Extremely beaten up over job rejection

So I am ~2 years in to IB now, and I finally saw a path to a new role that instantly caught my eye. Really excited me, it was a unique role that was very aligned with my background and I clicked with my would be boss. Killed the first 3 rounds. Took a day off and went in to the offices in person and did the whole interview circuit, got a tour. Then they told me I am not moving forward in the process, largely I believe because of an HR interview that I felt the interviewer did not structure well.

It's on me for getting ahead of myself but I had a whole vision of how my life was going to look, what I was going to do between jobs, how the next few years of my life were going to look. How it would set me up for going to business school. And now that's just all dead in the water. This was giving me a lot of comfort after a break up earlier this year too, and now I am just so defeated. 

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You're assuming a lot of things here and ignoring the fact that there is a (potentially very likely) world in which you take this job, turns out to be a sweatshop and you don't culturally vibe, spend two years there getting destroyed, get fat, get a mediocre rec to bschool, don't get into bschool, get screwed on your bonus, get let go because it's a two and out program, and get ejected into one of the worst white collar job markets in over a decade. This situation is not uncommon. 

The point is that there is very little point dwelling on paths not taken because you will never know how they would actually pan out. All you can do is put one foot in front of the next and keep pushing the ball forward in whatever small way you can.  You're still employed and you're young. This means you're still building skills, credibility, and, hopefully, savings, every day and you have a lot of time to take more shots on goal. The biggest limiting factor to your long term success at this point is your ability to keep trying.  

 

Your story sounds so much like a job I recruited for in my 2nd year in IB.  Same exact thing in terms of feeling a natural connection with the place (it all just clicked and seemed to make sense), right down to skipping work for superday, getting the tour, thinking about my life in the new gig etc.

Our story is exactly the same, except I got the job.  And it turned out to be the worst job I ever had.  The work sucked, the people sucked, the personal development and transferable skills sucked.  All of it was awful, and it remains to this day a major wrong turn in my career that I will keep paying for given the opportunity cost.

Not saying that would've been the case for you.  But the correlation between excitement going into a place, and end result, is very weak.  Especially for younger folks.  

The mindset you want to have is that talent sorts itself out over time.  You'll eventually wind up where you belong.  Some get there faster, some slower, but your long-term success will never come down to some interview that didn't go your way.  

Also, side note, WTF kind of place would allow an HR interview to decide anything?  Good chance you dodged a bullet.

 

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