How to handle when an employer says "no thanks"

I wrote a recent article that received quite a bit of feedback from disappointed job seekers who had missed out on numerous roles, weren’t receiving feedback, and were getting pretty disgruntled with the whole process (and in some cases with HR and recruitment as a whole!).

It had me thinking, no one likes rejection. It’s a fact of human nature that we don’t like to hear “no thanks” “another candidate was more suitable” or any number of reasons why we didn’t get a position. Worse still, we definitely don’t want to hear anything at all.

There’s also the other side of it where mergers, restructures, and redundancies are taking place, and you may miss out on your “dream role” to another internal candidate.

I’ve experienced all of the above, not just from a recruiter's perspective, but I’ve also been involved in a restructure where what I thought was my “dream role” went to another candidate.

?I must admit, I didn’t handle it well emotionally at the time. I felt I had achieved so much in the role I was in that it didn’t make sense to give the position to a different internal candidate. But you know what? They were the better candidate in the end, and I know this because I took the time to research and reflect on their qualifications, experience, and positive attributes in the workplace. The role they got was more in line with theirs than with my own strengths and abilities. Not getting the role was the best thing to ever happen to me because I found a role that suited me far better.

Through my own experiences and others sharing their views, I’ve come up with a few different ideas on how to take rejection in a role and benefit from the process.

1.??????Take charge of your own feedback

We can’t grow or learn from an experience unless we have meaningful feedback to reflect on. If you are interviewing for a role one of the questions should be “when will I know the outcome of this position?” and you are well within your rights to follow up on the recruiter or hiring manager if this date passes and you haven’t heard anything. When they call or you follow up they may not be forthcoming with feedback; so ask the question “is there any feedback as to why I was unsuccessful?”. If they say the other candidate was more suited to the role that actually is meaningful feedback in itself.

2.??????Do your research on recent hires in the company

Have a look on Linked In at other recent hires in their organisation and if you are lucky the person who got the job may also update their details so you can look at this at a later date too. Ask yourself, what is different about their background to yourself? Where are some potential growth opportunities for you? Do they have a Masters degree and perhaps you could look at future study? Do they have they experience in a different area that provides them a more well-rounded approach to the role? Take a look at these insights and use it apply some personal goals for yourself.

3.??????Determine if this is the right role for you

If you’ve interviewed a few times for the same role and you are missing out it may be worth discussing with an experienced recruiter if there are any recommendations around what roles you should be aiming for. Some companies look for a particular skill set and you as a job seeker are not always privy to that. Furthermore; you may also have overlooked companies that would love your skill set or roles that you didn’t even consider. The job seeker and recruitment network is complex so it pays to keep an open mind. If you are not even sure about where you want to be or where your strengths could be best utilised it could also pay to engage the services of a career coach at this point.

4.??????Don’t take it personally and fall into the trap of pointing fingers

Yes, we’ve all been there where we don’t hear back about a role. Someone doesn’t return our calls. We miss out on a position that perhaps we were qualified for and it went to someone for an unfair or unjust reason. It can be easy to fall into the trap of becoming bitter or scathing of recruiters, hiring managers and the whole process. Only problem with this is, it doesn’t benefit anyone to get into this mindset. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where you think recruiters and employers are slack and unresponsive and the more that this happens it then reinforces your view that of course recruiters and employers are slack and unresponsive. I recently had a candidate who hadn’t heard about a few roles and interviewed for a position. When he was told he would get feedback on the Friday and he said they “wouldn’t hold his breath”. He interviewed well but those comments and the mindset he had about the process cost him the job.

Of course from this comment you can tell he’d been disappointed in the past but this outlook and attitude didn’t help anyone. Let it go, holding on to resentment is a burden you don’t need to carry.

As we move into the New Year I’m sure many of us will be looking at embarking on new challenges or perhaps you’ve made it your new years resolution to land a new role. You may miss out on one or two of those roles. However, if you approach each part of the process as an opportunity to discover more about yourself as a job seeker and learn about the market; you might just find you were only one or two applications away from that dream job after all.