Welcome to Edition #19 of Ask Gorick Anything. This AMA is part of Gorick's Newsletter, where Harvard career advisor and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Gorick Ng shares what they don't teach you in school about how to succeed in your career.
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→ Read time: 4 min
ASK GORICK ANYTHING
“How do I get over rejection?”
Have a career question? Ask me here.
Subscriber’s question:
“Hi Gorick,
I’m Jaron, a newly inducted 2025 Horatio Alger Scholar that attended your talk on how to create your own opportunities. If you remember, I was wearing a green sweater around my neck and was sitting on the far right side from you.
I had a question that I wanted to ask but didn't get to as time ran out.
My question is: What is a significant example of when you were rejected from something? And what’s your advice on how to deal with rejection for landing jobs, internships, etc?
Thanks,
Jaron”
— Jaron Harris from Baltimore, MD, USA
Gorick’s response:
Hi Jaron,
First of all, thanks so much for getting in touch—I definitely remember you! Thanks as well for giving me so much energy during my talk.
I love your questions. Yes, I have a personal experience that I can share with you (see below). As for how I deal with rejection in my career, I always try to remind myself of 4 things:
1. This might hurt now—and maybe even 5 minutes (or 5 hours) from now—but I’ll probably not remember it 5 months (and definitely 5 years) from now.
2. The fact that this one thing didn’t work out means that I’ll now have the opportunity to do all of these other things, which I might even appreciate more long term.
3. Even pro baseball players only manage to hit a ball about 30% of the time. If the odds of failure are fixed, then the more I swing the bat, the more balls I’ll hit.
4. Every “failure” is a chance to learn how to do things better next time (so the more I “fail” when the stakes are low, the more effective I’ll be when the stakes are high).
Where do these lessons come from?
From the time when I ran for president in a major club in college—and didn't get it.
Not getting the position wasn’t the sting, though. Working really, really hard and still not getting the seat wasn’t the sting, either.
I was in 1 of 2 roles in this club that historically fed to the presidency. I had spent two years getting to this point—and I was convinced that either my opponent or I would win.
In the end (and the real sting)? Neither my opponent nor I won.
A wildcard third candidate got the job instead.
Why?
The club’s outgoing president is supposed to chair a meeting of the board of directors. The outgoing president isn’t typically supposed to say anything that sways voters, but there was a candidate who happened to be his friend and fellow fraternity buddy.
He spoke up in favor of his friend, who was—you guessed it—the wildcard who won.
I was devastated! It felt like I’d put so much of my life into that club. Numerous friends had told me, “Gorick, you’ve got my vote!” only to turn around and vote for this other person.
To add insult to injury, I later learned that many of those same people had spoken about how my hard work had been bad for team morale.
Ouch.
Little did I know that this rejection would end up becoming a huge blessing in disguise.
Here’s how:
1. The presidency would’ve required that I stay on campus for my junior year summer.
- Junior year summer is the most important summer (because many people get resume-building experiences that then convert into full-time job offers).
- Rather than stay on campus, I recruited for finance jobs and ended up breaking into investment banking, which then later landed me a job in management consulting.
- If I’d won the presidency, I would’ve lost my summer and I probably would’ve simply done more of the same things I’d already done, rather than explore something new and different.
2. The negative feedback I received helped me realize that competence is not enough to get ahead.
- I’d been so focused on being competent that I’d overlooked the importance of being compatible.
- In other words, it wasn’t enough to simply be capable. You also needed to be a “team player” who collaborates well with others—which I wasn’t, at least in the eyes of others.
- You also have to be careful not to overexpress your commitment to the point of becoming threatening to other people’s roles and responsibilities, which I guess I was also.
3. After being accepted into Harvard Business School, I took my experiences from college—including the Three C’s of Competence, Commitment, and Compatibility—and wove them all into the foundation of my book, The Unspoken Rules.
So, yes: I “failed.” Not only did I not get the role I thought I deserved, but the process left me utterly blindsided.
Now, years later, I can’t help but feel like this so-called “failure” was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. It led to opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise had—and led to a perspective I wouldn’t have otherwise learned.
Now, I have a different relationship with failure. The same can be true for you: It’s not a dead end. It’s a detour that will help you become even more resilient the next time around (and yes—there will be many more rejections to come!).
I believe in you!
Gorick
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