mindset of resilience that is essential for long-term success.
Try seeing each setback as a challenge and grow the self-understanding and ability to bounce back and deal with failures and rejections. Overcoming hurdles in your path will help your chances of scoring the right job.
Conclusion
Rejections can be tough to handle and learning from them can be a challenging task. It is not easy to cope with the disappointment of being rejected continuously. It is a constant battle. However, by focusing on developing a strong mindset, reminding yourself of your great qualities, and capabilities, reevaluating your strategy, employing positive affirmations and mantras, taking a step back, and altering your definition of success, it will help you battle and overcome the feelings linked with the job rejections. Self-analysis and evaluation can help in developing a perfect presentation to score a job. Likewise, rehearsing and reviewing for your interview by incorporating the feedback from coaches and friends and your previous interviewers can prove valuable. Ultimately, having a level-headed approach and a resilient personality can help you cope with job rejections and come at top of things.