This weekend, I was rejected from a role I applied for. This isn’t the first time in this job search that I’ve been rejected, but this one stung more than the others for a couple of reasons:
This is the first time I’ve been rejected from a role I interviewed for. (Again, I know what a privilege it is to be able to say that.)
This was my top choice job opportunity.
I was really aligned with this role. After I applied, I reached out to the person I’d be working closely with. We connected and had a great conversation. The dedication to their clients was obvious, and it made me incredibly excited to work with them.
This felt like the perfect combination of what I do already and what I want to do in the future: building relationships with clients and proactively learning how to make their experiences smoother, while also working in tandem with the PM to use those conversations to inform the product roadmap. Plus, since this was their first time hiring for this position, there was a lot of autonomy to define what the role looked like.
I really wanted it to work.
When I got the rejection email over the weekend, I was crushed. I allowed myself a couple of days for self-pity, but promised to get back in action after that.
Here’s what I’m thankful for, and where the lesson comes in: This company didn’t just ghost me, or tell me I was rejected without sharing the reason. The CEO personally reached out to me to offer his feedback, which I gladly accepted.
I learned that there were more qualified folks applying for the role. I also learned that, while there were many strong aspects of my application and take home assessment, I had room to improve on my product intuition.
The feedback makes sense. I’ve never worked on a product before. I can’t hide that, nor would I ever lie about it. It makes sense that I still need to grow my product knowledge.
In this tough job market, I’m competing with talented and experienced people. I’m talented and experienced too of course, but if I end up working on a product, it would be my first time doing so. For that reason I have to accept that, to an extent, my next employer would be taking a chance on me.
After hearing the CEO’s feedback, I felt…driven. If product knowledge is my issue, that’s entirely within my control. I can fix that—in fact, I’m already working on it. This just makes me that much more excited to continue learning about product intuition, analysis, and operations.
So while I’m disappointed to have lost the opportunity, I’m grateful for the perspective and motivation it gave me. I’m using this experience to light a fire under my ass so that, someday soon, I’ll find myself in a job that feels just as perfectly aligned as the one I missed out on.
Want to learn more about me? Know of any opportunities that sound like a fit? Let’s talk. You can reach me at brittleestill@gmail.com.