A few weeks ago, I went for a job interview.
I really liked what I knew about the company: the culture, the people, the soft and hard opportunities, the potential for growth and the respect of work -life balance. I also knew that the role I was applying to didn’t have the same financial compensation that I was used to. But, nonetheless, I was very interested. My skills were good for the role, there were one or two gaps, but nothing that I didn’t think I could overcome quickly and easily, after all: LADY BOSS!
Interview day came around and I met with the Brand President, VP and HR.
I left feeling uncertain but GOOD about it. Over the course of an hour, I presented a pitch deck, had insightful conversations and well, stumbled a bit. All in all, I left feeling confident – not about my success in the interview, but about myself! And what a feeling that is.
Fast forward to today, just over 3 weeks later. I got an NTY (HR speak for “No Thank You”) e-mail. They hired a candidate that was a better fit.
Okay, I’ve been in this game long enough, and call it a good gut or women’s intuition or whatever but I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to get the job. Even with all that, the NTY made my heart sink to the bottom of my feet. Here’s what happened in the next 60 seconds: I lost all my confidence, started questioning my quest for a happier life, got anxiety and worst of all started thinking that I would never be hired anywhere because I wasn’t enough.
How messed up is that? In 60 seconds: I basically talked myself into a scary dungeon of self doubt, near loathing and basically spiraled myself out of control, almost undoing the last 10 weeks of self care. And almost making myself believe that I wasn’t enough.
And then I took a deep breath and forced myself to wake-the-fudge-up. I got rejected today. And there will be many more times in my life in which I get rejected. But what I do after that rejection is what counts.
So, here’s what I choose to do: learn from it. Understand where my area’s for improvement are in interviews and apply the learning. And maybe in fact there was nothing I could have done differently and the person they hired was truly a unicorn. Regardless of all of that, I made a choice to grow as opposed to be defeated by it.
And then I started thinking: are we as women societally programmed to deal with rejection in a negative way? Think about it. Only recently (last 2 decades or so in my opinion) have women become more vocal and more assertive in talking about long standing so called societal norms that negatively impact a female’s mental or physical well being. And the journey is only just beginning.
So, if you’re like me and work hard at overcoming your own self doubt; I’m here to tell you: YOU ARE ENOUGH.
Never let anyone tell you different and most importantly never, ever tell yourself that.
Just remember to breathe, accept, keep learning and KEEP LOVING yourself. No NTY is ever enough for you to question your self worth.
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