Keep Busy. When you receive a rejection, channel the negative feelings into constructive activity that is directed toward your goal. For example, for each rejection letter you receive, file it away and then commit to sending out five more letters of inquiry, or making three more telephone calls that very same day.
Talk to Yourself in a Positive Way. We all talk to ourselves mentally or verbally, and what we say can have a significant impact upon our self-esteem and general attitude. Make sure you are not giving yourself negative messages.
Develop Multiple Prospects. By always keeping a variety of prospects in different stages of development, you will have alternatives to pursue. Avoid placing too much faith in any single lead.
Try to Learn From "Nos." Try to learn something new from each rejection, something that can help you do better next time. If you do, no interview will ever be a complete loss and you will be constantly improving your technique. You may even ask the person who rejected you for feedback about yourself and how you could improve your chances in competing for future position openings.
Support Groups
Another means of working toward employment is participation in a support group. Such a group meets regularly to discuss progress and problems in each individual's job-hunting efforts. Meetings can be very informal with each person sharing experiences that have been encountered while job hunting since the previous meeting. Problems can be discussed and new approaches suggested. Where possible, role playing can be done to help members of the group who are uneasy about interviewing or using the telephone
Participants' self-esteem typically increases as they help solve each other's job-hunting problems and practice the job-hunting concepts they have learned. The credibility of the techniques is reinforced as members of the group have success with those techniques. The rapport of the group increases as members rely on each other for feedback and support Participants learn that they have similar concerns and can deal with them in similar ways.
Whether you are still in school or have graduated, you can easily join or start a support group. If you are still in school, chances are that the campus career planning and placement office periodically sets up such groups for interested students. Otherwise, you might form such a group on your own by periodically meeting with friends and acquaintances who are looking for jobs. It only takes three or four people to get started, and such groups usually should not exceed ten or twelve.
When setting up your own group, be sure that everyone agrees with the overall objectives of the group and the guidelines for participation.
Support groups tend to be most successful if everyone participating has already developed their career objective, and thus knows the kind of job for which they are looking. Members of the group must make the group a high enough priority to schedule other activities around meetings, and be willing to devote the time to job hunting between group meetings.
Members should be willing to share personal job-hunting experiences, whether successful or not, and be supportive of other members of the group. Typically support group members are committed to sharing information and contacts that might be helpful to other members of the group, helping others to diagnose and solve problems related to their job search, and spending a minimum number of hours per week on their own job search. Before the end of each meeting members should outline the action steps each one is committed to taking before the next meeting of the group. This kind of accountability and support can keep you up and going when your job search may have you down.
