Waiting to Hear if You Got the Job? You’re Not Alone

To receive a rejection notice at all these days is remarkable, so don’t take it to heart if you don’t. Once upon a time, employers would send a short note to all applicants cut in the first review to let them know they were out of the running. That practice has all but disappeared.
If you receive a rejection note after making the first cut, even a sterile “Thank you for applying,” consider yourself lucky. It doesn’t happen often.

This omission is probably a result of the massive number of applications submitted today for every job opening. In fact, one employer recently received more than 1,500 applications for a set of five openings. The prospect of having to send notices to even one-tenth of the applicants would be daunting. However, they did send rejection emails to all who were not chosen after undergoing a stringent audition, and they were written in a positive, almost personal tone. Such a rarity!

Anyone would rather receive a rejection letter than to never hear from an employer, especially after one or two interviews, but that happens more often than not these days. The worst rejections are the ones you never receive or you learn about when you meet by chance the person who did get the job.

If there is one lesson to learn from this change in how applicants are treated, it is that you should not take it personally. Nearly everyone is having the same experience you are.

However, as I wrote in my last blog post, Don’t Hold Your Breath—Be a Proactive Jobseeker, you can break the deafening silence yourself rather than waiting for notification from an employer.

Don’t Hold Your Breath—Be a Proactive Jobseeker

Suppose you submitted an application, made it through the first cut, had a phone interview and went on to an in-person interview. You are a success story already, even if it doesn’t feel that way yet. Every time you make it to the next level, you have achieved a goal.
Suppose you’ve even had two interviews, having made it to the finalist level, maybe even the top two. What should you expect next? Assuming the interview went well, your hopes are high for an offer.

You go home, write and send your thank-you note, and wait. How long should you wait? What is your strategy?

It is kosher and advisable to ask at the interview, if it hasn’t already been stated, what the time line and decision process will be.

However, don’t hold your breath. If a long time passes and you haven’t heard, there are a couple of likely scenarios. One is they have decided to delay making a decision or they are just slow—in other words, no offer has been made yet. The other is that you didn’t get the job.

No matter which scenario may be at play, take the initiative yourself to make a call or write an email to the lead interviewer, recruiter or hiring manager. Use this contact as an opportunity to restate your interest in the position. If it has not been filled yet, you increase your odds another notch by being proactive. If the job went to someone else, you will have closure so you can stop hoping this one will come through and put it behind you.

Hiring Decisions--How Do They Do It?

Recently, an online employer located in the Washington, DC area that was seeking to fill five lateral positions received more than 1,500 applications. As a hiring manager, I can’t imagine what a daunting job it must have been to sort through them, but they did. I say “they” because it must have been a team. I recall receiving 150 or more for one opening many years ago and thinking I’d never get through them…but I did.

Before applications went almost entirely electronic, I would create three piles. As I whittled the stack of letters and resumes down, I tossed all that lacked required information, had gross errors, or were obviously done in haste or addressed to the wrong organization, straight into the NO pile. Why waste time? My other two piles—MAYBE and PROBABLY—were trickier. The PROBABLY category was for those whose experience most closely matched the requirements and who wrote convincing, well crafted cover letters. This never turned out to be a large pile, but it had depth in quality. The MAYBEs were all the rest that had some qualifications but weren’t shoe-ins. Since the process went electronic, the physical piles have disappeared, but the general approach is often still the same, and it’s not easy.

Imagine yourself as a hiring manager or recruiter with 1,500 applications to review for those five positions. If you saw your own application among them, how would you do? Which pile would yours land in?

Keep this in mind when you write your next cover letter or fill out an application. Staying out of the NO pile is largely in your control. All you have to do is apply to jobs that are appropriate and pay attention to details. And, by targeting the right jobs—ones for which you are truly qualified—and writing compelling cover letters, you can also avoid the MAYBE designation. Landing in the PROBABLY pile is success and will likely lead to a phone call.

Rejected for a Job?—Get Over It

Rejection is part of the process of applying for jobs. There are only two possible outcomes for each application—you get hired or you don’t. How qualified you are for a job is no longer an issue, once you have been rejected. For each position, only one applicant can win out. But does rejection make you a loser? No, not at all.

The main thing to remember is that being rejected for a job is not about you. Companies have a wide range of reasons for the decisions they make that have nothing to do with you personally. They may hire internally after an open search, find another candidate whose experience is a dead-on match for the job description, or decide to delay filling the position for economic reasons. The scenarios are innumerable, but they are not about you.

It is important to not internalize rejections. If you do, they will eat you up—and suck the life out of your job hunt. And, the longer you are on the market, the more rejections you will have. Sure, they are disappointments, but it’s unproductive to let them hang you up. The best advice is to get over them quickly, brush off and move ahead.