How do you cope with the pain of unemployment and rejection?
I am genuinely unsure if I will ever find a software engineer job. I have slightly over 1 year of experience of software engineering experience. I have been unemployed for 4 months now and I don’t know how long more will I be unemployed in this terrible job market. I left my previous job due to my really toxic boss and have since applied to hundreds of jobs but with less than 10 getting back to me with an interview.
One of which was the DBS SEED programme which I made it to the hackathon. I worked my ass off to prepare for the hackathon so I could possibly get a position because there was no other offers.
It was honestly my only hope. I prepped extensively before it and coded entire test projects in different languages so I could cater to my other team mates and learn libraries from scratch so I help the team speed up the development process due to the lack of time.
During the hackathon, I made the most commits, I really strive to be a team player, I often try to help others debug at my own expense. I did not eat lunch so I could finish up the portions that other couldn’t.
During the 1 on 1 interviews, I answer all the technical questions whilst offering different viewpoints. The interviewer clearly nodded his/her head in response to my answers. I honestly believe that I could receive a job offer.
Today, I received a reject letter from DBS. I have also come to realise that some teammates who barely made any commits and was barely contributing to the hackathon (just parroting or offering bad suggestions, I am not joking when I say that they barely did anything, they had time to talk cock) received offers from DBS.
I don’t understand how DBS even evaluates the candidates or if they even checks the quality of the code or even the number of commits.
Not gonna lie, it was one of the most saddening thing I have received till date. It was not the fact that I did not get the job offer (it was a small part of it) but it was the fact that hardworking and clear competence is pointless. This isn’t my first failure, I have failed countless number of interviews and things before but this was by far the dumbest one.
I apologise for the rant. It helps me cope with pain. I am really tired of applying for jobs in this environment. It seems that with time, it gets more and more hopeless.
In any case, do you guys have any advice with coping with this situation and any rational explanation to how DBS evaluates their candidates? Have you guys experienced something like this before and how did you overcome it.
It would help a lot. Thank you.