Dealing with rejection as a Software Engineer

“Thank you very much for your interest in our Software Engineer role. Unfortunately…”

Sigh… Again?

I know how that feels, trust me. I do.

Sometimes I act like it doesn’t hurt and sometimes it’s really not that bad. But mostly it’s painful. But it’s also completely normal here.

Here are a few things you should know about rejection:

You were not rejected as a person

You were not “entirely” rejected. You were denied access into the company because the specific skillsets, the level of those skillsets, the way you presented those skillsets, the way you answered the technical questions (which may not have favoured you even though a tougher one from a different angle may have favoured you) or the way you crafted your CV did not convince the interviewer enough to choose you over another Software Engineer fighting for the same spot.

That’s really what happened.

A great engineer will be rejected if he/she is not a great interviewee

Interviewing is a skill. That’s enough, you can stop reading at this point.

Okay, you want more? Cool then :)

You have to hone your interviewing skill by doing more interviews. Mock interviews with colleagues and also with mentors or anyone with more experience, is great for this.

You need to learn the things the interviews require you to know. Ranting about how they do not prove how great an engineer you are, will not fix anything. Get to work!

Data structures and Algorithms probably bit you

Yeah, I know, I know!

I used to think it’s a bad way to test engineers and all that too. But changing paradigm and stepping into the shoes of an interviewer will make you understand things better.

Interviewers don’t care about the most skilled engineers. If an employer wants to hire 100 engineers in 2 weeks, and they have to sift through 10,000 CVs, they would rather choose 100 proven averagely good engineers in two weeks, than spend 3 months trying to get the top 100 engineers out of the 10,000 applicants.

An easy way out is to create a framework that tests the core things that cut across. Something that’s fundamental and independent of specific experiences that may not prove how smart an engineer is.

That’s all that’s going on here. Your job is to learn it and you’ll start seeing the real benefit too. You start to write better code, more efficient code and you just get better as an engineer!

What to do?

I have failed so many interviews and I’m still learning how to get better. Here are a few tips I can share.

Read Cracking the Coding Interview. You really should read this book. It’ll give you the foundation for cracking technical questions and also behavioural questions. It’ll also put you in an interviewer’s shoes to make it easy to know how to predict their moves.

Fix your CV/resume. If you’re arrogant like me, you probably want your “skill” to speak for itself, but it won’t speak loud enough unless you’re already way past the role you want to be hired for. It’s okay to pay for your CV to be properly done for you. Or take your time and read on how to make it the perfect CV that’ll get anyone’s attention.

Interview more and more. Repetition is for emphasis. Do mock interviews a lot. Not just as an interviewee, but also as an interviewer. Remember you learn best when you teach or learn with the intention of teaching. It applies to interviewing too — be an interviewer sometimes.

Build projects that will build your skill. You may not be exposed to technologies that really build your skill at your current job. Don’t let that limit you. Build more projects so you have things to confidently talk about during interviews. Interviewers love passionate engineers.

ALWAYS research the company. Don’t be too generic. Read about the company; its core values, projects, impact, everything you can get hold of, including your interviewer if you have information about them. Let them know you’re interested in adding value to them.

Know that it’s not personal. Rejection is never personal. Don’t beat yourself, you’re doing well. It’s either not a role fit for you, or you’re not at the version that’s fit for the role.

All the best!