I am a veteran interview reject

Nineteen rejections, to be precise.

Yes, nineteen, not exactly the kind of thing you embroider on a tote, I know.

It’s a number that makes people exchange uncomfortable glances. Which is why it has been my dirty little secret for twenty years.

Being a serial reject comes with its curiosities (applicants), hecklers (Gordo), and exasperated sighs (Dad).

No one expects someone who failed nineteen interviews to still be smiling, let alone trying, after seven years. (thirteen years when you count my teen prep).

If it’s an applicant asking, what they’re really saying is: Please tell me I’m not doomed.

If it’s Gordo or Dad, there’s usually a job centre flyer involved. Folded. Thumbed. Definitely highlighted.

If it’s a recruiter: Oh no. You again.

So why listen to me?

Please, allow me to lead by example and rephrase:

I have a unique view of the airline recruitment process because I reverse-engineered my way from the bottom of the rejection pile and into the elite ranks of Emirates, one mascara-streaked rejection at a time — and I documented how to do it.

Besides, if that notorious 99% rejection rate holds even a whisper of truth — we’ll unpack the truth behind that statistic later — then most of us are doomed from the start.

For anyone stranded in the rejection pile — the hopeful, the heartbroken, the pre-rejected — you are not doomed and I wrote this multi-leg series just for you.

Expect the scenic route with stopovers at Virgin Atlantic (VS) and Emirates (EK), and a final transfer toward your dream airline.

Tray tables in. Grab your unicorn onesie. This journey includes detours and at least one go-around — before a very classy touchdown.

Now, where to begin? Ah yes, 183.

The measurement of failure: ♥︎ 183bpm

You know that moment when everyone’s telling you to quit and get a real job, stop dreaming? But you ignore them, because it’s your dream. Besides, the next interview will be the one. And anyway, you’ve sunk too much time and effort to back out now. But then you’re standing outside Virgin Atlantic Headquarters — ready for interview number eighteen. Same exact spot it all began three years earlier. Only this time, it’s your body telling you to quit.

That’s exactly where it happened for me. Not interview failure number five, or ten, or fifteen. And I remember it exactly because it was August 2001, a month before 9/11. Yes, that 9/11.

There I stood, nose to glass, staring at a flock of Virgin flight attendants.

Everything mirrored my first, and second, and third, (and 4th…6th…8th…9th…) and on through my seventeenth interview: the building, the grey sky, even the perfume lingering in the doorway — save for one difference:

Feeling somewhat faint, I glanced down at my Polar watch, where a furious little heart emoji flickered away with a resting heart rate of: ♥︎ 183bpm. I was motionless — but my body was already legging it down the M5 back to Bristol.

I was having my first panic attack.

After years of dreaming, scheming, manifesting, prepping, preening, pretending — that tiny screen, lit in cold clinical LED clarity, served up the first honest and concrete feedback I’d ever received.

Whilst I was performing confidence, it was recording collapse and calling me out as a fraud, because…

I looked like a tit

My reflection in Virgin’s glass stared back. I tried focusing on the flight attendants in their stunning red, but I couldn’t visualise myself wearing that dream uniform anymore — not with my fake flight attendant scarf flapping and choking the last bit of fantasy out of me.

It had been flailing and flapping in the breeze all damn morning.

I’d bought it to “look the part” and thought blue made me look less desperate. But there I was — wheezing, overdressed, mid-palpitations — finally seeing the truth: I looked like a proper tit. And, on top of all that, I might have to ask Virgin’s recruiters for the defib.

Where failure ends and success begins

That was the moment I finally ditched my dreams at the curb like a dirty old fag butt, not realising I was standing in the seam between failure and success.

When I got back to the car, I told my boyfriend I’d failed the reach test, hoping he wouldn’t dump me. He bought me chips and gravy, then introduced me to his favourite airline: Emirates.

This wouldn’t have made any difference, except Emirates made no mention of swimming in its requirements. Nothing at all. Had I finally found an airline that didn’t measure my suitability by the metre?

That was enough to push me towards one more interview. If only I could enter the building.

I set my sights on an Emirates open day.