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.

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.