When I was a junior developer, I always thought that experienced developers never got rejected from job applications. Well, I was wrong!

In my career as a developer, I’ve gotten many rejections from job applications.

I had sent more than 40 letters, all of them were rejected.

I have learned so much from the ones I succeed on but even more on the ones I got rejected from.

In this post, I would love to tell you about the lessons I have learned from all those rejections, so you can be prepared for it.

1. Be Prepared

You have probably heard this early one in your life, if not, I hope you will lock this into your brain.

Good preparation is half the work

It’s not only a phrase, but it is true!

As a runner for the Olympics will train their bud off, to only make a change to win. If a runner never trains, he or she will never win a race.

Don’t depend on luck, but take good preparation. So what’s good preparation for a developer job interview?

• Search what the company does.
• If you get a name from the interviewer, do research to find if you have common interests, this will make the conversation easier.
• Read the application carefully to find out what the company wants.
• Write down some questions about the company or position. (I don’t mean questions about salary ;-) )

Will a good preparation guarantee the position? No, it will never be a guarantee. But with good preparation, you have a lot of bigger changes to success!

2. You Are Good Enough

But time will come that you got rejected. If you are lucky enough, companies will share why they rejected you.

Don’t be surprised to get some weird answers!

Don’t ask yourself am I good enough? Because most of the time it’s not about how good you are, it’s that you don’t exactly match with what they had expected.

It happened to me a lot of times that companies were not very clear about their expectations. So they rejected me because they wanted to have someone with slightly different skills.

Be confident that you are good enough! You will be in the process of growing your entire career, so don’t doubt yourself.

And if a company is searching for someone with more experience in a certain skill or technique, let that be your bigger motivation to keep practicing your work.

3. Don’t Let It Stop You

For me, this is the most important lesson!

I will take you on a journey. I was a developer for 2 years, needed to find another job. Searched the whole internet for jobs in my area.

Letter after letter that I submitted to get that job. I had sent more than 40 letters, all of them were rejected.

All for the same reason, I didn’t know JavaScript. What surprised me, because I could do some stuff with jQuery right. But that was not the thing most companies were searching for.

So I thought — if nobody wants me, I start working for myself!

It was a leap of faith. It was not the easiest path I could go, but I was motivated as hell to show all these companies they where missing something!

I’m so happy that I didn’t stop at that time! I’m glad that I pushed through the difficult time of grinding.

Conclusion

This is the reason I want to share these tips with you today!

Never let someone tell you to stop when it’s difficult! If you want it so bad, push through! You will make it! My career is proof of it.

If you want to ask for advice about how to deal with job interviews as a developer, please ask them in the comments or hit me on Twitter.

Happy Coding 🚀

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