Getting rejected
Something they don’t tell you often enough when preparing for interviews: it depends.
The outcome, that is, depends on so many factors, and it’s hard to get a grasp on why the company decided the way they did, especially when they don’t offer you the job.
My advice would be: don’t look for reasons why you got rejected, but do look for areas where you could improve.
Many companies can’t give you a straightforward reason why you’ve been rejected. It’s often not in their best interests, and sometimes the reasons have very little to do with your abilities and skill set. For example, I thought I bombed an interview, but was very surprised to get positive feedback. On another interview, I felt confident and thought I gave all the right answers. Their feedback was lukewarm at best.
There is so much advice out there concerning what to do — or what not to do—in an interview. Some of it is great advice. Some of it is horrible. And some of it just doesn’t apply to certain interviews. Much of this advice is subjective but is made to sound like its truth; how you should act, what you should say, what you shouldn’t say, how to impress. If you follow these tips and still get rejected, then you feel a sense of failure and inferiority. “I did what they told, why didn’t it work?”
But the truth is: it depends.
Of course, you should still be as prepared as possible, but I personally think it’s beneficial to go into every interview as if it’s a learning experience. This is hard to do if you’re determined to work for Company “X”, because you’re counting on a certain outcome. But if you detach yourself from the result and just use each interview as a stepping stone to the next, you’d be surprised by how much you can learn — and how much better you’ll do on the next one.
The point is, approaching interviews doesn’t have to be so formulaic, and getting rejected from a job is not a direct measurement of your worth.
People often let rejection chip away at them, and their self-confidence crumbles. The truth is, rejection — and all experience, for that matter — is like a brick. With each new one, you use it to build a stronger foundation.
