I Got a Rejection Letter.
Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of 
“Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals,” a column by a laid-off recruiting manager in New York. Prior columns are collected [here]. You can reach Janet Raiffa via LinkedIn, leaving a comment here, or emailing 405club@gmail.com.
Last week I got a rejection letter. Rejection is nothing unusual to me these days. In fact, you can say that it has become my new middle name. I now consider myself lucky that my old middle name was Robin so I don’t have to worry about changing my monogram. This letter was unusual only because snail mail rejections are increasingly uncommon; in most other cases I’ve received the news via email, or in more than a few cases have simply never heard from an employer or a headhunter again. The other things that were notable about this rejection were that it was from a university I’d hired from successfully for years as a representative of one of its most wildly desired employers, and that the job would have required me to take a $120K+ plus pay decrease from what I earned in my last two jobs.
Receiving the letter didn’t surprise or hurt too much because it was weeks after the first round phone interview – perhaps the most rigorous and unpleasant phone interview I’d ever had - and I’d already drawn the conclusion that the response wasn’t positive. In fact, the thin envelope made me faintly nostalgic for my senior year in college. That was way back before email correspondence was the norm and seniors proudly displayed their rejection letters on the doors of their dormitory rooms, or papered their walls with them. They were called “ding” letters on my campus, and I remember that receiving them then was somewhat more humorous than I’m finding it now. I briefly wondered whether it would be appropriate if I mounted it on my apartment door, if only to put off the well meaning neighbor across the hall. He persists in asking me if anything is happening on the job front every single time he sees me.
This return to the reality of unemployment came after one of the best months I have had since my layoff…
