When there are more than six unemployed people for every job opening, one thing is sure: the odds are better than good that you won't be the first picked for any particular job.

But there's something else to know: It's better to be next in line than last.

Why?

Because if things don't work out with the first person chosen for any particular position, it's a lot easier for an employer to go back to the list and hire the next applicant than it is to start a new search.

That's why, when you don't get the job, you should never burn a bridge, but instead ask the employer, or even the person who did get the job, what you were lacking.

This is according to Harvey Mackay, whose new book, "Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door" is coming out at the end of the month.

"You have to learn something from your firing, and you have to learn something from your rejections," said Mr. Mackay, the author of the business best seller "Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive." "The given reason is often not the real reason."

In sales, for instance, he said a company might say they like another company's products better than yours, when the real reason is that the salesman for the company that won the bid was the brother-in-law of the buyer.

"If you know the real reason, not the given reason, you can do something about it," he said, though he did acknowledge that marrying the buyer's other sister might be extreme.

He said "immediate, unadulterated feedback" was the best way to learn from the experience.

While you can express disappointment about not being hired, do not act bitter. The most important bit of advice he had for dealing with rejection is the hardest: Don't take it personally.

There are hosts of reasons that people don't get jobs.

Right now there may be dozens of people trying to get the same job you want. Mr. Mackay said he was working with a man now who was one of 35 people who all interviewed for the same job.

Remember it's a buyer's market in the labor force, and there are 15 million people out there trying to sell their labor.

"You've got to have some tools to handle rejection," he said.

Those tools come in handy. Even the best and brightest have been fired or rejected.

Mr. Mackay tells the story of the two men who wrote a book and were rejected by 33 publishers. It was the 34th that said "yes" to "Chicken Soup for the Soul."

The "Chicken Soup" series, Mr. Mackay notes in his book, has sold more than 30 million copies "all because [Jack] Canfield and [Mark Victor] Hansen had the willingness to fail over and over, and to keep going until they succeeded."

If you have the same willingness to fail, eventually the odds will go in your favor.

"Money Q&A" and "Company Town" are featured exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.