“We Regret to Inform You That…” — The Dreaded Job Rejection Email

Rejection Email

There is a particular kind of email that can ruin your mood before you’ve even finished reading it. You open your inbox, see the name of a company you recently applied to, and for a brief moment, you get excited. Maybe it’s the update you’ve been waiting for. Maybe you’ve finally been selected. Then you see the words, “We regret to inform you that…” and suddenly, you don’t need to read any further. You already know how the story ends.

What I find amusing about job rejection emails is the politeness of it all. They make it sound as though the company is personally devastated by the decision. “We regret to inform you” sounds almost like someone is breaking up with you gently. Meanwhile, you’re sitting there thinking about the time you spent tailoring your CV, writing a cover letter, completing their application form and preparing for an interview. You might even have imagined yourself working there. Now you’re being politely informed that your dreams have been redirected elsewhere.

The application process itself can sometimes feel like a full-time job. You find a vacancy, read through the requirements and convince yourself that you are qualified enough to apply. Then you upload your CV, fill in information that is already on the CV you just uploaded, write a cover letter, create an account, verify your email and answer a series of questions that seem to have nothing to do with the actual job. After all that, you finally click “Submit” and feel relieved. At least the application is out there.

You try not to think about it too much, but you still check your email more often than usual. When a notification appears, you immediately wonder if it’s from the company. Most of the time, it is a newsletter, a bank notification or someone forwarding something completely unrelated. But eventually, the company’s name appears in your inbox, and your heart does that little hopeful jump. You open the message and discover that they have decided to “move forward with other candidates.”

There is something about those two words that makes rejection sound almost competitive. You start wondering who these other candidates are. Were they more experienced? Did they have a better CV? Did they know someone at the company? Did they answer the interview questions better? You will probably never know, because most companies don’t give you enough information to understand why you were rejected.

And that is one of the most frustrating things about job hunting. You can spend days wondering what went wrong when, in reality, you may not have done anything wrong.

This becomes even harder when the rejection comes after an interview. At least with an application rejection, you can tell yourself that they probably didn’t get to know you. But after an interview, you’ve had a conversation. You’ve answered their questions, asked your own, explained your experience and tried your best to make a good impression. If the interviewer tells you that they’ll be in touch, you leave with a little hope.

And when the rejection eventually arrives, you start replaying the interview in your head. You remember that one question you didn’t answer as well as you wanted. You wonder whether you talked too much or not enough. You think about whether your answer about your weaknesses sounded convincing. You may even remember a completely insignificant moment and decide that was definitely where everything went wrong.

Sometimes, though, there was no dramatic mistake. Someone else was simply chosen.

That doesn’t make the rejection feel better, but it is an important distinction. Not getting a job doesn’t automatically mean that you weren’t good enough for it. There could have been another candidate with more experience, an internal candidate, a change in the company’s plans or dozens of other factors that have nothing to do with your worth or potential.

Unfortunately, rejection emails don’t usually explain any of that. Instead, they give you a few carefully worded sentences, thank you for your interest and encourage you to apply for future opportunities.

That line always makes me laugh a little. After spending hours applying for this particular position, I’m not sure I’m ready to volunteer for another rejection just yet. But I understand why companies include it. The hiring process is not personal, even though being rejected can feel very personal. And that is probably the hardest part of looking for a job: learning not to measure yourself by the responses you receive.

When the rejections start piling up, it becomes easy to question yourself. You start wondering whether your CV is the problem, whether you need another qualification, whether you are applying for the wrong jobs or whether everyone else is simply more capable than you are. After a while, “keep applying” can sound like terrible advice because you are already applying. You are already trying. You are just tired of being told no.

Still, a rejection is only a rejection of one application. It is not a rejection of your entire career. It doesn’t tell you what you are capable of doing five years from now, and it certainly doesn’t determine whether you will eventually find a job that suits you.

The strange thing about job hunting is that you only need one person to say yes. You can receive ten rejection emails, twenty rejection emails or more, and then one company can change everything with a simple, “We would like to offer you the position.”

Maybe that is why the dreaded rejection email shouldn’t be allowed to have the final word. It can be disappointing. It can be frustrating. After a particularly long search, it can be downright exhausting. But it is still just one company’s answer to one application at one point in your career.

So the next time you see “We regret to inform you that…” sitting in your inbox, go ahead and be annoyed. You earned that moment. Then close the email, take a breath and keep going. Because while they may regret informing you that you weren’t selected, there is no reason for you to regret trying. And, hopefully, one day, the email waiting in your inbox will begin with something very different.