They say if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. Well, I’ve worked a number of days in my life. And while I’ve learned a lot of things in my working life, many of the things I have learned have actually been from the jobs that I didn’t get along the way.

Just because its your dream company, doesn’t mean its your dream job

A few years ago I squealed for joy when I found out my local Lush store was reopening after a huge shop refurb, and were looking to hire a whole bunch of new staff. I smashed out a cover letter that very night and was absolutely buzzed when I was not only invited to a group interview, but also invited back to a trial shift/second interview. Where I fell down was the trial shift, because I wasn’t as totally in your face as your typical Lush employee (if you’ve ever been in a store, you know what I mean) and because I didn’t jump on shoppers the second they walked in through the door, I wasn’t Lush material. I was semi-devastated at the time, but then I realised that the pushy sales assistant thing is definitely not my thing, and I would have felt really pressured in that job.

Passion counts for a lot

You can prepare for an interview all you like, but some interviewers want to see how much you want the job more than necessarily having all perfect answers. Feedback from one interview that I didn’t get hired from was that while I had great answers and they said I could have easily got the job, but other candidates showed more enthusiasm about the role and were more passionate about starting a career in that field, and that was just something that I couldn’t beat.

Just because you don’t get the job first time, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reapply

Technically, this isn’t about a job that I didn’t get, because its about the job I have now, but that’s exactly the point. I interviewed for this job once, and when I didn’t hear back for a while, I assumed that it was a no, which was then confirmed when I heard back about a month later, but I was invited to a meeting to get some feedback. During this meeting, I was told that there were two positions to be filled, and three people that they were torn between, one of which was me, but they settled on the other two. However, another role had just become vacant, and while they had to advertise the role again properly, they asked me to interview again, and well the rest is history!

Ask for feedback

Whenever you here back from a job that you didn’t get, don’t be afraid to ask the question of why you didn’t get the job. Take any ‘negative’ reasons as constructive criticism and learn for the next time, but also listen to the good things they will inevitably say about you, and also don’t feel hard done by if the reasons are that other candidates had more experience or were better suited – that’s not a problem with you!

Sometimes you’ll just never hear back

Unfortunately, there are some jobs that won’t even reject you, they’ll just ignore you. A lot of companies now even put it on their job applications to say that they won’t respond if you’re unsuccessful, leaving you completely in the unknown as to if you’ll ever hear back, and why you didn’t get it if you never do. I’ve learned not to take it personally and just move onto the next, their loss!

Twitter / Bloglovin / Instagram