dealing with the feeling after rejection

Question

I interviewed at one of the good universities in the Netherlands as a lecturer two days ago, and I was informed today that I was not selected (five did the interview, and two were selected). I am really feeling sad. I don’t feel guilty now as I prepared for three weeks, and I felt I did well in the interview. It was strange because the interview was supposed to last 45 minutes, but it ended in nearly 30 minutes. I’m trying to reflect on this now, especially since I was really interested in that job. Yet, I feel like it might be time to move on and forget about searching for a career in academia as it is the second time rejection after one for a PhD two months ago. I would appreciate any recommendations about how to deal with such a situation, maybe it helps to go over this sad time:) I yet believe life will work out

How can I deal with the rejection, personally and professionally?

Answer 1

Failure is part of life. You can try reading CV/record of failure of some very successful people in your field. They also have a lot of failures. This makes me feel better at that time. More in the following link: https://www.sciencealert.com/why-creating-a-cv-of-failures-is-good-Princeton-professor-viral

I also want to add one more point: if you do not have failure, it is likely that you undersell yourself, or you do not try hard enough.

E.g. I can also submit my paper to tier 3 journal and get accepted easily to avoid failure, but we can be sure that we don't want to do that.

Answer 2

Keep trying. There seem to be more seekers than jobs in many fields at the moment making competition fierce.

Talk your qualifications and approach over with a trusted colleague, especially a professor who has some experience.

Talk to a professional about your mental state if you seem to get too low for too long. Good luck.

Answer 3

^{(This answer isn't specific to academia; I think the important points apply to all job interviews, house-hunting, and many other situations in life.)}

As the question already implies, this is a numbers game.  You didn't fail because they hated you; you didn't fail because you weren't any good.  It may well be that they liked you, that they were impressed by your skills and/or attitude, even that they would have offered you the job if there hadn't been other applicants that they liked even more.  And (much as the interview process aims to find the best people) chance is bound to be a factor.

Rejection will always be hard to take.  But it's only a temporary setback.  Ultimately, it won't matter whether you were rejected once, or a hundred times — in the long run, only the acceptances will matter.

And, since this is a numbers game, you can simply maximise your chances by making more applications.  (Doing that will also give you more experience of the whole process, which may help too.)  Yes, it can be hard to find the energy/will to go through it all again — but it will get easier.  And if you keep at it, sooner or later you're bound to succeed.

So maybe the answer to dealing with rejection is: try to take the long view.  Try not to take it personally, nor to dwell on what might have been — instead, learn what you can from it, and then forget it and move on to the next.  Because when you look back, you won't remember the rejections, only the ones that worked out.

Answer 4

Two other people were in the same situation as you, and more people who interviewed for that job were rejected than were accepted. And you got one of only five interviews so clearly your CV did it’s job and you were deemed a strong candidate. Even though you weren’t ultimately selected, by any reasonable assessment in the sum this reflects well on you not poorly.

In general rejection is the norm in hiring in general, and my guess is that academia is more competitive than industry given the huge number of PhDs and the tiny number of professor positions. Interviewing sucks and can be super stressful, but if you don’t give up then as long as you're qualified (it sounds like you are) and you’re not making self-defeating mistakes*, you should eventually succeed at landing a job. It may not be where you originally planned (or it might), but the key is to be strategic, try a whole lot, and focus on the eventual success not on the many failures that preceded it.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t leave academia, or that you should. But I wouldn’t base that decision on one interview that didn’t go your way unless you’ve been searching for a job without success for so long that your chances of success are rapidly approaching zero (this doesn’t seem to be the case since you got a coveted interview at a good university).

*It may be worth deliberately working on your interview skills if you aren’t already doing this. Doing well in an interview is an art form and most people aren’t naturally good at it. Learning how to ace an interview could give you an important leg up in your job hunt.

Answer 5

There is nothing further that I can contribute to the discussion. Just that maybe it would be beneficial for you to read Karen Kelsky's "The Professor is in" book during this phase. It's an excellent resource.

Answer 6

I suggest that you reframe this event that you're calling a "rejection." All large goals take many steps and attempts to achieve them. Think of these as stepping stones. You go from one to the next until you reach your end goal. Each stone is a positive step forward. If it takes 25 tries to get a job in the Netherlands, you started out at zero and completed two out of 25 required attempts. You are now at #3 with 23 attempts remaining. There is reason to celebrate each interview regardless of the outcome, because you're one step closer to your goal. Reframed like this, every interview is a success!

It's arbitrary to think of an interview as a failure. You can just as well think of it as a step forward. Both could be true in some way. In that case, don't invest in negative framing, because that will lower your energy and decrease your chances of success. Invest in positive reframing, not because you "hope" it's true, but because it "is" true.

If you want to drive from Rotterdam to Amsterdam, that's 78 km. After 1 km you don't say, "Zut, that didn't work." You say, "Yay, only 77 more km to go!" ;-)

Much of life can be viewed in more than one way. Choose the way that benefits you the most and makes you feel uplifted and energized. Generate positive counterthoughts to neutralize negative thoughts. Not "I failed this interview," but "Wow, I got an interview!"