I could not get hired as an Engineer after attending my twentieth interview for a Civil Engineering position, I sat alone in my car for nearly an hour.
The interview itself had gone well.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
The hiring manager seemed impressed by my academic record. We discussed project management, site inspections, construction scheduling, and the internship experience I had gained during university.
On paper, I was exactly the type of candidate construction firms said they were looking for.
Yet deep down, I already knew what was coming.
Three days later, the rejection email arrived.
That made twenty.
Twenty interviews.
Twenty rejections.
Twenty different companies telling me, in one way or another, that they had decided to move forward with someone else.
At 24 years old, I had a Civil Engineering degree, a résumé full of internships, and enough rejection emails to fill an entire folder on my laptop.
For the first time since graduating, I started questioning whether I had chosen the wrong career.
What I didn’t know was that this rejection would eventually lead me to build a business worth more than a million dollars—and it would happen in an industry I thought had already rejected me.
The turning point came from a conversation I almost ignored.
Like most engineering students, I entered university believing hard work would guarantee opportunities.
I wasn’t looking for shortcuts.
I wasn’t expecting success to be easy.
I simply believed that if I earned my degree, gained experience, and did everything right, the opportunities would eventually come.
For four years, that’s exactly what I did.
I attended lectures.
Completed projects.
Worked on construction sites during internships.
Studied late into the night.
Graduated with decent grades.
When graduation day arrived, I felt optimistic.
My future seemed straightforward.
Find a job.
Gain experience.
Become a project engineer.
Eventually manage larger projects.
Build a successful career.
Simple.
Or so I thought.
The first few months after graduation were surprisingly difficult.
Applications disappeared into black holes.
Emails went unanswered.
Interviews rarely led anywhere.
Whenever companies called me back, I prepared obsessively.
I researched the company.
Reviewed engineering concepts.
Practiced interview questions.
Yet the result was almost always the same.
“Thank you for your time.”
“We’ve selected another candidate.”
“We’ve decided to move forward with someone whose experience more closely aligns with our needs.”
The wording changed.
The outcome didn’t.
As the months passed, I noticed something happening to my confidence.
At first, every rejection felt temporary.
Then it started feeling personal.
I watched former classmates post career updates on LinkedIn.
Some were working on major infrastructure projects.
Others were joining respected engineering firms.
Meanwhile, I was refreshing job boards every morning.
The comparison was exhausting.
I began avoiding conversations about work.
Family members would ask how the job search was going.
I’d smile and say, “Good.”
The truth was much different.
A few days after my twentieth rejection, I received an unexpected phone call.
It was one of the interviewers.
At first, I assumed he was calling by mistake.
Instead, he offered something I hadn’t received from any company before.
Honest feedback.
After discussing my interview performance, he paused.
Then he said something that stayed with me.
“You have the technical knowledge.”
I thanked him.
Then he continued.
“But I don’t see much evidence that you’ve solved real business problems.”
The statement caught me off guard.
I had solved engineering problems for years.
That’s what engineers do.
But as I thought about it, I realized what he meant.
Everything on my résumé existed inside an academic environment.
Assignments.
Projects.
Coursework.
Simulations.
I had very little experience solving problems that affected actual businesses.
That realization bothered me.
And eventually, it motivated me.
Instead of immediately applying for another hundred jobs, I decided to do something different.
I started speaking with small construction companies.
Not as a consultant.
Not as an expert.
Simply as someone trying to understand their challenges.
I met project managers.
Site supervisors.
Contractors.
Business owners.
I asked questions.
And I listened.
The same frustrations appeared repeatedly.
Scheduling delays.
Miscommunication between teams.
Missed deadlines.
Paper-based systems.
Spreadsheets that nobody updated.
Information getting lost between office staff and site crews.
The problem wasn’t a lack of expertise.
The problem was inefficient communication.
One contractor showed me how his team managed projects.
Half the information was stored in spreadsheets.
The rest existed in phone calls and handwritten notes.
When schedules changed, confusion spread quickly.
Delays became expensive.
Mistakes became costly.
Looking at his process, I had a thought.
There had to be a better way.
At the time, I knew very little about software development.
But I was willing to learn.
Every evening, I studied.
Programming.
Database design.
User experience.
Project management systems.
For months, my life followed a simple routine.
Learn.
Build.
Test.
Repeat.
Eventually, I developed a basic scheduling and communication platform specifically for small construction companies.
It wasn’t impressive.
Honestly, it looked terrible.
But it worked.
The first contractor agreed to test it.
Then another.
Then another.
Soon, companies were using it to coordinate projects, manage schedules, and track updates between office teams and construction sites.
The feedback was immediate.
Projects ran smoother.
Communication improved.
Time was saved.
For the first time in my life, people were paying for something I had created.
Not because of my degree.
Not because of my résumé.
Because it solved a real problem.
The next few years were far from glamorous.
There were technical issues.
Customer complaints.
Long nights.
Unexpected expenses.
Many times, I wondered whether the business would survive.
But every challenge forced me to improve.
Every mistake taught me something valuable.
Every customer conversation revealed another opportunity to make the product better.
Slowly, the business grew.
One customer became ten.
Ten became fifty.
Fifty became hundreds.
We expanded our features.
Hired employees.
Supported larger projects.
Construction companies from different states began using the platform.
Then companies from other countries started signing up.
The problem we were solving turned out to be much larger than I originally imagined.
Several years later, I was reviewing financial reports with my accountant.
He pointed at a number on the screen.
Annual revenue had crossed seven figures.
For a moment, I thought he was joking.
Then reality sank in.
The software company had officially become a million-dollar business.
I sat there quietly, thinking about the journey.
The countless applications.
The interviews.
The rejections.
The self-doubt.
The frustration.
The uncertainty.
None of it made sense at the time.
Yet somehow, every setback had led me to that moment.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
A few of the same companies that had rejected me years earlier eventually contacted us.
Not to offer me a job.
To explore partnerships.
One even became a customer.
Life has a funny sense of humor.
What I Learned
For a long time, I believed success would come from finding the right opportunity.
I was wrong.
Success came from creating value.
The degree mattered.
The education mattered.
But neither mattered as much as solving a problem that people genuinely cared about.
The companies that rejected me weren’t the reason I succeeded.
The problems they overlooked were.
Looking back, I no longer see those twenty interviews as failures.
I see them as redirections.
Because if I had been hired after the first interview, I probably would have spent years helping build someone else’s company.
Instead, I ended up building my own.