LinkedIn's "new role" announcement feature has been getting a lot of use lately, with plenty of people sharing that they have started a fresh position.

That is obviously a great thing to see, driven partly by LinkedIn actively promoting the functionality, but also by genuine, real shifts happening in how people approach their careers today.

If you are considering a new role or a career change yourself, you absolutely owe it to yourself to explore new opportunities as they come up. The one thing worth actively protecting yourself against along the way is unnecessary, avoidable rejection.

Avoiding that kind of rejection largely comes down to one shift in mindset: applying because you can genuinely prove you can do a role, not simply because you believe you could do it in theory. There are two practical ways to do this: 

First, go through your CV; make sure your experience and skills are directly and clearly connected to the actual requirements of the new role. Where the connection is not direct, take the time to explicitly outline the transferability of your skills and experience rather than leaving that link for the reader to guess.

Second, once your CV has done its job of getting you to the interview stage, use that opportunity deliberately to confirm everything you claimed on paper and to help your interviewers understand your suitability from multiple angles, including cultural fit, how your prospective team collaborates and operates day to day, and your general approach to work.

I don’t know anyone who enjoys being rejected, so being tough and stringent in your own honest self-assessment before submitting an application is one of the most effective ways to protect yourself from that outcome in the first place. A little extra discipline before you click “apply” saves considerably more disappointment further down the track.