How to handle a job rejection, with a reply template that gets feedback

You’ve seen this email, or you will:

Thanks for your interest in the Product Manager role. After careful consideration, we’ve decided not to move forward with your application. We’d love for you to apply again in the future. We wish you the best of luck.

It stings, especially after all the work you put in. Handling rejection well takes two things: knowing what happens behind the scenes of hiring, and having a plan for what to do after the email arrives.

Knowing how hiring works shapes your expectations. Some rejections have nothing to do with how good you are. With that in mind, here are four steps for the moment the rejection lands.

1. Acknowledge how you feel

It hurts, and it hurts more the closer you got to an offer. Whatever stage you were rejected at, let yourself feel it. Anger and sadness are normal reactions. Acknowledging them makes you human. Just don’t let them take over. Feeling it and then putting it down is what clears your head for the next steps.

2. Find closure

When you’ve worked hard on an application and it doesn’t work out, you want to know why. Answering that question helps you settle your emotions and do better next time. Closure comes at two levels.

Level 1: assess yourself honestly. Go back through each stage, from your CV to your interviews, and look at how you actually performed.

Level 2: ask for feedback. Recruiters talk to hundreds of candidates. Five minutes of personal feedback for each of 60 rejected candidates is five hours, so most won’t do it, especially for early-stage rejections. Ask anyway. Here’s a reply that gives you a good chance of an answer:

Hi [recruiter’s name],

Thank you for letting me know. I’m disappointed not to be joining [company] as a [role] this time, and I wish you the best in finding the right person to drive [company]’s mission forward.

I’d like to stay in touch if that’s okay. I noticed you hire for [other teams] as well, and I’m happy to share those openings with people in my network when they come up.

Can I reapply in the future, and if so, after how long? And if you have a few minutes, I’d be grateful for any feedback on how I could have done better. I’m early in a career transition and your input would go a long way.

I completely understand if you don’t have time for this right now. Either way, thank you for your kindness throughout the process.

Best, [Your name]

The structure behind it:

Paragraph	Job	What it does
First	Empathise	Shows support for their goal
Second	Offer	Gives them something they need
Third	Ask	Requests feedback and a reapply window
Fourth	Empathise	Respects their time

Some feedback will be detailed and some vague. Either way, it’s worth asking.

3. Keep the door open

Stay in touch with the recruiter, the hiring manager, or the team, on LinkedIn or however they prefer. The reply above is the first step. You may not be the right fit now, but that can change within months, and when it does, you want them to think of you first.

4. Keep walking

Move on and keep your head up. You’ll need energy for the next application, and the lessons from this one. Stay optimistic, move with purpose, fix what went wrong last time, and lean on the people who support you. I lean on my sister and my mother. Find your people.

Next time

Next time a rejection lands, you’ll know what to do: feel it, find closure, keep the door open, and keep walking. We can’t stop rejections from coming. We can get better at getting past them.