Conventional wisdom says that an unemployed person should spend 40 hours a week on their job search. While that may be mathematically correct - job searching remains a numbers game - spending that amount of time looking for a new job can be emotionally challenging. Job hunting under any circumstances is tough, and advice on how to go about the tedious series of soul-sucking activities tends toward the logistical. But no amount of trackers, templates, and planners will get to the real reason why you may feel defeated by the process.
Whether you’ve sent out a hundred applications already, or are just starting to prepare, it’s important to be mindful of the emotional barriers that might be making your search more difficult than it needs to be.
Outdated sense of self-awareness
Are you sure what you think you need is what you actually need?
Once a person’s career is underway, it often starts to feel like it’s happening to you rather than being under your command. An opportunity that seems better than what you have now appears, so you take it. There’s a limited number of ways to move forward and up, so you adjust your desires to what’s available rather than what you truly want. Feedback during annual reviews begins to define who you are. Then when it’s time to find a new job, it’s hard to know whether what you’re looking for is for you or what other people expect of you.
A little self-reflection goes a long way. Whether you journal about your job and dreams or hire a coach to help you identify the parts of you that deserve attention in your whole life, not just your career, use this time of change as a time to take stock.
You’re afraid you’re just going from one bad thing to another
One of the less talked about reasons why people stay in jobs they don’t like is because they don’t believe they’ll find anything better. Not because the job they’re in is so great, but because they’ve lost hope in the promise of finding fulfillment through work.
This is the promise that’s been sold to us since childhood when we were constantly asked what we wanted to be when we grew up and the expected answer was work-related. If we were raised by Baby Boomers, the last generation to experience even a small dose of that promise, we made getting an education to acquire a fulfilling career our one and only life plan. When that doesn’t feel like it’s panning out, it can make you question everything.
First, if the feeling you’re having is truly inhibiting your ability to move forward, or you’re concerned about your mental health, please take the time to access your personal support system. But if you’re just feeling annoyed or frustrated with today’s workplace realities, it may be time to reset your personal parameters for success to more than your career, and to wins that are truly meaningful for you. You may be surprised by the direction this takes you.
Fear of imperfection
I work primarily with high-achieving women who don’t want to do something unless they’re confident they can do it as near to perfection as possible. One of the top boundaries they face in executing a perfect job hunt is that they’re already extremely busy being perfect at their current jobs, perfect partners, parents, community members, bakers, hostesses, or whatever else they’ve chosen to completely fill their time.
Unless you’re a professional job seeker, it’s unlikely you’re spending a lot of time perfecting all the skills required to prepare and execute a successful career change. There are endless opportunities for frustration, and way more silence and rejection than praise - unfamiliar experiences for anyone used to playing at the top of their game. And there are plenty of other things you could be doing successfully instead.
Now is the time to identify and lean into your strengths. Success in a job hunt doesn’t come from executing the steps perfectly, it comes from projecting confidence in all the other things you actually are great at. From your resume to your networking, don’t let perfect execution get in the way of shining a light on yourself.
Not knowing where to start
A job search is much more involved than picking a job and sending out your resume. There’s deciding what’s next, research, networking, cover letter customization, interview prep, portfolio development, and adding technical skills. It’s a lot! Surprisingly, one of the hardest parts is often deciding what’s next. Which can be its own multi-part endeavor.
The good news is that under almost any circumstance, the place to start is usually the same. And that’s doing market research, which may involve:
Coming up with a set of parameters (industry, job category, location) and searching for related open positions;
Networking with people in places or positions that seem desirable; or
Trolling the open positions at a group of target companies.
The objective is to collect data on how many jobs are out there; the current trends in categories, titles, and priority skills; and to do a gut check on the jobs that feel promising or like bad fits. That information will guide your focus and how to position yourself and can be done in an hour or two.
The amount of work is overwhelming
You might not remember all of the details of your last job search, but you probably remember it was a lot of work on top of all of the other work you normally do - especially if you’re searching while still employed. Add in a few life milestones you may have collected along the way like a house, kids, or a steady travel routine, and finding any extra time to dedicate to your career move feels impossible. Not to mention the work is likely not something you’re an expert in - resume writing, vetting opportunities, self-promotion - so you don’t just have to do it all, you have to learn how to do it first. Double work!
Maybe you’ve considered finding someone to help you do the work, but then you have to figure out who can help, what they’ll do, and whether it’s worth it. So the task list grows and grows.
There’s no getting around it, job hunting is intense, but it becomes more manageable when you make it measurable. Break your tasks apart from each other. Arrange them in an order. Set bite-sized objectives, and plug away, celebrating every checked box.
The work we do is a major part of our lives, whether we like it or not. So it’s important to take the professional moves you make seriously, remembering that at the center of every choice is you. Your skills, your needs, your dreams. The more seriously you take yourself, the easier the rest of it will be.
Liza Dube is a career and leadership coach focused on helping high achievers take control of their careers. As an award winning marketing communications leader with 20 years of experience, she uses the fundamentals of emotional intelligence for leaders to create a more compassionate way of doing business, starting with themselves.