It’s a frustrating time in the job market right now. We all get that…I think…
It’s strange to see great professionals looking forlornly at their inbox having received yet another impersonal templated rejection.
I get it.
It’s easy to blame the recruiters for not responding to your application. Under normal circumstances professional courtesy dictates that you should get an explanation, or at least a call. Recruiters know that the professional candidates of today are tomorrows potential clients so they know they have to do what they can to build a relationship.
But these are not normal circumstances.
Not even close.
These days recruiters are bombarded with ever increasing demands from all sides.
Candidates desperate to get back the lost income and prestige of their old jobs, or even just worried about how to pay the bills.
What you may not have considered though is that clients are not reasonable either. And it is the recruiter that shields you from that.
You may never know the reason for the rejection letter. It is just possible that the client has told the recruiter that they need a nobel prize winning ballerina with a PhD in Chemistry and a previous job title as a CFO to fill that admin job. They can’t tell you.
It is also possible that the client simply changed their mind, or felt that their cousin, who beat them in monopoly last week, would make a great Finance Manager. The recruiter won’t say.
You see recruiters have a tough gig and we don’t help by overthinking things.
The reason for your rejection may not be as dramatic as you think. It also is likely to not be the recruiter who rejected you.
There will always be in every industry those who seek to just look out for themselves. There will be recruiters who don’t read CV’s or just get the AI bot to do a keyword search instead of choosing the best candidate.
If we are honest, though, we know that just flicking the same old tired CV onto the pile of more than 1000 that the recruiter has to now deal with isn’t necessarily going to be a success.
You can yell, scream, bang your fists on the table all you like. All you are doing is adding tension and emotion into a world that already is saturated with both.
Those recruiters are also going through a tough time. Try kindness. Try patience. Try understanding.
Try just remembering to just be a decent human being. We’ll all benefit from that.
