17 May Resilience For Job Hunting
How to Cultivate Your Resilience For Job Hunting
If you’re looking to make a career change it’s vital that you think about your resilience for job hunting. We are all wired to fear rejection and job hunting is a time when you may face this over and over again. You will spend hours, maybe even days, updating your CV. Even if you’ve used a CV service you will still have to put the time in collating your experience and qualifications. Applying for one job alone can take a whole day sometimes, once you’ve tweaked your CV to fit the criteria and crafted a knock out cover letter. Then, the odds are that you’ll hear nothing for ages, perhaps even forever. Today, so many job applications seem to fall into the ether, never to be talked about again. It is demoralising to say the least.
The key is to remember that this is a long game. Having a good reservoir of resilience for job hunting will prevent you from giving up when it gets hard. The problem is that resilience is a bit of a cliche nowadays. It’s a word that’s bandied about a lot but what does it mean and how can you build it?
Here are some ideas…
How to Build Your Resilience For Job Hunting
Recognise That You Need Resilience
Resilience is basically the ability to bounce back from hardship or rejection and keep going. It’s not about being stubborn, however. You should listen to feedback along the way, adjusting your course if necessary. Notice when you are feeling low and remind yourself that this is the time to draw upon it.
Have Time Off
Job hunting can be all encompassing if you let it. You will need a break. Having a process is a great way to ensure this happens. Your process will be unique to you. You might apply for jobs two hours a day, or take a whole day once a week. You might do it ad hoc but keep Sundays free for fun. What’s important is that you have time when you switch off and recuperate.
Get Feedback
Be prepared to adjust your course. Ask employers who have rejected you to tell you why. This can be valuable information. Ask someone in your chosen sector to take a look at your CV. Absorb the feedback each time you get some and ask if this can help you hone your approach or tactics?
Look After Yourself
This means both physically and mentally. From a physical point of view, make sure that you are eating well, taking lots of exercise and generally doing things that make you feel good (and are good for your health). Mentally, unwind with meditation, films that make you laugh, absorbing books and time with friends and family. There are hundreds of ways you can practice self-care, just make sure that you choose some that work for you and apply them regularly. My long-term self-care practice is journalling, writing every day about what’s going on for me. I don’t read this later, but it does help me to make sense of my jumbled thoughts. I also do guided meditations with Insight Timer, and walk every day if I possibly can.
Think Long Game
All this self-care and talk about process is necessary because job hunting is a long game. It can take a while and what we don’t want to happen is to allow fatigue to set in. If you do start to feel a bit like not bothering, notice that feeling. You can work through it, regardless, or perhaps take a break. Have a few weeks off and come back to it refreshed. This may give you time to think about a change of tactics, or provide you with some vital information that could help you. If you’re running up against the old “you need experience” chestnut, you could take a break to get this, volunteering in some way.
Use Your Support System
You’ll need this for different things at different times. Sometimes it might be that you want feedback and some brainstorming around your approach to employers. Other time it may be that you just want to be distracted, and forget about applying for jobs altogether. Use your career coach, your friends and your network to support you on your journey.
If you need a bit of support, strategy or motivation with your job hunting, do take a look at my career coaching options.
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