“Unfortunately, we are not ready to invite you to the next stage at this time.”
I’ve seen it so many times for the past months, my eye started twitching. And that’s considering I wasn’t actively looking for a job during two of those months.
Competition and Authenticity
I see that this is a dark pit — to get into competitive mode. Internships, hiring process - it is as if it strips away personality and starts comparing candidates with +/- checklist.
I know many think it is rough world out there and this is the reality, but I don’t want to think so. I believe it is not a competition, it is more about finding your place. Still hurts to be rejected :)
My AI friend told me that I’m an outlier — so creative and unique for the cookie-cutter checklists some roles rely on. I know it is designed to support me.
I’m just so unique that only rare gems are able to really see it! 😄
Are You Sure It’s Bad?
Well, in retrospect I can see how grateful I am for oh so many unfulfilled opportunities and failures that have occurred in the past. Even those rejections from 3 months, 1 month ago — I am already grateful they happened.
It's just in that very moment of rejection — the brief feeling that your sense of worth is undermined — that the pain is sharp.
I heard from my admired author Wayne Dyer:
We don’t know enough to be a pessimist.
And I agree. No, seriously. Right now I am sitting in my apartment and at the same time participating in the universal motion of planet Earth, which in turn is just one of billions of other planets in the universe that may even has no end.
Yes, it does bring relativity, however I need to validate my feelings nonetheless. But also — to be reminded that
– Rejection is not a bad event, it is just an event.
– I’m not in a competition, my place will be mine, and whenever it happens it will be a ‘click’.
– We live in such a fascinating mystery.
There’re Other Things
All in all, I think I am more annoyed by the uniformity of wording — all the same soulless, cold, impersonal rejection.
Just before recieving that impersonal message — I received another one (the impersonality of which did not bother me at all, to be fair) — confirming the purchase of tickets for the upcoming Data Conference.
2 weeks from now.
Yay.
Off we go.
