How to cope with job rejection
Being rejected from a job can be a challenging experience. But it’s not all negative: coping strategies can help students to gain a lot of positive learning from job rejection. This lesson explores strategies for students to use to cope with job rejection and to build their character strengths.
Year level
10-12
Duration
60 minutes
Type
In class activity
SEL Competencies
Self-awareness
Self-management
Social awareness
Learning intention
Students will develop a variety of strategies that they can utilise to cope with job rejection.
Key outcomes
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:
explore strategies for coping with job rejection
identify their character strengths
identify ways that they can demonstrate their character strengths to employers.
Materials needed
Paper
Pens
Ruler
Access to the ReachOut.com article ‘6 ways to deal when you’re rejected from a job’ and 'Getting a job'
Access to the VIA Character Strengths Survey.
Mapped to
Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education
Plan, rehearse and evaluate strategies for managing situations where their own or others’ health, safety or wellbeing may be at risk (AC9HP10P08)
Evaluate emotional responses in different situations to refine strategies for managing emotions (AC9HP10P06)
Australian Curriculum: General Capabilities
Critical and Creative Thinking:
Generating
Reflecting
Personal and Social Capability:
Self-awareness
Self-management
Social management
Digital Literacy:
Investigating
NSW PDHPE Syllabus
Assesses their own and others’ capacity to reflect on and respond positively to challenges (PD5-1)
Assesses and applies self-management skills to effectively manage complex situations (PD5-9)
Victorian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education
Plan, rehearse and evaluate options (including CPR and first aid) for managing situations where their own or others’ health, safety and wellbeing may be at risk (VCHPEP144)
Evaluate situations and propose appropriate emotional responses and then reflect on possible outcomes of different responses to health and wellbeing (VCHPEP147)
Activity 1
Options explosion: Strategies to cope with job rejection
30 minutes
Present students with the scenario that they have just been rejected from a job that they really wanted. Explain to them that feelings of rejection can occur when they:
don’t hear back from the employer
receive a first-round interview, but are not successful
receive a letter explaining that their application has been unsuccessful
learn that their referees have been called, but they don’t get a job offer.
Students list the feelings they might have if they receive a rejection.
Students access the ReachOut.com article ‘6 ways to deal when you’re rejected from a job’.
Students list three strategies they could use to deal with this experience. They may explore suggestions additional to those included in the article.
Ask students to delve deeper into these strategies and explain, using a dot point for each strategy, why they could be beneficial.
Ask students: ‘What can you learn from job rejection?’ (For example, it can foster resilience, and awareness that there are things they can do about it.)
Ask students to share times when they, or someone they know, turned what they initially thought was a negative experience into a positive one.
Activity 2
Character strengths survey
10 minutes
Students make a list of their character strengths. Students can ask friends in the class to help them identify their character strengths, or they can complete the VIA Character Strengths Survey suggested in the article.
For each character strength, ask students to write a brief sentence explaining why this is a strength for them.
Activity 3
Making strengths visible
20 minutes
Students create a table with three columns:
In the first column, students list their identified strengths (e.g. ‘Organised’).
In the second column, students list the ways they have demonstrated that strength (e.g. ‘Coordinated the netball team training roster’).
In the third column, students list the ways they could communicate this strength to employers (e.g. through including netball under ‘interests’ on their résumé and using it as an example of organisation in a job interview).
Provide students with access to the ReachOut.com article ‘Getting a job’ to help them if they need ideas.
