What would you do after 100 job rejections? Most people would question their qualifications, their resume, maybe even their career choice.
Fazil Karatt applied to 10,000 jobs.
Not out of desperation but out of curiosity. He wanted to understand exactly why qualified candidates get rejected and what employers actually look for. Most job seekers treat rejection as a dead end. Fazil made it one of his main career development strategies.
Today, as the founder of Qbay Career, he’s taken everything he learned from that experiment and built something real. Over 57,000 students have used his methods to turn applications into interviews, with a 97.5% success rate that’s hard to argue with.
In our latest Leadership Spotlight conversation, Fazil opened up about how rejection became his greatest teacher — and how he turned what most people run from into a startup that actually works.
- Rejection is research: applying to 10,000 jobs taught more career growth tips than any course could.
- Start with what you have: startup success tips include building with zero funding before seeking investors.
- Practice your pitch on low-priority investors first to learn how to grow a startup business effectively.
- Understanding both sides of hiring unlocks better career development strategies for job seekers.
- Spend 6-7 months researching each new market before expanding to ensure startup success across borders.
How to Overcome Job Rejection (Career Resilience After Rejection)
After finishing his bachelor’s degree in Kerala, India, Fazil ran into the same wall millions of graduates hit: landing that first job. No connections, no shortcuts, just a stack of applications and a lot of waiting.
“I know how hard it is to find a job. I know how to struggle to get a new opportunity,” he reflects.
Most people change their job search strategy after rejection; they double down on the same approach and hope for different results. Fazil did something most wouldn’t think to do. He started treating every rejection as data.
Those 10,000 applications weren’t sent out of frustration. They were intentional. He wanted to understand exactly what was stopping qualified people from getting hired, not just keep guessing like everyone else. And when he later got the chance to sit on hiring panels at top companies, the picture became a lot clearer.
“I know both sides, what is actually happening behind it,” he explains.
This perspective of both sides, knowing what candidates feel on the outside and what employers are actually thinking on the inside, became the foundation for everything he’d build next.
The Soil Startup Story – Fazil’s Lean Startup Methodology
Before Qbay Career, before the VC funding, before helping tens of thousands of students, Fazil had one problem: no money.
Growing up in a middle-class family in Kerala, he didn’t have the capital to throw at a traditional startup idea. So he asked himself a simple question: what product could he start with that costs nothing?
His answer? Soil. Actual, natural soil.
“I only want to go for the product, which is getting free, of course,” Fazil says. He sourced natural soil, mixed in organic fertilizers, rebranded it, and pushed it through e-commerce platforms. Not glamorous, but it taught him something that no business course ever could,
The Qbay Career Solution: Turning Applications into Interviews
Fazil launched Qbay Career in 2021 with a clear mission: help international students bridge the gap between graduation and actually getting hired. He knew firsthand how overwhelming that transition feels, especially when you’re in a new country trying to figure out an entirely different hiring culture.
Qbay’s approach comes down to three steps, each one shaped by Fazil’s experience on both sides of the hiring table.
Step 1: Free Career Counseling
Before taking anyone’s money, Qbay sits down with the student to understand exactly what’s going wrong. Is it communication skills? A need to upskill? Unrealistic expectations about the roles they’re targeting?
“We want to understand what type of problem they’re facing,” Fazil explains. “First, you have to understand what sort of problem they’re facing.”
This isn’t just a formality. If Qbay can’t genuinely help, they don’t take the student on. Simple as that.
Step 2: Profile Analysis and Market Research
Once a student is onboarded, Qbay’s R&D team gets to work. They dig into the student’s background, qualifications, and experience, then research whether the opportunities they’re chasing actually exist in their target market.
That sometimes means delivering hard truths. A student might have their heart set on a senior management role, but if the profile doesn’t match what the market wants, Qbay steers them toward something realistic.
Step 3: Comprehensive Support Until Success
Qbay doesn’t hand over a polished resume and call it a day. They stay in it — interview prep, mental wellness programs, and ongoing counseling for students hitting walls or going through personal challenges.
Fazil describes it like treating a patient: “Until getting discharged from that specific care, everything then went for home. The way we are treating the student through our services.”
The results back it up. A 97.5% success rate across 57,000+ students, with 90% of new clients coming through referrals. That’s not a marketing stat — that’s students telling other students it actually works.
How to Build a Successful Startup Without Capital
One of his main startup success tips in fundraising is: Don’t pitch the big investors. Fazil pitched over 100 investors before securing his first check. But he didn’t start with his dream investors. He started with the ones he was sure would say no.
By the time he reached the investors that actually mattered, he’d tightened his pitch deck, smoothed out his delivery, and had a ready answer for every objection he’d heard along the way. Turning up prepared made all the difference.
His broader advice on fundraising is just as counterintuitive: don’t raise money unless you absolutely have to.
Fazil shared many startup resilience tips. One factor he kept emphasizing: Every dollar raised means giving away a piece of your company. And as your startup grows and becomes more valuable, you’ll feel every percentage point you gave away too early. His tip? The founders who protect their equity in the beginning are the ones who don’t regret it later.
Going Global: Scaling Across Countries (Startup Growth Strategies)
Qbay now operates in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Canada, and Finland. But early expansion attempts into India, Dubai, and the UAE all failed — because Fazil was building for how he thought markets worked, not how they actually did.
“I started learning what my targeted market is, what they are lacking, how they want to deploy,” he explains.
Now, Qbay spends 6-7 months researching every new market before entering. Local hiring practices, cultural expectations, pilot programs — all of it before a single student is onboarded.
Slow, deliberate, and worth it.
Final Words on Fazil’s Story
Fazil Karatt’s journey from 10,000 rejections to 57,000 success stories isn’t just an entrepreneurship tale. It’s a masterclass in overcoming professional setbacks.
He didn’t let rejection defeat him — he studied it. He didn’t wait for funding — he started with soil. He didn’t assume one strategy would travel across borders — he spent months making sure it would.
And underneath all of it is a simple belief: career success was never really about the perfect resume or the fanciest degree. It’s about mindset. The willingness to learn, adapt, and stay relevant in a world that keeps changing.
FAQs
Embrace each rejection as a learning opportunity, adapt your approach, and keep pushing forward with a refined strategy.
Focus on customer feedback, iterate quickly, stay adaptable, and create a strong network of supporters and mentors.
Stay focused on your long-term goals, celebrate small wins, and remember that each failure brings you closer to success.
Continuous learning, resilience, adaptability, and effective networking are essential for advancing in your career.
Entrepreneurs should view setbacks as valuable lessons, stay persistent, and remain committed to refining their product and strategy.
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