How do people deal with depression that accompanies the rejection inherent in job searching. I get excited about a job, just to get my hopes dashed.
“Sorry, you’re not what we’re looking for.”
“Sorry, you don’t have side-projects, so we don’t think that you love the web enough.”
Or just the black hole where you spend time and effort to put together a cover letter, research the company, just to get zero response back.
It just makes me feel hopeless, and worthless. Sometimes I just feel angry and resentful. I feel like I want to work hard to become extremely desirable to those that have rejected me just to tell them to fuck off when they come back and ask me to work for them. Sometimes I just want to disappear.
The logical part of my mind knows that it’s just business and they are just trying to make the best business decisions that they can. But I can’t help feeling the emotional roller coaster.
It doesn’t help to confuse me emotionally when I get mixed signals, like seeing people that have interviewed me at local tech meetups, telling me that I was the strongest technical candidate that they’ve interviewed. If I’m so strong technically, then why won’t someone hire me? Am I just that worthless? I’ve significantly improved my interviewing skills, at least so much as it feels more like a conversation now, than an interrogation.
I don’t even feel like I want to attach my name to any of this because I feel like it will hurt me in the long-run. Who wants to hire someone that feels this way? He’ll be unreliable! He’ll break-down under pressure!
I don’t even feel like I should be posting here. I feel like I should just suck it up. There are people worse-off than me. Why can’t I see the bright side of things? All I feel is hopeless. I feel like all I’m doing is feeling sorry for myself, but the feeling is familiar and, in some ways, comforting.