Rejection: Changing My Approach in My Next Career Move

Written January 8, 2020

Rejection may as well be one of those four letter words because it tends to make us cringe even more.  I learned about rejection early in life.   I wanted to be involved in everything as a kid.  Most people don’t know that I tried out for choir, volleyball and basketball in my younger years.  I was rejected from each one.   Volleyball and basketball weren’t big hits, I hadn’t practiced enough at either to really be too surprised.  But choir was devastating.   I had been singing in my church choir and in church plays for years by this point and while I was certainly no Adele, I wasn’t like Cameron Diaz in my Best Friend’s Wedding.   (I might have just aged myself a bit there, oops).    I publicly cried like the world was ending and never tried out for choir again.   And it was the one thing I actually had focused on and enjoyed enough to keep going back to.   It was awful enough for me to remember the feeling approximately 19 years later.

                I avoided the feeling of rejection for a while by not going out for things once I realized it wasn’t working out for me. But when I hit adulthood and finished college, I was thrown back into the world of rejection whether I wanted to face it or not.  I decided to move to Columbus after college with no connections and no job experience. The economy had not recovered yet from the 2008 recession. I applied for over 50 jobs.   I was contacted by 3…3 entry level customer service jobs that were nowhere near my career interests.   So I moved forward with 1 and thankfully it worked out.   Fast forward to last year when I left Bank of America.   I started applying a little here and there on maternity leave and in the spring.  All in all I had to apply for at least 100 jobs.   Have you all filled out applications? That’s a lot of time and energy!   And here I was again only hearing from a few jobs here and there.  I received one offer and turned it down due to money.   That job required 3 interviews before the offer.     I finally got the job in my current field that paid more.   But that isn’t even what I wanted to do! There were jobs that I had phone interviews with or had applied for that I got rejections for or heard radio silence.   I’m a pretty confident person, but I have to tell you that this amount of rejection still discouraged me.

                I started to do some self-reflection after I took my current job because I still was not fulfilled by this job. I knew my next career move had to work.   What I came to realize is I was casting a huge net trying to catch whatever job I could.  While that worked when I was right out of college with no experience in survival mode, I am now further along in my working years and need to start making more purposeful career moves.  I should know from being married to a fisherman that things go better when you pick a bait for a specific type of fish.    You are much more likely to catch the fish you are trying to catch and then if you end up catching a different kind of fish, it can be a great surprise (unless you’re in a bass tournament and catch a catfish, that’s no good).      

                When I think about it even deeper, I think it all roots back to that choir rejection.  It is so much easier to try everything and just shrug it off when you get rejected than to go for the thing you really want and get rejected.   It is so much different.  I can get 20 job rejections a day and it might eventually discourage me, but it is nothing in comparison to getting that one job rejection to the job you really wanted.    So while it’s scary to potentially be in the same boat I was in so many years ago, I’m going to focus in on what I really want and if something else comes along, great.  I have a lot better chance of eventually getting the job I really want if I put all my effort toward it instead of spreading out the effort so it doesn’t hurt as bad if they say no.