Some days back #ShareYourRejection was trending on twitter and lot of people were sharing their rejection stories and how they have overgrown despite them and at times because of them(Given that twitter search result are ever-changing, here is a link to some compiled tweets from that time period).

There is a triumph, sort of happy ending vibe around above stories so I wasn't sure if my rejections are going to fit in. Mine are more related to this blog post and HN thread on rejection around it. I went through the post and discussion trying to apply what was being said and discussed there and what I had experienced. Here are few rejection emails I have got recently:

Thank you for your interest in this job. We have now reviewed your application and we regret to inform you that it has not been selected for further consideration.

We have looked at your resume and, although we appreciate your background and experience, we are choosing not to move forward at this time.

Below three rejects are from same company and after the rejection text they also mention, without failing, "we encourage you to keep an eye on the Work With Us page"

We don't think that your skills and experience are a match for this position at this time.

Thank you very much for applying again. Unfortunately we still don't think there's a good fit.

We don't think there's a good fit right now.

And some more

Your background is very impressive, however we are not looking for someone with your expertise at this time.

We regret to inform you that, after careful consideration, your profile does not fully match the requirements for the vacant position.

As it is hard to make out what and where I got wrong, I do try to follow up with some of them asking for directions, like, one person who was communicating with me had blogged about how hard it is to judge and take a call on applications. I read the post, tried to understand what his position was and also asked for feedback saying, "If its not much of trouble, can you tell me which skills I am missing? Or as you mentioned in your post, was there something off in the way I communicated or drafted my application?". But I got no response to it.

Apart from few times where application was for specific role, I tried to apply for generic developer position. While the rejection blog post I mentioned above mentions about how sending feedback is lot of work and personally, on receiving end, above rejects didn't help much. Furthermore, I applied to these positions after going through companies, their employee blogs, work culture they mention, and from them it comes across that they would be open and willing to share their views on application, but clearly there is a gap between expectations and reality. In meanwhile I do keep revisiting them to improve things on my own end but I am clearly missing something critical as I keep getting very similar rejection. Though these rejections hurt, I would still prefer these rejections over no responses(getting ghosted), which I feel are the worst of the rejects and also pretty common.

PS: Thanks punch for suggesting the topic and feedback on the content.