An Affordable Black Pair of Size 10 Sneakers

“ We appreciate you taking the time to apply, but at this time, we are considering other applicants whose background and experience more closely align with the qualifications and requirements of this position.”

“Unfortunately, we have decided not to proceed with your candidacy at this time.”

“I wanted to let you know we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates.”

This is an excerpt from emails that most of us received or currently receive after applying for jobs, internships, fellowships or more. This is an excerpt from emails that we all wish we never see or read, emails that have the peerless ability to change our entire mood in a glimpse of a second, emails that can manage to ruin our entire day, and make us feel worthless, talentless and most importantly hopeless.

Now I want you to shift gears and imagine this situation: You decide to go to a shopping center because you need one specific thing: A pair of shoes. You enter a store and you find an entire area specifically dedicated to the item you are looking for. Now in the shoe area, you find all kinds of colors, styles, prices, and sizes but what you want is an affordable black pair of size 10 sneakers, so you find three different pairs and you try all of them to choose one that you like the most. Now you put one back and you have two pairs of shoes left but you decide to choose the one on the right because it is the cheapest. End of the story you pay for it and the shoes are yours.

This story is exactly what happens when a company decides to hire you. The hiring managers have a specific profile in their mind just like you have a specific shoe style in your mind when you walk in the store. When they start reviewing applications, they also find all kinds of backgrounds, experiences, skills, and capabilities, but what they want is maybe an Ivy league student instead of another, a US citizen instead of an international, a Ph.D. student instead of an undergraduate. Therefore, searching for specific kind of shoes do not necessarily mean that the rest of the shoes are valueless, but it is only because at that point in time you were seeking to find an affordable black pair of size 10 sneakers.

What I want you to learn from this story is that you will get rejected at some point in your life, whether as a student, an employee or a personal human being in general, but what matters the most is how you perceive this rejection, are you going to perceive it as a failure to satisfy the customer who is searching for the affordable black pair of size 10 sneakers, or as a unique opportunity to thrive until you find customers who are searching for one thing: You.

Written By: Hajar Harda

IQ Magazine X Calabash