Coping with Job Rejections

You applied to dozens of jobs with no luck. Your cover letters are honed to perfection. And your resumes are fine tuned to every job. The few interviews you’ve landed went well—or so you thought. But that all important phone call to part the clouds never came. The prospect of living with your parents looms as large as your student loan. You’re starting to slip into a mild depression just thinking about having to wait tables for a living.

Relax, you’re among the thousands of college grads facing the same gauntlet of job rejections. So how do you cope? Some suggestions:

Stay positive

It may seem that employers and recruiters are rejecting you personally, but more than likely, it’s not about you. If you were rejected before the interview, it may simply have been a mismatched keyword on your resume. The recruiter or HR manager may be biased toward one college or have had a positive experience with a candidate from a certain school. The HR manager may know someone from the list of employers a candidate included on his or her resume. If you were rejected at the interview stage, the reasons can be even more subjective and have nothing to do with you’re your ability to do the job. The chosen candidate may know someone inside the company or have a social connection outside work. In a recent Denver Business Journal article, Stephanie Klein, president and CEO of Experience Factor, a Denver recruiting firm, noted that one employer passed on a candidate because she "was too good for the role." The employer was concerned that the candidate would make the supervisor of the team "feel inferior." It happens. When it does, don’t take it out on the company or the interviewer.

Stay in touch

Don’t lose contact with the HR manager or recruiter, especially if you’ve met face to face in an interview. You’re a known quantity, culled from a list of preferred candidates. The subjective reasons that beat you out of a job can turn against the other candidate when he or she fails to perform as hoped. That leaves an opening for you. If the HR manager or recruiter is kind enough to call or email you that they’ve chosen another candidate, consider it an opening to ask why they chose him or her over you. This constructive feedback can be both an eye-opener and immensely useful. Be sure to thank them for the courtesy call and their feedback. For more on this, check out Learning From Rejection: The Questions to Ask When You Don’t Get The Job by John Kador. He devotes an entire chapter on dealing with job rejections.

Stay Focused

Don’t wallow in self-doubt and give up. Use everything the HR manager or recruiter told you in the step above as a learning experience. Focus on improving your cover letter, your resume, and in particular, your interviewing skills. Make yourself better than the other candidate who was selected. Add job skills, if necessary. Bring the odds in your favor by connecting with people in that company or others you want to work for. Join industry groups, attend seminars and trade shows. Become a known quantity. So that when you next walk in for an interview, you can name drop. It’s surprising how quickly that can get you on the short list of candidates.

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