Rejected out of the blue- how to respond?

I recently had 2 phone interviews with a large firm's internal consulting arm (last call was Friday). Today I received an email from their head of recruitment saying (unexpectedly) that my profile does not fit their current needs so they will not be able to move forward. The email ends with well-wishing etc.

It's a small unit and my application was out of cycle, but things seemed like they had been moving in the right direction. A friend of mine knows both the unit's global head and the regional recruiter (person emailing me) and had put in a good word.

I am considering emailing back saying something like, "Thank you for your quick email and kind words. I remain interested in [firm] should a match for my profile arise. To help me in my pursuit of future endeavors, is it all right for me to ask how my profile specifically differed from your current needs?"

Fellow monkeys, what would you do? Have you ever been in a similar situation?

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