4 Ways To Turn Around Job Interview Rejection

Rejection of any kind isn’t fun, regardless of the stage of life you’re in, but it can be a rite of passage of sorts. You don’t know how strong you are until you’ve had to battle back from a punch to the ego. In my experience, professional rejection can completely shake an individual’s confidence.

Being told that you didn’t get the job you spent hours preparing for can be tough. The rejection seems to validate that negative voice in your head that keeps telling you you aren’t good enough. While such feelings are understandable, believing them will do more harm than good.

The key to handling the fear of rejection is to immediately recognize when your emotions are taking you down a rabbit hole of negativity and try to think strategically about getting better. Here are a few tips that will help you maneuver through your emotions to bounce back better:

Seek Feedback

When you get rejected, you might not feel comfortable turning to the potential employer for feedback, because your feelings are hurt and it seems like you’ve been done wrong. But the reality is, no one can help you more. When you ask for constructive criticism, you open the gateways to learning. You learn where you went wrong, which helps you ensure that it never happens again.

Seeking feedback will also help you accept future rejections and move on instead of getting stuck. Don’t just ask people to accept you as you are without being honest about whether you can be better. There are always things you can do to improve your skillset.

But please keep in mind that the feedback you get is just someone’s opinion. The next interviewer may say something completely different. Think carefully about which parts are constructive and which parts don’t feel right. It’s up to you to decide what you will consider and what you won’t.

Reassess Your Strategies

If you have encountered a string of rejections and can’t understand why it’s time to look at your job search strategy and see if you can identify a pattern. Once you identify a problem, you can move towards correcting it and presenting the best version of yourself. With some analysis, you may even find that you are pursuing opportunities that have nothing to do with your interests and don’t make the best use of your talent.

Evaluating the steps you take before, during, and after an interview will help you identify weak points that you can work on and consider in light of the feedback you receive. Remember, every individual is different, and every solution will be different.

Remain Positive

Remember, rejection isn’t personal. It may have nothing to do with your particular qualifications or talents and simply be a matter of circumstance and timing. It will take many no’s to get to a yes, so it’s important to be patient and persistent. Sometimes, rejection even occurs because you’re too good. Did you ever think of that? Well, it happens. Interviewers have been known to reject candidates who are overqualified or seem threatening. Sad, but true. You must realize that not every position or company is right for you.

Seek Professional Help

If you’ve been doing the same thing over and over again, without a positive result, it may be time to seek an expert to help you navigate your job search the right way to save you time and frustration. Working with an expert will help you narrow down your niche, redefine your goals, and reinvent your brand package.

You might find it challenging to wrap your head around hiring someone when you have been going it alone all this time, but a coach or certified resume writer can offer insight that you can’t get on your own. New results require new perspectives.

Every missed opportunity could be a blessing in disguise. Who knows? Maybe the opportunity of your life is waiting around the corner, and this rejection was the push you needed to get to it.

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