How To Deal With Job-Search Rejection

Dear Liz,

I got the rug pulled out from under me last August and I can't say I've totally recovered yet. My company was sold to a private equity firm and I got laid off.

I got three months of severance and I cut my expenses so it lasted me through the end of the year but it's gone now.

I got a part-time retail job right away and I'm grateful for that job because without it I would think I was losing my mind.

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One day you're working away with your co-workers, happy and successful, and the next day you're in your own living room staring at the walls and asking "What happened?"

I finally got my act together to start my career-type job search. I've had two job interviews so far so I can't complain. I know from reading your columns that my chances at getting a job go way up as soon as I have a job interview.

So I'm very glad that I've figured out the first step of the process, how to get a job interview.

I didn't get either of the two jobs I interviewed for. If I try to be objective, I probably wouldn't have hired me, either. I was nervous. I'm sure I rambled.

When I left each interview my first thought was "Thank goodness that's over!"

Still, the two email rejection letters I got caused me more pain that I would have expected. It just feels like a message "You're not good enough for us."

All I can be is me. I have years of work experience and great references. What can I do to build my mojo back up and learn to deal with rejection better than I'm doing now?

Thanks Liz! You are my guide through a tough time.

Yours,

Josephine

Dear Josephine,

Dealing with rejection may be the hardest part of a typical job search. Even when you don't really want a particular job, it still stings to be told "We don't want you, either!"

It helps sometimes to remember that even when you feel depleted, you may bring too much juice to a job interview and make the interviewer uncomfortable.

You may have more experience than the interviewer him- 0r herself does. You may intimidate them without even being aware of it!

The best way to deal with job-search rejection is to create such a flurry of job search activity that you have to work to remember which companies you're interviewing with, where you are in the pipeline and other details.

Your goal is to build your job search engine and get it moving at such a high gear that if one opportunity falls through, you have two others waiting to explore, right behind it.

You cannot pursue one job opportunity at a time and wait to see what happens with it before putting more irons in the fire!

As a full-time job-seeker you can set the goal of getting three to five Pain Letters into the mail every business day. With that high level of activity you will create more conversations with more companies and the loss of any one opportunity won't affect you as much.

You'll network with old friends and new acquaintances every week and you will give them moral support and get it back from them, too.

You'll spend time on yourself every week, listening to your favorite music or dancing with YouTube or reading your favorite books. You'll experiment with new recipes and explore your neighborhood.

I was an opera singer years before I ever heard of HR. Opera singers could teach job-search workshops because they know that they won't get most of the roles they audition for.

The routine of going to an audition, handing your music to the pianist, singing your song and going home takes on its own rhythm. Some of the auditions will pan out and some of them won't.

Sometimes you don't get the role you wanted and then six months later you hear from the director, who says "We loved your voice but that was not the right production for you!"

Over time you begin to trust the process and care less about every audition, not only because you've been to so many of them  but also because you know that not every show or every conductor deserves you.

Job-seekers get to the same realization once they begin paying attention to their bodies and the way their bodies react to different environments and people.

I recommend that you get a job-search journal and write in it. Reinvention is not easy but it is a time of powerful learning if you are open to it!

There is nothing for you to change about yourself or to feel bad about. You are perfect. You are like a snake shedding an old skin and trying on a fresh new one. Reinvention is a physical process and it takes time.

The minute you remember how talented and powerful you are, your mojo will begin to come back!

All the best,

Liz