Mental Health Monday: Tackling the Highs and Lows of Job Searching

What happens when you walk into an interview armed with the snazziest suit and tie, a resume you couldn’t possibly improve further, and more knowledge about the company than your friends…just to take a “NO” like a sucker-punch to the gut?

What you’re experiencing is the emotional rollercoaster that is job searching. Job searching can be the wild west for recent graduates, where you’ve got to keep your confidence close and rejections closer. It’s important to confront the emotions that come with experiencing these rejections and use them as leverage to bounce back twice as confident as you were before them. 

Why Rejection Hurts

Job searching doesn’t come without a few rejections here and there, and your early rejections can hurt just as much as your recent ones. When you feel you’ve prepared as much as possible for a position, and give the interview your all, it’s not uncommon to experience a derailment in your confidence and a rise in self-doubt when it’s all still not good enough. All in all, rejections can feel pretty personal.

Mentally recovering from a rejection can feel just as harrowing as anticipating the possibility of rejection right after your interview. 73% of 2024 job seekers in a Zippia study considered job searching to be one of their most stressful experiences. When you’re newly armed with a degree and may be feeling the societal pressure of scoring a job quickly, the addition of a rejection can feel like a recipe for disaster.

Why It’s Not Your Fault

Rejections don’t signify the end of your job search. They can be used as pivots to guide you in a new direction that may be better tailored toward your needs, and they help you get closer to scoring the job that’s best for you.

Sometimes, you don’t know where to turn when you feel like you’ve done everything right, all you possibly could’ve done, just to hear the word “no.” But it’s not always you. Rejections can be the result of many different circumstances, like timing, scope of the job, the current build of the team, volume of applicants, or even an error or typo.

What To Do About It

1. Remind yourself of your achievements. Look back at kind emails and letters from professors, projects or exams you killed, or even text messages from people congratulating you. Create a folder compiling all of these and swipe through them when you need to pat yourself on the shoulder.

2. Transform your mindset to be more productive. Instead of telling yourself that you’re not good enough or you’ll never get hired, zoom out and view rejections as another step on the map closer to your true destination. The perfect job for you might pop up out of nowhere, and you won’t be ready to grab it while it’s there if you tell yourself that you can’t.

3. Track your wins. Don’t focus on the number of applications accepted as your metric for progress. Instead, tally up the new skills you’ve picked up, the new connections you’ve made, and how you’ve developed as a person through the process. There are more ways to win at job searching that don’t only come in the form of acceptance.

4. Maintain a support system through it all. Connect with friends and family who will gladly have your back through both acceptances and rejections. Maybe even reach out to other students experiencing gradxiety (graduation anxiety) who could use your support, too!

Perseverance is Key

Rejections are just as important as your acceptances because they allow you to learn about yourself, grow, and serve as opportunities to remind yourself that you’re an accomplished graduate who has a long, promising road ahead of you. Don’t get hung up on the “nos” because the “yesses” are on their way, and you want to be ready for them.

At Gradxiety, we want to see you succeed as much as you do. That’s why we continue to build a community of thousands of graduates just like you who are looking for a team to root for their success. 

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