By Christian Warren, Senior Careers Adviser
This insight is part of our career wellbeing series.
‘We regret to inform you that on this occasion you have been unsuccessful.’
Whether you’ve just heard back from your first-ever application for part-time work, or have spent hours completing applications for graduate roles, being told your application is unsuccessful can be demoralising.
Feeling rejected hurts, but luckily, there are strategies you can use to help turn this situation around.
Acknowledge and label your emotions
Emotions can be seen as a source of information that helps us understand what is going on around us. While we may want to be happy all the time, research shows that experiencing both positive and negative emotions is essential to making sense of life.
Research has shown that an effective way to do this is to acknowledge and label negative emotions.
Doing this simple act has been shown to reduce the amount of activity in the part of our brain that deals with emotion, and greater activity in the part that deals with ‘executive function’. In other words, the emotion becomes less intense, and we start to view and analyse it in a more detached way. Externalising how you feel through writing and/or speaking has been further shown to help.
From here, you can explore what’s behind the emotion – what’s the message it’s trying to tell you – and take suitable action. For example, are you worried that you’ll never get a good enough job? Do you worry that you won’t be able to balance the time commitments to apply for more jobs? Once you’ve identified the underlying issue, you can do something about it.
Reframe setbacks
Firstly, remember that being ‘rejected’ for a job is not personal, and in many instances doesn’t reflect on your ability to do the job. In fact, there will be times when you’ve done well in the application process, but it’s just that someone else did a little better.
We often learn more from what went ‘wrong’ than what we did well, so being unsuccessful at this stage of your career can be a good platform for the rest of your life. You can learn how to be a very strong applicant in the future.
Reset your focus
Firstly, acknowledge what you think you did well in your application. It’s easy to forget this.
Secondly, consider what specific areas you could improve? What specific, focused actions could you do to ensure your application is better next time?
Having clarity here will greatly improve your chances of doing better. For example, you can ask for feedback from the employer to identify what needs to be improved. Then, use our resources and talk to us about how you can develop your skills.
Take a longer view
While receiving a rejection might feel very raw when it happens, in time it will become one small part of your career story. This may initially be hard to accept, but in time your feelings are likely to mellow and you’re likely to come to appreciate what you learnt from an unsuccessful application. Know that you can, of course, still move forward and do well in every aspect of the job and application process.
We can support you with all aspects of the recruitment process from developing your CV to acing an assessment centre. Check out our making applications webpages with lots of practice resources and book an appointment with a member of our team.
First published March 2021. Updated December 2025.
Posted on Thursday 11th December 2025