…is to not care about the numbers. In the modern job market, taking offense at every rejection will slow your progress to a crawl. No matter how bad the email, no matter how ridiculous the reason or how indifferent the response, you must keep going. Only more numbers will lead to a win.
I’ve applied to 45 jobs, and of course, some rejections hurt more than others. But whenever I open LinkedIn, I see a post from someone who had to apply to 100, 285, or even over 1,000 jobs to finally score a gig. And while I don’t know how much effort these folks put into each application, I can see what Wolf of Wall Street‘s Matthew McConaughey already knows about my submissions: “Those are rookie numbers. You gotta pump those numbers up.”
It’s hard to put your heart and soul into a plea only for it to disappear into the vacuum that is HR’s unmonitored inbox. So is being hung up on for the 100th time, having yet another publisher call your manuscript “meh,” or getting ghosted yet again after what seemed like a great first date.
But in the long run, it’ll wear you out much more still to get on a self-designed emotional rollercoaster each time you experience rejection in its countless forms—especially if what you’re playing is a numbers game. Let the math roll off your toughened skin, and just keep marching until you succeed.