Rejection Handling-Causes and Remedy

The great response I received for “why we lie” has motivated me to think and write one more similar topic. Rejection Handling.

Rejection Handling…Causes and Remedy

All of us face rejection in many phases of our life. From school admission to job interview, from marriage proposal to loan request, we encounter rejections of various types in our day to day life. Whatever be the cause of rejection, the general impact is that we feel disappointed and repeated rejection leads us to depression.

In this post I'm making an attempt to analyze the cause and possible solutions to over come different kinds of rejection.

Rejection type 1: Theory of relativity: This is applicable to situations like job interviews and marriage proposals. The vacancies are few (in the later case its just one) and aspirants are many. In this situation if you're rejected it's more because of the fact that there were other candidates who were considered more eligible for the post than because you were not good enough. When competition is high the selector enjoys the advantage-he/she can select the best. No body wants second best. If you sit back and cry (or in worst cases commit suicide) because you were rejected by a company or an individual, no one will give a damn.

Above situation can be overcome by any of these three strategies or a combination of them: 1. Enhance your competency, skills and other decisive factors so as to beat the competition 2. Find alternate or Compromise and settle for a lesser target 3. May be the other person failed to recognize your potential. Market yourself better.

Rejection Type 2: Perception and attitudes: Some rejections are because of pre set mindsets and notion of people. "He's a mechanical engineer and may not be able to code well", "last year he had an accident, it may not be safe to hand over the car keys to him", "if I receive his call he may ask for favors, better avoid speaking to him" All these rejections are based on some assumptions/beliefs and other factors for which you may not be responsible directly.

It takes consistent efforts to convince someone and change the way they look at you. They'll stop rejecting you only after they're fully satisfied with your abilities.

Rejection Type 3: Rules and Regulations: Some of the rejections are simply because of non compliance with some of the guidelines/rules/regulations/policies etc. Your leave request is likely to be rejected if you have no leave balance. To overcome these, you either reposition yourself to comply with the norms or find a way to trespass them (often done illegally and not advised).

Rejection Type 4: Purely Personal. Some rejections are purely due to personal reasons. The other person may just not be interested in you or has a bad impression on you or other compulsions or any other possible personal reasons because of which he/she might be rejecting you/your request. Very few straight forward people say NO directly and generally give a genuine reason. Most others give a clue that their response will be negative by their words and action. It's up to you how you want to take the rejection and proceed. Some of the personal rejections can be turned around by adopting tactics like begging/external influence/force/pressure/temptation/threat/pleading etc. While you may be able to get things done by these tactics, repeated use of them (i.e. forcing someone to do something he/she doesn't like) can be harmful to the relationship. Depending on factors like the importance of the person, the criticality of the request being rejected, the level of dignity you want to maintain, available alternatives etc you can decide how you want to proceed. Sometime you can afford to ignore this rejection while sometime you can't. This kind of rejections is to be handled by your interpersonal and negotiation skills. Also introspecting yourself and rectifying mistakes/shortfalls from your side, if any will help reducing this kind of rejections.

Rejection Type 5: Incompetence: You're likely to be rejected if you don't meet certain expectations. Like you're expected to clear a test or else rejection is guaranteed. These days there're global standards for almost everything and if you don't meet certain expectations and benchmarks, you're out of the game. If you face this kind of rejection obviously you should focus on the benchmarks you've to meet and achieve it. No shortcuts.

Type 6: Over Expectation: In some situations, we expect things we don't deserve and when we don't get it feel rejected. Consider these: A lady colleague in your office speaks freely with you on office work and next day if you invite her to movie or dinner, and get rejected, that's not rejection. You just expected too much. When people are not bound to entertain us, and our expectations can't be justified, we should learn to respect the other person and his/her decisions. You never finished your work on time with expected efficiency and you expect a promotion-be prepared for rejection. No one will show pity if you make this kind of rejections public.

These are the six types I could categorize rejections into. Whatever is the type we definitely feel very sad and disappointed when we're rejected. We blame our fate, luck, time and almost anything and everything. We begin to hate those who reject us even though he/she may not have anything personal against us. Will that serve any purpose?

In general following are the actions one has to undertake post rejection:

Ask for feedback: Try to ask the person what made him/her reject you. Not all are bound to give right feedback but generally should be able to grasp couple of points that lead to your rejection. Take stock. Sit back and introspect yourself. There may be something you seriously lack in you, you might have committed some mistakes, your strategies and approach may need a correction, you may not have enough preparation/practice identify the key reason Reassure yourself: Rejection is not the end of everything. They're an opportunity to identify your deficiencies and improve upon. You need a job, someone needs an employee. Finding each other may take some time, that's all. Restore your confidence Reposition yourself: Work on the key areas you identified in step

2. As far as possible overcome your deficiencies and ensure that you don't repeat the mistakes.

Your success depends largely on how you handle rejections. Most of the people who're successful today have sustained heavy criticism and rejections in the beginning. It's important that you don't loose your hope and let the rejection lower your self confidence. The train called life keeps moving. If you enter a wrong compartment you just change the compartment at next station. No need to jump out of train

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Thanks for reading. If you've liked the above post, you might like following similar posts as well:Check them out:
Why people lie?
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Pleasant surprise

This Monday morning I was in for a pleasant surprise. I was going through The Hindu Business Line and was reading Swathi CA’s column. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read my name and blog url in the article. She was referring to a feedback I (and other readers) gave on her previous week’s writing. online edition of the column: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/mentor/2006/06/26/stories/2006062600431300.htm

The biggest motivation for a writer is that there’re people who’re willing to read what he/she writes. Add to that the publicity in a national newspaper and he/she won’t be on grounds. I was literally floating on air for few hours on Monday morning.

There’s nothing worth boasting about all these but I was really happy yesterday. Last time my name was in media was way back in 2004 April when my article was published in Vijaya Karnataka. Two years is a really long time.