How to handle rejections?

To state the obvious, rejections are a part of life. If you have seldom experienced them, you probably are not very daring.

As I mentioned in a previous post, getting a job in the tech industry is a nightmare at the moment . So much so, that candidates don't just get a rejection here or there, but multiple rejections in a week if not a day. And to rub salt in the wound, most companies outright refuse to give feedback, leaving the candidate to second-guess what they did wrong.

The rejection itself is most likely a template. In some cases I find these template rejections disrespectful, especially if you have undergone four or five stages of interviews. Or in other words have spent four to six weeks in the interview process only to be met with something written years ago. If they're incapable of changing your name, such as here, it adds further insult to injury. Unfortunately, it is the case that there is no standard practice of interviewing. The company can do whatever they choose and they're not even obligated to reply to you. This is quite frustrating for the candidate, particularly if they are freelance, as time is money. There are of course websites such as Glassdoor, which try to give the power back to the candidate, but this seems somewhat ineffective. For example, not all companies are registered on this platform and it's been known that some companies will force its employees, specifically HR, to write positive reviews.

So, if you are somewhat powerless in this nightmare system, what can you do about it?

When you get a rejection, its only power is how it affects you. If you for instance got an offer for your dream job and at the same time, got a rejection from another company; I'm willing to bet you couldn't care less. However, if you had sent out hundreds of applications, finally got an interview, got to the last stage and the interviewer says: "You've really impressed us, we'll probably make you an offer". Only for you to get that email: "Thank you for your time but it's a no". Your world may crumble beneath your feet and panic attacks become a part of your sleeping routine.

I noticed with myself that the response from a company could literally regulate my mood. I get invited to an interview, I'm on cloud nine; I get a rejection after the interview with no feedback and I want to bury myself underneath the Earth's core. So what can you do about it?

First of all, regardless of everything, do something that both you enjoy and involves other people every week. The idea is that you have something to take your mind off it, as, for example, with sport, you physically have to live in the moment to say receive a football, swing a squash racket or climb a wall. This allows your subconscious to work on anything that's troubling you and you may find you have a new perspective afterwards.

Second, work on a coding project you love. Many of us have coding projects we are really passionate about but may not have the time to work on. The worst thing about rejections is that it can kill your motivation to keep going. The best antidote to this is to return to your passion project and to just reignite that fire inside you. You may also find you'll have created some cool new features and then by your next interview, you'll have something to show off. Win win. It's also good to look at your older projects and remind yourself how far you've come. You may, for example, be able to code a function that you originally wrote in ten lines of code to five lines of code.

It is also good to ask for feedback but this has become a cliche at this point. As I alluded to earlier, many companies aren't interested in giving valuable feedback to rejected candidates, so it will often feel pointless. Nevertheless, despite the numerous companies unwilling to give me feedback, I had one or two that have been nice enough to provide me detailed feedback about my performance and it has proven to be incredibly valuable. This feedback made me a much better developer and I am eternally grateful for it. So always worth a shot.

In addition I would say before you have the initial interview or interviews, tell as few people as possible. This also goes without saying if you are currently employed (otherwise colleagues can gossip and you lose your job), but I say it mostly for your piece of mind. If you told ten people you have an interview and you received a rejection from said interview, you now have ten people who will naturally ask how it went. You'll then have to relive that rejection ten times when you tell them. Of course if you got a rejection, you may find it lethargic to talk about it. But by not saying you had an interview in the first place, you have control over whether you want to talk about it or not. Otherwise they'll ask and it can get awkrawd if you don't want to talk about it.

It's also worth noting that companies themselves struggle to interview candidates to their satisfaction. There is no one size fits all but Theo, a former Senior Frontend Engineer at Twitch, gave some good suggestions. To some companies it's whether you can solve Leetcode problems, to others it's whether you can recite all the technical quirks of your chosen language, and to any others it may be a take home task with an unspecified time limit.

Ultimately, it's always important to know that a rejection has as much power as you give it, and it doesn't define who you are. It can sometimes be impossible to show your true strengths in an interview, particularly if your interviewer interrupts you as you speak, or mocks you for being too technical.

And at the end of the day, after a rejection you can only get a new job by sending a new application to another company. So at some point you will need to get back on that horse and try again. It's always good to reflect and think of what you will change next time in the interview process, but it is not something to dwell on.

Your mental wellbeing should be the number one priority, which only you can champion.