Rejection Resume? What the . . . ? | JobSearchTV.com
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Dr. Eli Joseph and I have a provocative conversation about The Perfect Rejection Resume (Amazon) and finding your next job and career advancement through rejection. As you’ll be able to tell, I thought this was a stunning topic.
Standing Out on an Interview
Jeff Altman
So my guest today is Dr. Eli Joseph, an American academic who’s active in behavioral finance, data analytics, statistics and quantitative finance. He’s on the faculty of Columbia University, a contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine. In addition, he’s a TEDx speaker. And on the board, I’m sorry, a member of Ted Forbes, the culture and the Grammy Recording Academy. Eli, welcome. Thanks for making time today. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you. Thank you. Sorry, kind of you. And we’re gonna have some fun today. Because folks, he’s the author of a book called, I love the title, it threw me for a loop, The Perfect Rejection Resume.
Jeff Altman
Rejection resume, what is a rejection resume?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Now we know a traditional resume, it basically highlights our accomplishments, and what we have accomplished over our careers. The rejection resumes the complete opposite. The rejection resumes, a document the highlights or lowlights. In other words, it basically takes in all the failures, all the rejections that we’ve accumulated over the past years, our dream jobs that we thought that we were were applying to, and we got to rejected, that adds on to the rejection resume. And it basically, it’s a document, it’s more than one, one to two pages, but it’s a good document that we can use here in our hiring process.
Jeff Altman
And I gotta pause for a second. And I’m going to represent the audience here. And I’m going to repeat what I did before, what the . . .? rejection, like we’re creating a document that goes through all the failures, all the rejections? Like, I know, for myself, and folks, you know, this face is not 24 years old. That’s a, that’s not a one or two page resume. That’s that’s a lot longer.
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yeah.
Jeff Altman
Okay, why don’t we do this?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Now, as far as a rejection resume, we do this basically to number one, be transparent with the world, you want to share our failures, as much as we share our success. When we go on LinkedIn, we go on social media, we tend to put our best foot forward, we tend to represent the best and you know, we tend to talk about how we’ve accomplished so much. However, we don’t spend too much time dwelling on our failures, and what made us who we are today. So this is why we need that rejection resume because it, it puts us in our seat. And it humbles us, it’s a humble document for us.
Jeff Altman
And, you know, I have an MSW and I’ve run men’s retreats around the country, where men have a chance to look at the wounds that they have, and heal from them. And I have the idea that these failures, these rejections that we’ve had, you use the term humbling, but I also tend to think of as being like a cut, a cut to our psyche or a cut to our sense of magnificence. You know, the narcissistic baby. It comes out and the world revolves around me. And that’s what our normal resume does. So am I reading that right?
Dr. Eli Joseph
You right? Yep, you’re perfectly correct. It’s more so it’s a cut. Because we’re, even if we apply, we apply to let’s say, we apply the Facebook or to Amazon. It doesn’t matter how much time we have the firm itself, we could apply to Amazon 50 times or 500 times that cut. It’s a reminder saying, “Hey, you got to accomplish so much in the future. However, this is a reminder to look yourself as far as your wounds, it’s okay. You’re gonna endure the pain. That’s basically what you’re learning and it’s perfect. It’s a perfect example here.
Jeff Altman
So I want to check. Are they uploading this to an applicant tracking system, along with their regular resume? In replacement of the resume and like, what do you do with this thing, other than for yourself?
Dr. Eli Joseph
You may not upload it into the applicant tracking system. However, you can upload that on LinkedIn.
The Top 10 Salary Negotiation Mistakes
Jeff Altman
Interesting.
Dr. Eli Joseph
You upload that on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. You show it to people, you know, the fact that you’ve accomplished so much. Here’s my resume. But here is a long list of rejections and failures that I’ve accomplished over the past, I don’t know five years, 10 years, over over my whole entire career and even beyond. Here’s what I have. If I, if I proposed to my girlfriend and I was denied, it’s all in my rejection resume. If I if I applied for a scholarship, and I got denied, it’s all my rejection resume. It’s basically showing LinkedIn, showing the world. Okay, you know what, I am accomplishing in certain areas, but I’ve endured so much. And it’s a reminder, it’s a reminder and that I don’t have a silver spoon in my mouth. And I’ve gone through the same issue that everyone else has gone through.
Jeff Altman
So it’s the demonstration of perseverance in the face of adversity.
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yes,
Jeff Altman
got it. And thus, let’s say you put it on LinkedIn. Like, someone downloads this thing. And they go, “What the . . . right?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yeah.
Jeff Altman
Because they’re not used to this. What kind of response do you hear people getting to this?
Dr. Eli Joseph
So when I shared my rejection resume, I’ve gotten the wow, I have a rejection resume as well. We all have rejection resumes.
Jeff Altman
you bet.
Dr. Eli Joseph
Right. And on top of that, I get I get responses from the hiring managers as well. I remember one time I shared my my rejection resume. I applied to Goldman Sachs. And I remember getting getting denied for an internship role. The hiring manager, the managing director at Goldman Sachs, he reached out to me via the private message PM, and said, “Look, I kind of regret we’re not even taking you on the team, you’ve accomplished so much. And, you know, I kind of regret not taking you on.” But now, it’s also a way to turn the tables, as well. Because you can get hired that way, too. What if your, what if your rejection resume goes viral on LinkedIn, and everyone else everyone sees it. Next thing, you know, you get opportunities coming from, you know, places where you never thought you would have opportunities coming from?
Jeff Altman
Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Now, for you as an individual or for anyone as an individual, it doesn’t have to be personal to you, because you’ve got your rejection resume in the book. So, folks, he’s been rejected a lot. A lot. Not as much as me, but a lot. So what kind of response do people give you? I know, you tell the story about yourself and your internship, but with people that you advise to do this, what reaction or response to they get from people that they’ve shared with you?
Dr. Eli Joseph
It’s more of a relief for them. It’s like, wow, I’m relieved to even share my story. And I’ve inspired and, from from them, they’re telling me, I’ve inspired so many people to share their story as well. So it’s more of a relief, saying, “Look, I’ve hold on to so much negativity in the past that, you know, it’s kind of like I just bottled it up and put it all away when we’re taught. And we’re taught to just, you know, leave the rejection to the side, leave the negativity to the side and just focus on the positive. So when I get that feedback, I get that feedback from someone saying, “Man, just share my rejection resume? Not only did it did well, as far as the vanity metrics, I’ve gotten likes and shares, but I’ve gotten opportunities, and I feel relieved, I can now I can fail forward, I can fail spectacularly and show the world that I can, I can accomplish so much. And even if it’s not possible to accomplish something, I’ll make my I’ll make it possible in the future. I get that relief from people.
“Stupid Salary Negotiation Mistakes: Being Too Grateful”
Jeff Altman
Fascinating. So when people get rejection, and folks, I’m just kind of walking through concepts here. When people are rejected, what’s the emotional response that many feel, and you may be different, but this man is an expert.
Dr. Eli Joseph
When people get rejected, they tend to shut down. They tend to shut down and they tend to put the blame on themselves. And part of the blame, it’s warranted on themselves. But they’re, they’re always in competition with themselves. You hear this all the time, the term, I’m always in competition with myself and I don’t want to compete against others. When you get rejected, right? You get rejected from someone or an organization, you just feel down and you feel depressed. And I talked about this in the book. I’m always a firm believer that time is the biggest competition. So when I get rejected, it’s like, “Okay, on to the next one, right? On to the next one. And in due time, I will be able to succeed, whatever I need to succeed. So you know, that’s how I want I want to just change the paradigm and paint and change the status quo of, you know, when you get rejected, you just stay away from it and and not talk about it and and internalize your pain instead of just expressing your pain to the world.
Jeff Altman
And this traditional thing with men, of course, is block the feeling. Put the wall up. And it doesn’t work, guys, you know that every time your wife, husband or partner says to you, “Hey, did you hear back from so and so after the interview?” (sad voice) I got turned down.
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yeah.
Jeff Altman
There’s that feeling of shame, like I screwed up. And you dread even being asked the question. So I know that people, men and women hold on to these feelings, and they eat out at their insides and impacts people as they move forward. Because they carry the wound with them.
Dr. Eli Joseph
True, true. 100%.
Jeff Altman
So just doing this resume is a healing process. Wow. Wow, okay. So put it on LinkedIn, submit it with the real resume? Is that what we’re doing?
Dr. Eli Joseph
We could do that. We could do a compare and contrast. We can always compare and contrast resumes.
Jeff Altman
Okay. So tell me what it’s like at a job interview when a person submitted a rejection resume? Because you’ve done that,right?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yeah, I’ve done that before. Yeah, I’ve done that before. And when it comes to hiring us, like getting getting hired and employment, we want to get as much face time with the hiring manager as possible. Right? We want to be different. So when we share our resume, we’re sharing our resume with 1000s of other applicants for a particular role that we that we want. But if you share your resume, and you know if it’s if you want to if you want to share your rejection resume as well, it adds in that additional context, and I Okay, wow, okay. Not only have you been you’ve, you’ve accomplished so much, but the rejection resume, it’s intriguing. Tell me more about that. And, you know, once you hear that, that that question, tell me more,
Jeff Altman
You got them.
Dr. Eli Joseph
Because antennas are up. It’s like, “Okay, tell me more about that. Okay, good. Now I can I can reel them in and talk about my story and, and have that introspection where I can reflect on, you know, what I’ve been through and, and how I’m gonna get to the next goal. And it’s also, it also answers the questions. “Okay, so tell me more about your weaknesses, as well. We get that question all the time. Right? You know, what are some of your weaknesses? Okay, what was some of your weaknesses? Your weaknesses can be reflected from the rejection resume as well.
Jeff Altman
Right? Can I also have the idea that with the rejection resume, there’s a way to flip the conversation to what you’ve learned from the failures. And what you may have learned, in your case, from the rejection from Goldman, and the MD telling you, “you would have been an interesting hire,” and all that kind of stuff. It opens them up in a different way. It also opens you up in a different way. Because you can get to how you persevere in the face of adversity. And it’s an opportunity to talk about . . . There was an interview question that a client of mine used to ask. Everyone makes mistakes. I make mistakes. You make mistakes. Tell me about a professional mistake you’ve made and what you learned from it. Well, this is the grandiose mistake. Every mistake you’ve ever made, right?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yes. Because it also allows it answers the questions from your perspective of failure. Right? We always like to talk about how we succeeded and I have overcome, you know, so much, but we don’t have a document that explicitly states states, ‘okay. I’ve, I’ve lost here, I failed here. I’ve got rejected here. I was denied this scholarship. So it puts things into perspective. And not only that, you’re you’re brave enough to even share that with the world. You got the guts to do that. It’s like you even got the guts to even share your problems and your issues here. And it’s it gives a breath of fresh air and it once again, it relieves you. And then the chapter of the book I mentioned that pride is the devil for you. But shame is the ultimate angel
Jeff Altman
Say more about that because I’ve been trained to believe shame is one of those things of pain and embarrassment that is hard for many individuals to recover from. But you see it differently. Say more about that.
“Stupid Salary Negotiation Mistakes: Being Too Grateful”
Dr. Eli Joseph
So when we think of pride, right, and we’re not talking about the we are not talking about the I’m proud of you moment, right, that comes after the shame. But when we think of pride, we are, we are overconfident. We are arrogant to the point where I can accomplish this stuff. This is easy. If you give me a problem, I can easily get it done. I have that pride in me, right? However, once I get stung, and it’s always like, it’s like in a basketball game or in sports, in general, we have this underdog. When the underdog wins, right, the other, the opposing team goes, and you’re like, wow, I got stunned, and they are down. But then again, the underdog is okay. It’s that shame from from losing from an opponent that you never thought you would lose to. And what happens? That shame brings you back to Earth. It humbles you, that shame humbles you and they sit you down so you can learn your lesson from them. That’s what angels, the angels sit you down and they take you apart from that, that negativity. And not only that, they change it to a lesson. It’s a lesson that that comes out of it. And that’s what shame does.
Jeff Altman
And so much of life is about those lessons. I know Coach Parcells when he was the football coach for the Giants would talking about trap games. And it was a game, you’d look at the calendar and go, ‘this is an easy win.’ And the team would take their foot off the gas, and suddenly, fourth quarter, they’re down by three and they’re going, ‘We could lose this thing,’ because they took it easy. And like last year, I think there were games, that Jacksonville played. Like at the end of the season, Indianapolis looked at the schedule, ‘we’re in the playoffs if we win today. ‘But it’s Jacksonville, they’ve got two wins, this is a no brainer.’ And they lost and they didn’t make the playoffs. So it’s like looking at things as traps that humble us. And crush our pride. And the question is, how do you transition that in folks? Are there are stories that you can tell about this professionally where you talk about . . . there’s a guy I interviewed some years ago. I’m drawing a blank on this name. And it’s the I have a video of it on YouTube–There are Stories, and Then There Are Stories– And he’s a TV writer. And he writes for movies and the White House brought him in to do some of the promotional stuff for COVID relief. And he talked about connecting emotionally with people. And that’s what TV people do. It’s a formula that they work with. And we use a couple of the elements of it in the interview. But this is a document that starts hitting on this. Amazing, absolutely amazing because I’ve been trained the other way. This is stunning to me as you folks, if you can’t see my face, if you’re listening to this as a podcast, I look stunned.
Dr. Eli Joseph
To say to say to add on to your point, the genesis of the book, it’s a response to the people that told me you’ve you’ve probably got it so easy growing up. It’s gotten so easy. You’ve accomplished so much. You obtained your doctorate and by the age of 24. Everything must be easy for you.
Jeff Altman
And everyone holds a doctorate by 24.
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yes.
Jeff Altman
Did you go from your undergrad to your doctorate right away? You went through the masters?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yes.
Jeff Altman
Okay. So how old were you when you got your undergrad?
Dr. Eli Joseph
20
Jeff Altman
20? Me, too. I was 20 And you did your masters and you got that at . . .
Dr. Eli Joseph
Jeff Altman
Okay. And the doctorate by 24 Got it. Okay. And did you get into the program that you wanted to?
Dr. Eli Joseph
No.
Jeff Altman
How many were you rejected by?
Unknown Speaker
10 PhD programs.
Jeff Altman
Okay. Okay. Okay.
Dr. Eli Joseph
That’s PhD alone. Yeah. Undergraduate, undergraduate. We’re talking more than more than 25, 30
Jeff Altman
I don’t remember. Are those on your rejection resume?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yes. Not all of them. Not all of them. I did highlight Columbia. Columbia was my dream school.
Jeff Altman
And you’re now teaching there but they rejected you right? Because you got your degreea degree from Queens as I recall?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yes. Queens College? Yes. Yeah.
Jeff Altman
Okay. Your dream school says no, but now you’re teaching for. Yes. I’m stunned folks. Just. Okay. So
Dr. Eli Joseph
current table has tables will always turn that way.
Jeff Altman
And catch that one, folks. As you’re feeling badly, because one of the things I thought of doing this interview for, because as you can tell, this is not about developing your interview skills or how to negotiate salary, or any of that kind of stuff that I tend to gravitate to. This is the emotional side that exists as well. Whether it’s in job search, or overall in your career, you’re going to have failures. How do you bounce back? How do you recover from it? Especially when you’re trying to stop the feelings there? How do you bounce back? So, in your case, you got rejected by 10 schools for your doctorate, got into Queens, which I assume was not your first choice. Columbia was. And you kind of settled for the one school that got . . . let you in, right?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yeah. That’s okay. That’s right.
Jeff Altman
And you persevered. And you got the PhD by 24? And when How did you first learn that the rejection resume concept? Was it from Coach Roberts?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yes. Coach Daron Roberts. Yeah, I grabbed him for that.
Jeff Altman
Tell everyone about Coach Roberts for a moment.
Dr. Eli Joseph
So Coach Roberts. He’s a lawyer, he received his Juris Doctorate degree, but he was also a coach, an NFL coach as well. And he wrote, he did a TED talk. he delivered a TED talk. And if I’m not, if I’m not mistaken, the title was “Let Your Rejection Be Your Resume.” And he had a prototypical type of resume where he shared it, and I shared it in the book as well. Regret your resume. And I say, “You know what, that’s a good idea. It’s a good concept. I’d like to turn . . . I’d like to make a spin out of that and derive it into my own rejection resume, and make a story out of it. So I got that from Coach Roberts. Coach Roberts, he’s, he’s phenomenal. I mean, he’s used to be he used to be a coach in the NFL. And he had a story where I believe, prior to coaching, and he coached in Cleveland. He he assumed many assistant coaching positions. Prior to that he was sending out letters, he was sending out letters to coaches, and he was getting rejected, and was taking that on. He was taking that on. He’d written for ESPN. I mean, he’s, he’s good. But now he’s currently like he’s lecturing. And on top of that, he’s also doing mentorship programs and motivational speaking as well. He’s phenomenal.
Your Conviction: Employment Checks
Jeff Altman
He is D-A-R-O-N Roberts. Look up the TED Talk. It is phenomenal. And just enhance the story a little bit. He stumbled into coaching while he was in law school. And he’s working with a bunch of kids. And I have to say they’re the reject kids for athletics, but they got the gear. He talks about the headbands, they know. They know how to look good, but they don’t want to play. And from that he got the bug. And now how to tell his parents that he didn’t want to be a lawyer. And right, because good proper family that they are. Mom sends him to Dad, the minister, who says “Do you know how much money you owe? It’s a quarter of a million dollars just for the law degree.” And there’s some detail to it. But the long and the short of it is his first job was an internship. No pay. Sleeping at the stadium. And from that he parlays it into a career or because he got 31 rejections, and one person says “yes.” And as I’ve said, some of you have heard me say this before, it just takes one. So the 31 rejections you may get of the 32 teams, it’s okay. You just need one. The one person who really sees you. So what haven’t we talked about yet that we really should because this is stunning stuff.
Dr. Eli Joseph
One thing I’m not sure if we we put so much emphasis on this part, but renters do it every day. Renters do it every day. So that’s chapter two right there. Rather than chapters one, rent is due every day.
Jeff Altman
And what do you mean by that? I just want to make sure the audience gets that concept. Okay?
Dr. Eli Joseph
So when we think about rent. In general, traditionally speaking, we think about paying our landlord to live in a spot, right? Or live in a place on a property. But when we think of rent being due every day, the landlord is our goals. That’s our goals. The landlord that we have is our goals, our daily goals, short term goals, long term goals, that’s our landlord, we sign a lease, we sign a contract with our goals. However, we need to pay our goals off every single day rent is due. And the payoff, the payment and the currency of the payment is our effort. Our effort towards our goals. That’s our currency, sweat equity, we think of that term all the time. But we’re paying our goals off with our effort, whether we succeed or we fail. As we continue to move along through our journeys in life, right, our goals change. In other words, we have to sign a new lease. We’re writing off our ourselves and making sure that we pay off our rent. That’s our goals. And time is our biggest competition, because there’s a deadline, we always have to set deadlines for ourselves to accomplish what we need to accomplish. And that’s basically why I say rent is due every day. And, and this is why you would fail so many times as you try to continue to be great, you’re gonna fail as much as as much as you try to become great. It’s a direct relationship, it’s a correlation here.
Do Recruiters Even Use Resumes Any More?
Jeff Altman
And thus, folks, I’ll just simply say, one of the things I think too many people do is they outsource their career to their employers. And they don’t take responsibility for themselves in their career, in your career, and your own goals and your own aspirations. You kind of abdicate responsibility to mommy or daddy corporation that you work for. But, and you should do a good job for them. You should do a great job for them. But there are things in your life that are important, too. There are things in your career that are important to you and have nothing to do with mommy and daddy company. Right?
Dr. Eli Joseph
Exactly.
Jeff Altman
And thus focusing on them is paying yourself rent. Like, for those of you who know this concept, you save money with each check you get, there’s a certain amount you predetermine, and you just you set it aside. And that’s your savings. I can do a 401 k or IRA, whatever it is. That’s the same concept here too. So you’re paying yourself rent for your own dreams and your own aspirations. Snuck that one in there.
Dr. Eli Joseph
Yep.
Jeff Altman
I love it. It’s a terrific concept. I really like it. How can people find out more about you? The book, which again is The Perfect Rejection Resume. Dr. Ely, Joseph, how can they find out more about it?
Dr. Eli Joseph
So the book, The Perfect Rejection Resume is available on Barnes and Nobles and Amazon. You can easily type in The Perfect Rejection Resume. Um, as far as me personally, I’m available on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Clubhouse, you name it, the user name is pretty much the same. Dr Eli Joseph. Dr. Eli Joseph. Straight on no periods? Not No, no underscore. Just straight on. DrEliJoseph. That’s basically how you can find me, and I’m available on all platforms.
Jeff Altman
Terrific. And what kind of support might you give people? If they contacted you that way? What would they find out about you?
Dr. Eli Joseph
I mean, you’ll find out more about what I do and type of like, not only as far as like the work that I do, whether it’s like Columbia University, or even we talked about Quest Diagnostics. We didn’t talk about that yet. But we can also tap in on as far as connect with me and talk about like, life. Like, you know, what’s funny, what’s not funny? What’s what’s interesting? You have much more of a personality as far as who I am. And on top of that we can we can also trade ideas. You never know. We can collaborate together. You know, that’s, that’s the idea of social media and marketing and networking
What’s the Point of a Recruiter
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, as well as executive job search coaching, job coaching, and interview coaching. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2300 episodes.
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