Level 1: Why aren’t the recruiters calling me back? My resume was tailored perfectly. I can do everything in that job opening, why am I not getting called? I’ve applied to 20 job openings but haven’t gotten any bites.
Level 2: What did I do wrong during the interview? I #nailedit during the interview rounds but I wasn’t selected for the job! How many times am I going to be on the #shortlist but not get the job?
Level 3: What’s wrong with me?! I’m never going to advance my career! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!
Let me help you here. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU and there is a good chance it is #NotYourFault. Most of us do just fine during the interview process. Getting the good ole’ “Thanks but we decided to go with another candidate.” is tough to handle because it is easy to decode that as “You aren’t good enough.”, “We don’t want you.”, and “We even don’t like you enough.”
Get a new decoder ring because those are not the reasons you didn’t get hired. You’ve heard that it’s a numbers game and that is very much a fact. Try and learn from the “rejectionsâ€.
There are plenty of reasons you didn’t get hired and I’ll bet you most of them were out of your control. Do you know if their budget just got cut? Can you tell me for certain that they didn’t already have someone in mind? How can you be sure that the hiring manager didn’t love you but was being let go or just quit?
Don’t ever get down on yourself for something you cannot control. Did you nail that interview? YES! Did you walk away feeling like it went great? YES! Are you superstitious and won’t talk about how good you did because it will jinx you? GUILTY! ☹ Let’s go one step further and believe that it just wasn’t meant to be. (I’ll save that story for another post)
(DISCLAIMER) This post is not all about affirmation and having a hype-person in your corner. Some people are not doing the right things nor growing from their experience to land that role. If this is you, here is something to think about; What am I learning from all this? Have I been given advice on things to work on? Have I asked for feedback and acted on it?
It took a while, but I learned that there are a million reasons why I was not hired for all those roles but the one thing I knew for sure was that it is not always me BUT there were things I could improve upon. Pat Hubbell and the Team Candorful taught me this – and I am so grateful for it.
Reach out to them and thank me later. https://candorful.org/
TL:DR
You can’t control the hiring process, ask for feedback, reach out to Candorful, and keep your chin up.