Turn Rejection Into Data: How to Improve Your Job Search

Rejection never feels good, even when you’ve been through it plenty of times before. It throws off your mood, makes you question your whole strategy, and leaves you wondering what happened. Especially when you thought the interview went well.

So you ask for feedback, hoping for something you can actually use, and get told there isn’t any “actionable feedback” to share. Or, worse, the company says they don’t offer feedback at all.

Without an explanation, it’s easy to start filling in the blanks yourself. Did I take too long answering? Was that not a strong enough example I used? Should I have emphasized something else more?

Before you start spiraling and reevaluating every word you said, give yourself some time to look at what actually happened. There may be something worth adjusting, but one rejection usually doesn’t give you enough information to know what that is.

Don’t roll your eyes, but do need to talk about mindset.

I know “change your mindset” is really annoying advice when you’re trying to find a job. You may be at your lowest, depending on your circumstances, which is when its hardest to stay positive.

There are plenty of hiring decisions you won’t have visibility into.

A team might change what it needs during the interview process, a budget might get held up, or another candidate might have experience with the exact problem the company is trying to solve. I have seen exceptional candidates lose opportunities to circumstances outside of their control. So often we find that folks will interview well, and still lose out.

While its important to reflect on your performance for ways to improve, it’s foolish to think you had full control over the decision. Just because you could have given a stronger answer doesn’t mean that’s why they said no. When you treat every possible mistake as the confirmed reason you were rejected, you are unnecessarily giving yourself a hard time.

If you’re still in the “I’m never getting hired again” phase, come back to this later. You’ll have a much easier time figuring out what’s useful once the disappointment isn’t doing all the talking.

Okay, so what were your chances going in?

Think back to when you applied and consider the requirements of the role. Was this a job you had substantial experience doing, or was it a stretch you were excited to try?

PLEASE apply for stretch roles, but understand doing so will come with a higher rate of rejection. You don’t need to talk yourself out of every opportunity that would require you to learn something, but if the job involves managing an entire department and you haven’t managed anyone ever, you didn’t have very strong odds going into this.

A few things are worth looking at:

How closely did your experience match the actual work?

You need to look beyond the title. Have you handled the responsibilities they emphasized? Could someone reading your resume easily see that experience, or would they have to make a few generous assumptions?

Some qualifications matter much more than others. Missing experience with a tool you could learn is different from missing the central skill the job depends on, and recruiters take note of how much training is required.

How much competition might there have been?

A remote job with good pay and an easy application process can attract a lot of interest. You won’t necessarily know how many applicants were qualified, but it’s worth remembering that being qualified doesn’t make you the only person they could hire.

It’s frustrating, especially when you’d be perfectly capable of doing the work and in an industry you love.

Did you have a clear picture of what they wanted?

Sometimes a posting is juuuuust vague enough that you apply thinking, “I could do this,” and learn during the interview that half the job involves something barely mentioned in the description.

Use what you learned to reassess the opportunity. If the responsibilities turned out to be different from what you expected, there’s no way for you to have prevented that before that moment. That misalignment will often lead to rejection.

The point of looking at these questions is to set reasonable expectations for yourself. A long-shot application and a final-round rejection after several promising conversations are going to feel different, and they may give you different things to learn from.

What parts could you actually influence?

If you keep running into the same roadblock, start there.

Are you sending applications and rarely getting interviews? Look at the jobs you’re choosing and the resume you’re sending. Does it clearly show the experience those employers are asking for and connect it to business impact? Or are the relevant details buried under responsibilities from three jobs ago?

Tailoring your resume can be as straightforward as giving the most relevant parts of your background more space. If the role you’re applying for involves training employees and you’ve spent years doing that, make it easy to find.

If you’re using ChatGPT to help, read what it gives you. Carefully. Does it describe work you’ve actually done in language you would use? Or has your experience somehow turned into a jumbled mess you can’t really explain?

Give the reader enough detail to understand why it matters for this job. A polished sentence that could describe anyone isn’t helping them understand you.

If you’re getting interviews but aren’t moving forward, spend more time reviewing those conversations. Which questions caught you off guard? Was there an example you struggled to explain? Did you leave and immediately remember something you wish you’d mentioned?

Write those things down while you still remember them, then work through the answer you’d want to give next time, using your actual experience. Practice STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) answers that can be applied in multiple instances. You may never know whether a particular answer affected the decision, but can recognize that you weren’t happy with it and prepare a stronger one.

Make the adjustment you need to, then give yourself a chance to use it. Rewriting everything after every rejection makes it hard to tell what’s helping.

Keep the door cracked if you can, and move on.

If you spoke with someone during the process and can reply directly, send a brief response when you’re ready.

Thank them for the update, mention that you appreciated the conversation if you did, and let them know you’d be interested in relevant opportunities in the future. You can also ask to connect on LinkedIn if you’re feeling bold.

I’ve been offered two interviews after responding to rejection emails. I also know as a recruiter, I’ve reached back out to previous candidates plenty of times after having rejected them to discuss other opportunities. Having an existing conversation makes it easier to pick that relationship back up when another role comes along.

You might still be disappointed after doing all of this. I would be too, especially after getting invested in an opportunity. You really don’t have to find a valuable life lesson in every single rejection.

Take whatever useful information you have, make the changes you can reasonably support, and keep in touch with the people you’d like to hear from again. If the company gave you no feedback, you may need to answer those questions for yourself.

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I write about hiring, content creation, internet culture, and whatever else I can’t stop thinking about that week.
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