4 steps to staying sane in your job search

Whether you’ve found yourself unemployed, furloughed, or just plain unhappy at work, here you are… job hunting. Maybe you’ve been secretly looking for a while now. Or maybe this is the first time in 10 years you’ve found yourself staring at your old resume wondering, “Are ‘objectives’ still a thing…?”  Regardless of how and why you’re here, the fact of the matter is, job hunting is a bear. And while it’s a necessary evil, there are certain things you can implement right now in order to minimize your frustration, practice energy portion-control, and provide you a more productive search.  Here are a few tips and reminders to keep yourself mentally and emotionally resilient enough to weather this storm and get back to work.

STEP ONE (and this is an important one): Assess your barriers and invest in removing the biggest one.

Do you hate your resume? Are you completely overwhelmed when you try and use LinkedIn? Is this whole job search process a mystery and every application just feels like a shot in the dark? I want you to stop. Take a deep breath. And try and identify what your biggest barrier to success feels like right now. What is the thing that causes you to hold back in your search? 

After 12 years of working with job seekers, I can tell you this for certain: If you don’t believe in your resume, your process, or your direction… you’re not going to want to apply anywhere and it will hold you back. Period. Anxious thoughts like, “Am I qualified enough?” and “Is this resume good enough?” will only make your search feel like an emotional uphill battle…every… single… day. Trust me. “Analysis paralysis” is a real thing. People with unaddressed barriers will wind themselves up for weeks before finally pulling the trigger and applying to ONE job. All this does is put all of your eggs in one basket, which is an immense amount of pressure on that ONE job. And if doesn’t work out, it feels like a huge punch to the gut, the negative, self-fulfilling prophecy talk seeps in, and applying anywhere else after that feels twice as hard… and the viscous cycle starts all over again.

So please, invest in yourself.  

If that resume is holding you back, ask for help or pay a professional to do it for you, so you can take control of your search and MOVE FORWARD.  If you don’t have the resources to spend on a professional service, or you prefer to tackle it yourself, check out my blog post, “How to create the resume a recruiter WANTS to read.” You can also search YouTube for free tutorials, call your local library’s community resource center, run a Google search for templates or free webinars coming up, call your college’s career services office (most will help alumni for FREE), or reach out to your local unemployment office. Regardless of what your barrier is, research ways to overcome it or talk to someone who can help you clear it. You don’t have to carry the burden of this whole search yourself. Ask for help. Tackle the hurdle. And move forward.

STEP TWO: Get organized.

Job hunting without organization feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall just to see what sticks, only it’s dark, so you’re not quite sure where the wall is, and more times than not, you forget which direction you were supposed to be aiming in.  Organizing all of the moving pieces of your search into a “Jobs Tracker” not only turns the lights on, but helps you see exactly where you stand so you can recalibrate and fine-tune as needed, while also holding yourself accountable for what should come next.

To build your tracker, open a blank Excel sheet (or something similar) and add the following headers to your top columns: Company, Job Title, Job Description URL (so you can revisit it easily), Date Applied, Date Followed Up, and Notes/Details.  You can obviously add many more columns to this (i.e., name of recruiter you talked to, where you saw the posting, company notes, etc.), but at the very least, keep track of these six pieces of information. When a recruiter reaches out, they’ll usually email you to line up a call. (If they call and an unknown number pops up, just let it go to voicemail. They’ll always leave one. That way you’re not caught off guard.)  You can go back to your tracker, review the job description, get organized, and call them when you’re ready.

STEP THREE: Structure your search process.

If we truly want to move away from the spaghetti, we need add structure to your process. The best way to do this is to treat your application steps like a lifecycle. Here is the plan:

Day One: SEARCH and SAVE. I don’t want you to apply to anything on day one.  By solely focusing on searching for roles that interest you, and saving them in your tracker, you’ll stay focused on the task at hand, and before you know it, you’ll have several roles listed – the more the merrier. Add the appropriate details to the Company, Job Title, and Job Description URL columns. Regardless of whether you can dedicate one hour a day or 10 hours a day to your process, Day One is all about the search. Load up that tracker as much as you can with positions you want to go for.

Day Two: APPLY.  Now that you have lots of roles in your tracker, we can step back, look at this list more holistically and prioritize. Which ones are the best fit for your background? Which ones are you most excited about? Start there. Day Two is all about applying.  Have your resume and cover letter up and be ready to LIVE in these documents. (If you’re not sure when to use cover letters, check out, “In the age of LinkedIn, are cover letters still necessary?”)  Make your tweaks and tailor up these docs as necessary so you can apply, apply, apply! Don’t be tempted to dive back into searching. Stay on task, and work through your list from Day One. Don’t forget to add the day’s date into the Date Applied column on your tracker.

Day Three: FOLLOW UP.  Don’t ignore – or over think – this part of the process. Yes, you HAVE to follow up. And if you don’t hear anything for a week, follow up again. Don’t hear anything by week 3? Follow up again! (They might be out sick, on vacation, or perhaps they were laid off and a new recruiter is getting onboarded – I’ve experienced and seen it all. Don’t second guess yourself. Just follow up until you’ve done so three times, or you’ve heard back.)  If this step feels the most uncomfortable, here is everything I’d tell you in person about why you MUST follow up after applying.  LinkedIn is going to become your best friend here, so you’ll want to start familiarizing yourself with how to use it. Your profile is incredibly important, but there is A LOT more to this resource than your presence. You need to know how to find the right people.  Finally, don’t forget to add the day’s date to the “Date Followed Up” column in your tracker.

Day Four: BREAK.  Yep, the last part of this lifecycle (assuming you’ve worked through your entire list of jobs and tasks) is to take a break. By Day Four, you’re probably mentally exhausted, and trying to balance the competing emotional tides of productivity and accomplishment, along with fear and nervousness. That’s 100% normal. Be gentle on yourself.

This COVID-19 job market is a beast, so we need to start looking at our search as a marathon, not a sprint. You’re going to hit “mile 20” in your search and feel like you can’t go on, and that’s common. Do whatever you need to in order to sustain your energy and KEEP GOING. It’s incredibly important to take time to emotionally disconnect from your search and plug back into something that recharges you, because guess what “Day Five” in this application lifecycle is…. it’s Day One again. If you find that you need to put more time in between your cycles here, that’s okay, but by sticking to this structure, you’ll never be without direction or focus and you’ll quite literally apply to MORE JOBS. This will prevent you from putting all of your eggs in one basket and when a few rejections trickle in (because they will – this is job hunting), you’ll be able to look at your tracker and see all of the other applications you STILL HAVE in process, therefore, minimizing the blow.     

STEP FOUR: Getting clear on what is killing your application or candidacy.

One of the most common things I work on with clients is diagnosing where their process-pitfalls may be. It’s sort of like a diagnostic test. If you’re submitting resumes and not hearing back, there is something we need to look into here. If you’re getting calls, but not moving forward, that is indeed validating that your resume and/or approach is working, but there is something going on in your initial conversations that is keeping you from progressing to the next level. Every step of the process is looked at with a microscope. Try stepping back from your process as a whole, look at your tracker, and take notes (in the Notes column) about what happened – and when – in the instances you did NOT get the role. Good or bad, data is data, and we need to analyze what these insights are telling us. It’s not always easy to look at our candidacy or process objectively, but it’s an important part of job hunting. If after a few months, our tools or approach aren’t working, we need to figure out why, before we just let our emotions throw the baby (and the whole damn tub) out with the bath water.

At the end of the day, job hunting is an emotional rollercoaster, let alone when you have a volatile market, stay at home orders, and record-high unemployment. If there was ever a time to self-advocate, invest in yourself, and get creative with how you can stand out from the swelling sea of candidates, it’s now. Forget the rules you followed the last time you were job hunting. This is a totally different landscape and fortune favors the bold, my friend.  Focus on your process, network your butt off, leverage the resources around you, and hopefully someday soon this job search will be one more thing you can say you successfully overcame in 2020.