It's a major bummer when you have spent an hour writing what you think is an inspirational cover letter, attached your carefully worded CV, clicked the "submit" button, and then find out that absolutely nothing happens. This has happened, and continues to happen to me. It's no fun at all.
If I had a breezy, optimistic New World-type personality, I'd brush aside these brush offs, tighten my smile, seize the day and grab a job from somewhere. I admire people with those qualities - what I think of as American qualities.
I suspect I'm more an Old World type: more pessimistic, less prone to great emotional highs and lows, slower to get excited, perhaps a bit more thoughtful.
The question of how much of this personality type is due to genetics and how much to societal influences I'll leave to the social anthropologists. Can someone change their basic personality type - turn from a pessimist into an optimist? I suspect that it can be done, although I've never seriously attempted it. This might be a case where those who have done it, know; and those who have never tried, or tried and failed, don't.
Whatever personality type you might have, it's not easy being rejected. For what it's worth, I think that being rejected for a job is easier than being rejected by someone you might fancy. In my online experience (for jobs, not relationships), it is all very remote and emotionally detached. You read a job ad, written by someone at a job agency (an ad which probably contains basic spelling and punctuation mistakes). You write a new cover letter, click on some buttons, and your work history disappears into the ether somehow. At the receiving end, the designated recruiter finds your email, along with perhaps several hundred others for the same position, and then makes some decisions.
Spare a thought for this person.
How long would it take to read several hundred CVs, let alone give some serious thought to each one? What criteria does this person use to cull the selection down to a managable few dozen? Can such a person spend a few days making a shortlist and then phoning and interviewing the remainder? It's impossible. Such a person, possibly a new person to the world of recruiting, perhaps even filled with some sincere desire to treat each candidate with thoughtful respect, would not last long. They would be up before the boss within a few weeks, facing charges of spending too long on each position. They would be told that their time spent on one position is making them uneconomic - the cost of their time spent on that one job versus the financial reward from the client does not add up. The recruiter will have to use some techniques to speed up the selection process.
I have heard whisperings that some recruitment companies use image scanning software to "read" the cover letters and CVs, looking for key words. If your letter contains enough of these words, then you escape the rubbish bin for now and proceed to the next stage.
Another handy technique is to list in the selection criteria that a university degree is required, even when a degree doesn't seem to make any sense. Do you need an MBA to manage a retail shop? Will this make you a better manager? Does having the piece of paper mean that you, perhaps a young person in your early 20s, will be able to deal with employees, suppliers and clients, all of whom will be of varying ages, backgrounds and life experiences?
Ageism might be a factor as well. It wouldn't take a lot of experience at reading CVs to get a sense of how old the applicant might be. The future employer might have told the recruiter that they are looking for someone young, with perhaps a bit of experience, someone with a bright and bubbly personality. If you want to be a PA to a powerful corporate executive, then it would also help if you are an attractive young woman with nice tits. Yes, yes, of course you can't list the tits in your selection criteria, but having a nice pair would be regarded in most corporate offices as definite assets.
Being a middle-aged male (MAM) means that not only do I not have nice tits, but I also have a history, as does a middle-aged woman (MAW). This is not necessarily a good thing from a future employer's point-of-view. MAMs and MAWs can be complicated creatures to deal with: they have had triumphs and tragedies; possibly a few marriages and children; they have definite views about most things; they may not respond very well to certain types of managers who remind them of their former partners, parents or neighbours. They can be a pain. It would be easier to get some impressionable young blood who can be moulded into the corporate image.
If these are the realities of life, then what can a MAM or MAW do to make themselves visible to the recruiters (who are probably young enough to be their own children)? Nice question. If you have any ideas, please let me know :)
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