Rejections at interviews are not uncommon. But your success at every subsequent interviews depend upon how you handle your failure in the previous one.

How easy is it to overcome an interview rejection?

It took me 12 interviews to get my first job. With every failed interview, I kept loosing my confidence. Every subsequent interview seemed as if it was even more difficult than the previous one. It was later that I realized that it was not that the interview was difficult. Instead I was loosing confidence.

It was an uphill task for me to regain my confidence and keep appearing for interviews until I could get through.

Before we even discuss how to overcome interview rejections, a question to ask is – Why should your loose your confidence when you get rejected in an interview? What you need to understand is the fact that they have not rejected you. Rather they have lost you.

The best approach to take is to look at rejection as a loss to the organization and not a loss to yourself.

It is often seen that even after so many interview rounds and screenings, organization often make the wrong decision and hire the wrong person. The consequence is a disaster. In doing so they often reject much more and better skilled talent, only to loose them to another organization who has a better form of interviewing and screening.

7 Things to do to overcome Interview Rejections -

As soon as you are through with and interview and you get to know that you have not been selected, don’t be disappointed. Follow this 7 step method to overcome the disappointment and to gear up for your next interview.

1. As soon as the news of you not getting selected is conveyed to you by the interviewer, thank them for the time and effort they invested in you and ask them if there is a feedback.
2. Don’t leave the interview venue immediately. Sit there for some more time and jot down 5 things that you think that the company lost by not hiring you. Read that for about 10 minutes and then leave.
3. Go out with your friends for a cup of coffee or, a dinner or, to watch a movie. Prefer not to go to pubs or, discotheques.
4. Read about 2-3 chapters of your favorite book, preferably a non-fiction book. I recommend, “The Magic of Thinking Big” or, “Tough Times never last but Tough People do”.
5. Prefer not to use terms like “rejected” or, “not selected” when telling people about your interview result. Rather say, “I was over-qualified or, over talented for their organization”. It might sound odd, but it will make you feel good from the inside.
6. Prefer not to schedule any interview the very next day. Set up your next interview at a gap of at least a day and leave everything alone and take some rest for the entire day.
7. Jot down 5 things you thought did not go well in the previous interview and what their ideal responses would have been. Practice them for about 15 minutes. Then proceed for your interview

These are simple things to do and you might feel awkward with doing a few of them. But these give good results and help you rejuvenate for the next interview.

Are your spending more than 12 hours in your office and still unable to complete your work?

Is your team feeling demotivated and unimportant?

If you are wondering, why I asked these two different questions that has no relation with each other, then think again!! These two questions are related to each other.

I have still not forgotten that day, when my boss walked into my room once late in the evening just as he was passing by the office and found me still in the office. He looked at me and asked me, “What are you doing in office so late”? I had a sarcastic look in my eyes and replied, “Boss, I am trying to complete my work”. My boss responded with an even more sarcastic look and said, “If you cannot complete your work in 8 hours of office time, you cannot do it in 16 hours”. I felt insulted and disappointed. After a few minutes when I tried to decipher what was the inherent meaning of this statement, I learnt the biggest lesson of my life.

If you cannot complete your work in 8 hours of office time, you will not be able to complete it in 16 hours.

In my further discussion with my manager he told me how to work effectively in order to complete things in time. A lot of these discussions were around effectively delegating work.

What is Effective Delegation?

Are you someone who delegates all of your work to your team members and prefer being an audience? Or, do you delegate very little or, no work?

Effective delegation involves carefully assessing each of team members’ skills and competencies. Your team members will have specific areas of interests. There would be certain other areas on which they need to work some more and some others in which they are masters.

The key to effective delegation involves the following -

1. Delegating activities which are of utmost priority to team members who are masters in it.
2. Delegating critical activities to people who have an interest in those areas.
3. Delegating less critical activities that have some time to completion to people who are not experts in these areas and who require some grooming.

Though these could act as guidelines to deciding on how to delegate work, these might not be necessary rules to delegating. Effective delegation could involve a combination of all of these aspects. At times your decision could also be based on the composition of your team. Whatever the basis of decision, you need to bear in mind that your delegation should not in any way hamper the deliver-ability of the activities being assigned.

A few other aspects that you should need to keep in mind while deciding on how to delegate -

• Keep in mind, not to put somebody in charge of someone which whom they have a negative relationship.
• While delegating you should keep the “favoritism” aspect out of the decision making process. Delegate unbiased.
• You would not want to loose control of the situation and become vulnerable. Do not delegate everything that is important and put the burden on the shoulders of somebody else. Keep somethings that are important with you and stay in control. Keep on eye on everything that is happening around you.

It is often found that a lot of bosses delegate everything and finally find themselves at the edge of the cliff with no way to go. Don’t loose control of the situation ever.

Delegation and Motivation -

Every employee wants to be identified and wants some extra responsibility so that he can show his worth. He starts to develop a monotony with the activities that he has been doing everyday. There starts to develop a lack of sense of belongingness. They begin to distance themselves from the team and the team leader.

The gradual shift of the team member from the team and the feeling of not being important is the core of demotivation and loss of production. Delegation can take care of this to a great extent.

Additional responsibilities will make them feel important. They will learn and acquire new skills thus making their work even more exciting and interesting. They will identify themselves with the team and the leader.

I still remember once of the employee in a team of mine who had a huge problem in outage. His leaves exceeded much more that then entire team taken together and he has a reason every time he went on an unapproved leave. He was given the responsibility of outage management for the team. He had to approve leaves for the team. Gradually over a period of time, I observed that he became very efficient and kept his outage within control because he had to answer every other team member if he disapproved their application. Also he had the responsibility to ensure that the team’s outage is within control.

Delegation can do a world of good for your team members in motivating them and upskilling them in their career aspirations.

Is aggression good for your career?

Many a times I have seen people in the top management being a bit too much aggressive. I have also come across quite a few employees in the lower management levels also who have exhibited excessive aggression. How good is aggression and what level of management does it benefit?

It is good to be aggressive, especially if you are into sales and marketing. It is said that the most aggressive of salesman are the ones who are the most successful. Aggression helps a salesman in pitching for his product with full confidence. In a way he overwhelms the customer’s thought process and induces him to think the way he wants him to think, thus creating an urge for the product that he is selling. And because the customer does not have too much time to think, the salesman is able to sell his product.

Does the story end there?

It would have ended there if the customer (consumer or, market) in question was that of the 1950s. The markets have changed now to become a buyers’ market and so the story does not end there. Customers have options these days and every company knows that if they do not keep their customers happy, they will loose then to their competitors. In such a situation, aggressive selling only helps meet the goal for the moment. When the customer finally gets time to think, he will realize that it was a forced sale and he will return the product or, decide not to buy from the company anymore.

Let’s ask the question again. Is aggression good for sales? The answer would be – Controlled aggression is good for sales.

Aggression in Management -

I was attending a workshop being conducted by one the top management personnel in my organization, when suddenly a participant stood up and questioned a logic that the speaker gave. The question was valid and would have made any speaker think. The speaker in question here, got irritated, probably because the questioner was a lower level manager and was a new entrant into the organization. His response did not provide a rebuttal to the questioner, but he indirectly meant to tell the participant that he should not be questioning somebody in the top management. He, in a way wanted to make the participant realize that he was in command.

The workshop turned out to be a flop with not too much of attention from any of the participant and even a few quitting the workshop in between. Later we got to know that the feedback that the participants gave the speaker was very poor. It is worthy of mention here that the speaker was an extremely intelligent person, with immense experience in the field that he was in and was the subject of the workshop, had good knowledge about the subject, was an extremely good orator and a public speaker.

Aggression can be extremely harmful, irrespective of what position you are in, or what level of management you belong to.

“No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.

Control your aggression. Think of a situation in your organization where both parties take to aggression. There would be no solution. Logical thinking and a logical explanation is what can help you succeed.

People Managers, especially should bear in mind that you cannot lead your people by being aggressive with them. You need to understand them, their needs and their thoughts and evaluate things logically instead of taking to aggression. A composed discussion can provide you a resolution or, a solution rather than an aggressive discussion.

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What is the cost of a smile? We often do not realize what a smile could do to somebody’s day. Though it doesn’t cost you a thing to smile, we are reluctant to this one gesture.

That day was frustrating for me. I was already late to office and I had a very bad road rage verbal altercation with another driver and was cursing everyone I found on my way as I drove into the basement parking in my office. I knew the day would be a terrible one for me. As I reached near the door of the lift lobby, I saw the security-guard sitting there. With a gloomy face I leaned forward to open the door and suddenly, I heard a voice say, “Good Morning, Sir. How are you?”. As I turned towards the security guard, I found a pleasant and smiling face looking at me. The smile was contagious. Suddenly there was a smile on my face too and I replied, “I am good. How are you?”. He replied, “Excellent, sir. I am enjoying the day here”. There was a sudden rush of enthusiasm into me and I felt happy and wonderful. That day was unexpectedly good for me.

What made the difference? It was the smile that the gentlemen passed at me. He did not loose anything, but he made my day.

I had once read somewhere about the 90-10 principle. It said that,

90% of the things that are going to happen around you and that is going to influence you are beyond your control. But 10% of what is going to happen is very much within your control. And this 10% is what determines how 90% of your day will be.

It sounded strange to me. The principle was somewhat similar to the Pareto principle, but how can percentages define a behavior, I wondered. But experience proved that the principle was right. When your daughter spills coffee over you in the morning, a slight change in your approach meant that you don’t shout at her. Rather you calmly walk into your room and change your clothes and tell your daughter, “It is OK”. This small change in behavior would mean that neither your day, nor your daughter’s day (for that matter even your wife’s day) starts on a bad note and there is pleasant smiles all around.

Check how this small change can bring about a lot of important and major changes in your day. This is the influence of the 10%. The 90-10 principle really works.