The Perfect Rejection Resume

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product (The Perfect Rejection Resume) through Ascot Media Group.  Affiliate Links will be used, thank you for your support of my blog, costs you nothing to do so, and is so much appreciated.  

Well okay, The Perfect Rejection Resume is a reader’s guide to building a career through failure.  Written by Dr. Eli Joseph you will find persistence and self-reflection to be a huge part of the journey.   Let me take some time to walk you through this paperback self-help book. 

The Basic Details for The Perfect Rejection Resume

Author is Dr. Eli Joseph, an American academic with a doctorate in Business Administration and speaker through TedX. The Perfect Rejection Resume: a Reader’s Guide to Building a Career through Failure has been published by Elisee Joseph.  It runs at 162 pages with 6 chapters, each broken into subsections.  Illustrations were done by Creative Designs by Alifian Saputra.  Janice Gassam wrote the foreword, and I’m reviewing it on behalf of Ascot Media Group.   I received an ARC for my review.

Digging Deeper

You will find the Perect Rejection Resume to be a fairly straight-forward read.  Within the 162 pages you’ll find Joseph using examples from his own life to demonstrate the principles he’s teaching.  Over and over you’ll see demonstrated the power of persistance. 

Textually it’s set up to be easy to read, with bold texting, point forms, lists etc.  This makes it very easy to highlight/bookmark to revisit sections for review. 

Case studies in the form of resumes (all the various rejections) of various people were included.  When you consider that some people got rejected 63 times before they made it through… The persistence just amazes me.  

It makes me think of Thomas Edison who said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”   Each of these rejection resumes makes me think, each of these people found something that won’t work, and so they tried again. 

You will be given ample time to reflect on what you are learning.  After each case study you’ll discover these exercises.  But within the overall text you’ll often discover questions to ask yourself. A chance to think through what you may have done wrong and what you could do better. 

Add it to your shelves?

As I was talking about The Perfect Rejection Resume with my lad I said “It felt like the author was too young to have written this book.  He needs more experience behind him to give weight to his words”.  I went on to say that it makes it harder for me to read the book with the audience I think he has in mind.  My perception is it is geared for 20-somethings in mind, not over 50-year-olds!

It appeared to me that Dr. Eli Joseph repeatedly wanted the ultimate goal throughout his entire life without doing the work needed FIRST to meet those goals.  Ergo he would get rejected.  He needed to find a different way of reaching his goals, and he did.  He didn’t let rejection stop him, which I find admirable. At the same time, if he had written the book a bit differently, like “how to let rejection teach you new skills” I would have been more receptive. 

All that said, are there useful takeaways from The Perfect Rejection Resume?  For sure!   He has great exercises for self-reflection, good questions to ask yourself, and challenges to fulfill.   He includes a variety of rejection resumes for using as case studies.  In those resumes you see persistence, and a refining of their career paths, just as I would expect. 

How to Use?

Now I can see using this as part of a careers class, to help youth/young adults see that sometimes being persistent is exactly what you need to win through the day.  The reflection questions alone are most excellent to teach criticial thinking skills.