What I’ve learned from 203 rejection letters.
So November 2015 I started to look for jobs. I was still on maternity leave but was planning to move and needed to secure a job in my new town. Now it may seem lika a crazy thing to do; sharing the fact that 203 jobs have rejected you, but I’ve come to see it as something I’m not the least bit ashamed of, and I bet you can relate to at least half of these lessons.
It was difficult to know where to start. I’d spent 10 years as an academic, and most of my industry contacts are in Stockholm. I started in the most obvious place; the public job’s announcement.
That’s where my first 63 (!) no’s came from. I applied for everything from secretary, to IT administrator and health care staff. I figured;
Hey! I can start somewhere and work my way up. As if it was a sit com from the 90’s. But life in 2016 doesn’t work that way.
For the first 20 no’s quickly realized that my CV was awful, so I put down time and effort and made a better CV, in two languages and made a home page where I could share more content about myself. Still not perfect but more outgoing.
For the following 43, it made no sense. I was qualified, or rather over qualified. So I started to write back to recruiters and ask for the resume of those that had been hired instead of me. And there the truth was revealed, in three parts 1) I was overqualified and hence they didn’t see me sticking around, 2) The person hired was someone working within the organisation (internal hire) and 3) They didn’t even read my resume.
Internal hires were the most common obstacles for not even reaching the interview stage. So after 63 rejection letters, and 0 interviews I realized 1) Burger King and any other place where I am deemed overqualified is going to say no, 2) Sweden is a horrible place to acquire a mid level job in the public sector unless you already know someone within the organisation or have worked there for at least 5 years. It was Game of Thrones, either you’re born in to the crown or you have enough nobels to recommend you to sit on the small council and 3) I need to become more focused on 1 type of job and target those positions instead of applying for everything I thought was interesting.
Note to self. Value yourself more and find everything LESS interesting.
So I started to job hunt for industry jobs in 1) administration or analytics and 2) research or project management.
After a creative plea to Spotify I ended up with an interview. Unfortunately I had the programmin skills of a potato so that went nowhere. I did revive my SQL and am learning both JAVAscript and MySQL. Which I am sure that I will have great use for!
It gave me hope. And following that I was invited for an interview with WL Gore. There I was taught the lesson of being questioned to what extent an academic can do anything outside of academia which prompted me to write this. WL Gore chose to hire someone else, someone with more experience. I did also learn the hard lesson of being forgotten by a recruiter and having to chase them to find out you’ve been rejected. It hurts, a lot. Imagine having to chase someone just so they’ll give you the time of day to dump you.
So then I decided to branch out even more, and what followed for application 80–150 was a series of bad experiences. Three companies asked me to do a “work test”. I did it, only to realize they weren’t hiring at ALL. Well, that’s not the whole truth, they did hire, from within. They had, with other words, used me and I had spent a total of 10h working for free with nothing to show for it. It taught me to ask for the purpose of any work test and to require feedback. Don’t let these greedy companies get the best of you.
And now 150–202 were actually companies I had called early on and tried to present myself to in hopes for networking opportunities. I’m not foolish enough to think sitting behind a computer will do.
I had by now learned that the internet is not a good place to find a job.
They answered me, with unenthusiastic voices, that they had nothing for me, most of them were not even interested in me working as an intern, for free. It made me feel, well, like the gum you scrape off your shoe. But that’s life, and one moves on.
And then the final blow, rejection letter 203. Just when you think you couldn’t have fallen lower in ranks, I receive this email which symbolizes the job applicant of the 21th century and the sincerity of online application. I got an unsigned recruitment rejection ending with this: Sincerely {sender}. Because in a world where 80 resumes are sent for one opening, it’s no wonder nobody even has the time to read your name, or tell you theirs.
Either way. I have enough of wisdom to know that my quest is not over, that I am not perfect, this is all a journey towards becoming a better professional and that an unfair world won’t change by me quitting the strife for a job I love. All I can do, is hope that the next 203 rejection letters are as entertaining.
P.S. On a side note, I created a male alter ego that had a horrible CV written in comic sans. He’s doing better than me. More details on that in my next article.
