Job Search Rejection: How to Move on When You Didn’t Get the Job

Job Search Rejection: How to Move on When You Didn’t Get the Job

When you get rejected for a job during military transition, what do you really want -- besides the job? When I got rejected on the jobhunt, I wanted a stack of pizzas, a gallon of strawberry soda, and my husband endlessly agreeing that those people were crazy not to hire me. Carbs and love are truly healing.

Yet the job hunt was still waiting the next day -- the endless grind of job listings. The return to networking. The illogical, creeping conviction that I would never, ever work again. While I had rules to handle a 'no' with class and I never planned a pity party, I did not welcome the advice people give to disappointed job seekers: Be positive. Ask for feedback. Remind yourself of your awesomeness.

I was fresh out of awesomeness. I wanted an actionable, concrete plan of how to handle the rejection and move forward to get a job. To help you, I have collected a few strategies from transitioning service members who dealt with disappointment before landing a job. See whether any of these help you move forward faster than my pizza guy on a Saturday night:

Little Black Clouds Hint at Rejection.

When you are looking for work at a time when hundreds of people apply for each job, rejection is statistically the norm -- for everyone else. It never feels normal for rejection to happen to you, especially after a successful military career.

It is tempting to think of taking a year off. From this point forward, resolve to look at rejection not as a lightning bolt, but as rain on your parade. You still are working your parade despite the little black clouds, but you sensibly make a contingency plan in case of rain. To make this work for you, sit down after the interview and make a written list of the next 10 things you can do on your job hunt so you always are moving forward.

Your Brain Is a Jerk During Transition.

The one person who talks to you most during military transition is … YOU. After a rejection, your brain nags you relentlessly about what you did wrong (even if you did not do anything wrong.) Your brain is not really a jerk. Your brain is doing its job. It is naturally wired to pay more attention to bad news and endlessly alert you to danger.

While this may be an adaptive behavior when fighting woolly mammoths, it is not so helpful during the job hunt. For the first week after the rejection, put your brain on a leash. Whenever it goes down the same old feedback loop about the lost job, pull it back and refocus it on something more helpful, like your list of things to do.

Put on the Red Light.

Once you accept that there is going to be rejection and disappointment during the job hunt, get some control over it by bucketing those items. Some days are truly red-light days. The thing that happens on your job hunt is so devastating that you come to a complete stop. Red-light days can be triggered when you know you totally blew an interview. Or you had great interviews and made it to the final round and still did not get the job. Or you had a job offer that fell through.

These things are more than disappointing; they are devastating. They do not happen every day. In the next three months, give yourself 10 red-light days when you are allowed to take the rest of the day off and start again tomorrow.

Take Caution.

Once you know what a red-light day is, you can admit that not everything that happens on the job hunt during military transition qualifies as a red light. Some days are just yellow-light days; the disappointment might make you pause but not stop all work. This can happen when your job search turns up nothing but the same old listings. Or a networking call falls flat. Or an interview is canceled. Take a break and then get back to the work you planned within 20 minutes.