The most disappointing (not so sure about upsetting) rejection was from none other than Google.

I was ecstatic when Google respond to my application by inviting me to an interview. If I recall rightly I had two pre-interview screenings, two technical interviews, and about four interviews with people. The people were great and the HR person I was dealing with was open that the feedback was all good.

And then the rejection came! I called the HR guy and asked what happened. He said there’s a central group somewhere who approve all hiring and they decided I hadn’t worked for a “big enough” company in the past.

Yet - my potential colleagues and manager thought I could do the job, I passed the Google-scale technical tests … and then some faceless person somewhere says “meh” and that’s that.

It’s not like they didn’t have my resume that whole time, or the opportunity to ask any questions they wanted !

So that sucked.

So for everyone looking for a job, that keeps getting rejection or crickets I'll give you the following tip.

Most of the first level screen of resumes are done by automated machines that are basically just doing keyword matching. So if you want your resume to get through more of these automated scanners, what you do is create a second page on your resume and cram it with every keyword, and buzzword you can thinking of, like "10 years react experience." "20 years java architect", "AR/VR 5 years", "15 years mobile", etc ,etc.

Then select the text and change it to white. No human being will see it, but the automated scanners will and rocket you to the top of the list.

Your welcome. Now help me get my penguin!

Post after a long long time...

Wanted to reply to so many comments and mentions, rant about a bunch of topics, do a face reveal after I went for a vacation with family and got some pictures, update y'all on my job hunt, but was busy like hell.

Anyway, time for a story.

After my rejection with Meta and Booking, I started preparing like crazy and my interviews started going well. Refined my LinkedIn further and recruiters started reaching out as well.

Over time, with efforts and feedback, I was able to build a good pipeline.

One of my dream companies reached out to me and I got hired in just 1 round and all others were merely a formality. I was euphoric, but at the same time didn't get over excited as this seemed fishy.

They made a very good monetary offer and I didn't talk to my manager yet regarding resignation. They are pushing me for an early joining.

Read a bunch of Glassdoor reviews and also spoke to a friend who just recently quit that organisation.

He confirmed that the company has 3 months of notice, has sandwich leave policy, and some other XLT political mess.

I decided to decline the offer tomorrow.

Day saved? Not yet.

Because of this I slacked off work a lot. I am super screwed with work items pending because I thought I'd quit.

My boss resinged and new one isn't that supportive yet. He is trying to change everything overnight. Typical.

I ended up performing poorly in other companies because I was confident I'll pick this offer and didn't prepare for upcoming good companies.

Moreover, we have our offices opening up from April and I might be asked to relocate to another city which does not have a team but just because it is on paper, they might force me to be in office 50% of the time.

And what's worse is, my relationship with tech is deteriorating and they are putting the entire product team in bad light.

I have a planned weekend trip coming up, so I won't be able to prepare for interviews or work on case studies so that shit will pile up more.

I am sooooo fucking screwed. Life was stable and then all of a sudden too 180° flip.

I am hysterical right now.

Me: *Gives second round in an interview, didn’t go as expected, waits for the result (at this moment we can’t go further with your profile kinda result)*

HR: *calls after 2 weeks* Hi, hope you’re doing good, your last round was declared CNS (Candidate no show)

Me: was it this bad, that the guy interviewing me simply wiped off my existence?

HR: let me figure out something. *Calls back after 5 mins* since it was a no show, we’ve decided to not go with your profile further.

Me: 🥲 it didn’t have to be this brutal of a rejection

So today, again, I discovered the importance of unitests.
I was solving this performance issue, in which we had a few update actions for multiple entities in mongo, but it took FOREVER to complete, even when I unified it into one bulkWrite command.
Since the unified write did improve performance slightly, and we wanted to move on, we decided to let this bug go.
So there I was committing my changes when I got a rejection from the pre-commit hook since I didn't have enough unitests coverage.
Ok, let's start writing some unitests.
Some unitests also needed to test the bulk write. So there I was comparing expected with actual result, and suddenly I got a huge facepalm.
Apparently some rogue for loop iterated all entities again for each entity that needed update. So instead of getting one update per entity, I got N identical update commands per each of the N entities 🤦‍♂️
Needless to say, fixing this fixed the performance bug entirely.
Thank you unitests and pre-commit hooks!

Most upsetting interview rejection?

Back when I graduated college, I did the usual rounds of interviews with insurance companies, banks, various other institutional businesses set up by the college's career center.

One local insurance company interview I thought went great. Usual 'Where do you see yourself in 5 years?' type questions, told her about my job history, very high level type stuff.

Couple of weeks later I get a letter in the mail and after the usual 'It was great to meet you blah blah blah', it ended with
'State Farm will never consider you for a position with our company.'

Never?! My then fiance (now wife) yelled "WHAT DID YOU DO?!!!" and I racked my brain for anything I might have said or done. The HR lady was attractive, but I didn't stare at any body parts and I didn't make any weird sexual advances (I was nervous enough without *that* going thru my mind).
The college career center floods the local companies with graduates and I was #5 in the waiting room that day. My only guess was they got me confused with someone else.

My fiance wanted me to call them immediately to straighten out any misunderstanding, but I knew what was done, was done. It's not like they would realize "Oh, that's right, it was Bob that kept looking at Karen's breasts, not you...come work for us!" Besides, why would I want to work someplace that didn't know/care who I was?

I wouldn't say it's upsetting but confusing.

I had an interview at a household name where I asked for feedback. They only told me I did well in the technical and every other area, and that I was the first person they interviewed in the last 2 months to make it passed the technical part.

Less than half a day later I got a rejection email.

Hi Lexter, we bought a template and we need....
---
Instant job rejection.

Recruiter reaches out to me, he says he saw my LinkedIn and thinks I'd be a great fit.

I say ok and send my resume.

He gets me a phone screen. I do it, I think I do a pretty good job. (I'm able to answer all the questions well, I think I'm onto the coding interview for sure.)

A couple days later I get a generic rejection email.

I'm not sure what happened. They had my resume, I know I did well on the technical questions (I do that kind of thing for my current job all the time.)

No idea why I'm rejected. If it was something about my experience, they could have seen that from my resume. If it was something from my phone screen, I have no idea what it could have been.

Just wanted to rant >:[

Am annoyed. Not mad, just very disappointed. So the guy I emailed yesterday about doctoral research positions hasn't responded yet, and this is causing me somewhat of rejection anxiety, specially considering recent events.
Honest to god, if this one fails I'm abandoning academia and research and making cool stuff. Fuck society. I could make so many useful life saving stuff, but they didn't let me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, I'm enjoying my current minimum wage occupation. It's stressless and repetitive and I pay fuckall for tax. I didn't want to go antisocial, but I was driven here. So there. This is why y'all can't have nice things. 🎤💧

Headhunter called about a rejection for an assignment I did:

Assignment had malformed data examples
Assignment had unrealistic timespan for completion
Assignment used item stocks for a shop setup
Assignment didn't use any prices just item stocks

Who builds a webshop without prices in the first place?

So done with this job hunting assessment bullshit.

finally got a rejection letter reguarding my 'recent' applicantion xp that was over a month ago. pft recent.

being ghosted after interviews is the most stylish form of rejection

The most painful thing about job application rejection is the canned response. You would be left scratching your head as to why you were rejected.

!dev

Post rejection, I'm basically emailing my last supervisor, and I think... I think I'm forcing him to be my mentor... 🤔

Although forcing people into doing things is really not my style, but I'm kinda sorta out of will to live. 😐

Not a rejection per se, but a company I applied to just stopped emailing me after trying to arrange a day for me to come to the office and meet the team, following an informal phone interview. They dragged their heels while I was on leave and by the time they got back to me I was back at work and had limited time. They basically just ghosted me after that.

!Rant
Just interviewed with this company that I really love and wants to work in. And I think I did well in the interview. I hope they don’t send me a rejection email like the rest.

My job search is so frustrating. Despite having a job for two years and my Bachelor’s degree being almost complete (less than a year left) over half of the jobs give me an instant rejection because I don’t have a college degree (yet). The worst part is knowing that if I apply next year they would probably invite me to an interview.

Since the 3rd day, I have been telling y'all but none of you listened to me.

I kept repeating that I am the dumbest person I know. Why didn't you believe me when I said it?

Remember, Booking feedback? They sent me another official rejection with additional feedback. Mind blown.

That feedback really helped me understand what was going wrong. And now today in an interview, I was asked a question and the interviewer said, "I am looking for a specific details like xyz for why you should be a Sr PM".

That's when it clicked me, that I have done stuff and I know things. It's just that I didn't understand the question and wasn't able to articulate and communicate well.

My dumbass just needs constant feedback to learn. How much I love feedback more than ever.

The feedback cycle is interesting too. When I was new, I hated it. Then started to realise the value of it.

Then it did felt bad in the very instance whenever I got one, but quickly I used to incorporate the changes.

And now, I am crave and desperately seek feedback. It only helps me improve.

Funnily, everyone gave inputs when I didn't want it. And now when I am hunting for it, no one is giving inputs. This is how life is.

Nonetheless, I am pretty impressed with Booking. Good people, nice vibes, and kickass culture for sure.

For me..

Rejection ??

Lol .. as per my experience they don't even have time to reject me :P

If I do not listen any words from them for 1-2 days .. I conclude that I was rejected.. Mostly don't even bother to tell you that you are not selected.

My most upsetting rejection come from before I got into tech.

I was working in visitor services at a a cultural institution and I was trying to transfer to a different department. A big show was about to open and we were anticipating large crowds. I was tired of the stickup rich people that made of most of our guests. Now, there would plebs would be coming in droves and they would be even more ill behaved.

I didn’t get the job and had to continue on visitor services. It was upsetting because I was trying to save myself from mental stress. I went through months of being verbally demeaned by gross visitors and had physical injuries from working the incessant crowds. Only the seasonal hires were given special gifts when the show ended and I received nothing.

I did reapply for the transfer again when the position reopened a year later. I got the job. The hiring manager admitted that he should have hired me the last time. The girl they hired left after a year because she wanted to go to grad school. They wanted someone who was going to stay longer because training and hiring takes time.

They offered a coding test alongside a resume. So I took it and did extremely well. Showcased my talents wonderfully. They ask for an interview (video call). We do the first half of the interview with an HR rep, goes great, a little over schedule. So we go into the second half with a little over twenty minutes left, and the hiring engineer wants me to write some code. He explains my task and sends me to a site where I can write and execute the code and he can watch. I had never written code with an audience before, and between that and my now 20 minute timer, I was a tangled up ball of nerves. Needless to say, I blew it, writing nothing of worth. He ends the call and I open my IDE. Working solution in 7 minutes. I got a rejection email two days later. Worst part? The company employed the author of one of my favorite "learn to code books". Would have been amazing to work with him. Really demotivating to say the least.

My ex had an accident. I told the paramedics the wrong blood type for her. She'll finally experience what rejection is really like.