You’ve gone through level after level of interview for a job that sounds almost perfect for you. Everyone who interviews you seems to enjoy talking to you and sounds impressed by your credentials and your insights on how you would handle the position available.

You’ve been told you’ve made it to being a finalist and it’s only a matter of time before an offer will be made.

But then weeks go by and the offer doesn’t come. You try some discreet emails or phone calls to find out about timing. At first you get some polite replies but then those stop as well. It becomes painfully obvious you didn’t get the job.

Shock and disbelief set in. You were sure you had it, you had started buying some new clothes to fit into the new workplace. You may even have stopped some other interview processes, that’s how sure you were of this job.

Never stop job hunting, there are no certain job offers out there. So don;t let your guard down if you think an offer may be imminent…it also may not be,.

What do you do? First, spend some time grieving, it is a major emotional loss and pretending it doesn’t matter won’t help you get to where you need to be to again start your job search.

In my case, I know I’m at the end of my grief period when I can remind myself that it’s the potential employer’s loss, I know I would have been amazing at that position but the people hiring didn’t see it that way. Time for me to move on.

You also can hope the person who was hired will crash and burn or decide quickly the job isn’t right for him or her. That actually happened to me in 2008. I didn’t get a job because I was asking for a salary they didn’t want to pay. Someone with less experience was hired for less money and he quickly decided (after his first day on the new job) the place was a bit too wacky for him. He went back to his old employer (I actually sought him out to find out what happened, so this is first-hand information, not hearsay). The job was then offered to me again and this time salary wasn’t a problem, I was offered more than I had asked for.

Now don’t be waiting for that to happen to you, I think of that more as a once-in-a-lifetime event. But the point that potential employers make hiring mistakes is a valid one to help get you back in job hunting mode.

Shake the dust of that interview process from your shoes (a bit of a biblical reference there) and get back in the job hunting game. Oh, and never stop another job interviewing process because you’re sure you,re going to get an offer, that’s a rookie mistake.

John N. Frank