rejection on the job market

This can feel personal - like a wound. You can reasonably ask yourself what it means about you, your story of yourself, what you imagine as your reputation and value.

My experience of many rejections (received and delivered) is that the rejection says way less about you, the candidate, than it does about the rejecting entity and its context.

Most job descriptions don’t really tell you about the reason the organization is actually hiring for this position: what occasions the hire and what the goal of the hire is. Maybe an all star was suddenly fired or quit because of personal scandal; maybe the role is an obsession of a CEO or board member whose judgment the rest of the organization doubts; maybe there was a preferred candidate before the job was even posted. You can’t know for sure.

The thing you can control: being the most colored-in version of the weird little polygon you are. In interviews, hopefully they’re asking and you’re showing your sharp edges and bold hues. If you’ve done that and they don’t pick you, your most useful analysis probably isn’t rugged self-criticism. It may be more dispassionate reading of the context.

There’s a place where your shape and shine lock in tightly. That earlier place that said no may have been doing you a favor, preventing lots of friction and dulling on both sides.

-Eric