Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

I'm 32+, live with my parents and have failed at 4 different startups in the past 10 years, two since I left my last paying job in 2012. In 2014, I had $0 taxable income (due to being unemployed) and was rejected by the following companies:

Google* (third time in 3 years) Twilio* (x2) Smartling* Samsung* Amazon+ Facebook Cloudflare AppDynamics* DigitalOcean Placemeter* E.W.Scripps* Hatch AppNexus* OpenX ThoughtWorks* Roost ... several others I can't remember ... several others I can remember, but mutually decided the fit was wrong ... MANY others to whom I submitted a resume and never heard back

* = rejected after in-person interview + = withdrew, sensing impending rejection else, rejected after phone screen

In addition, I took the GMAT and was rejected by the following schools:

MIT Sloan Stanford Business School Columbia Business School Harvard Business School

If you're thinking "Wow that's a lot of calls and interviews to come up empty-handed", you're right. You see, while my resume is (apparently) attractive, I suffer from crippling anxiety, the kind that says "Hey, you have in interview tomorrow! No sleep for you!" It turns out interviewers don't like bloodshot eyes, dark circles and a foggy Xanax brain. (Nor does the GMAT.)

But finally... last week I had an interview at a major university, got 3 hours of sleep but somehow landed the job (pending HR salary approval). It doesn't pay like Google does, but I think I'll learn a lot and I'm extremely grateful that someone finally said "yes" to me. I'm going to make the most of it and will be a better engineer from the experience.

Don't give up! If you have any technical skill, whatsoever, someone out there wants to hire you. Just keep plugging along!

Just curious, so this is a university staff position or are you enrolling in a business school as a student? Either way, congrats!

Congrats! Good luck!

Re crippling anxiety - I highly recommend improv classes.

I indirectly second that. A colleague took improv classes for vaguely similar reasons, and he had a positive and helpful experience.

Great username for this particular post.

Congrats! And as a side-note, I think it is suitable for persons in your [before-job] situation - to ask for internship or contract-to-hire work instead of direct hiring. We all know interviews suck. And working temporally for 2-3 months would be much more effective (for you and the company) to see if you're a good fit or not.