There’s so much that goes into job searching that can leave you stressed out. However, more often than not, you are doing things that make your job search more overwhelming than it needs to be. In this blog post, I share 5 reasons your job search is stressing you out.
As I go through these 5 reasons, you should listen to determine if you’re doing any or falling into these reasons so that you can develop strategies to make your job search a little less stressful.
First, your job search is likely making you feel stressed and overwhelmed because you don’t know what kind of job you want.
What I often see happening, at least with women I’ve worked with or even talked to, is when it comes time to job search, especially if you’re someone who has been in the field for a while (maybe 5-10 years), you have likely developed a lot of skill sets over the time.
You have developed a lot of knowledge where you can do multiple things successfully.
It’s one of those, “Oh, I could apply for project management, but I could also do marketing. But I could also do data analytics because I have this skill set for everything…” situation. And so, when you’re going into the job search, you’re saying, “You know what? I’m just staying open to see whatever is available.” And my first thought is: “Girl, you are not a book! Stop staying open.”
Secondly, staying open will only leave you feeling stressed and overwhelmed. Why? Because when you start job searching, you automatically become a marketer.
You are marketing and positioning yourself as an expert for the roles you are applying for. This means listing out your skills and qualifications and telling your career story in a way that makes it super easy for recruiters and hiring managers to say, “This is somebody we want to interview or talk to.”
So, when you try to do that process of marketing yourself for multiple jobs, it becomes challenging.
It’s stressful because every time you go to update your resume, you’re literally changing it for a whole different job instead of having a template that you put minor tweaks in because the jobs are similar.
So yes, you have many skills and can do many things, but staying open to everything you can do will only leave you feeling stressed and overwhelmed in your job search.
If you are unclear about what kind of job you want, you will keep feeling that stress. What you need to do is pause and get clarity. Recognize that although you have many skills, it doesn’t mean you actually enjoy doing all of those skills.
Instead of trying to use all the skills you have, pause and ask yourself, which of these skills:
You can also think about your values because that will help you understand what kind of company you want to be in and what your interests are – both of those combined will help you identify what kind of industry you want to be in.
Once you get clarity, you can then create what I call your Ideal Job Profile. And when you lay that profile out, it allows you to go into the job search being very strategic, intentional, and picky.
When that happens, your “grunt work” during your job search will be reduced. It’s like, “I’ve gotten clarity about myself. I know that there are maybe these two jobs that, at this stage of my career, I would enjoy these two jobs. I would thrive in them. This is what I want to do!”
When you focus on that, doing things like updating your resume and cover letter and networking with people becomes more effortless.
And so, if you don’t have clarity, you will continue feeling stressed and overwhelmed in your job search.
The second reason you are likely feeling stressed and overwhelmed in your job search is that you don’t have a plan or a strategy.
A plan and strategy are two very different things. And what I often see happening (and this is like the cycle I see people go through) is:
When you do that cycle, there’s no strategy with what you’re doing.
You’re just looking for anything that you think you will get or can do.
And doing that makes you feel overwhelmed because when you do that, you get more rejections and ghosted by companies.
You see, the average job search takes 3-6 months. So, if you’re continuously getting rejected and ghosted, over time, you feel so exhausted and discouraged that it’s stressing you out.
This is when you find yourself up at 2:00 AM scrolling through LinkedIn, trying to find another job. And at some point, you just want to take your laptop and throw it across the room because nothing works. It’s the “I hate everything” feeling. It’s those moments where you want to pull your hair out because you are frustrated with the job search process – and that sucks!
But all those are happening because you’re approaching the job search with the mindset of just wanting to find ANYTHING that’s better than what you’re doing right now.
And yes, you want to find something that’s better. But, if you want to go through this job search without stressing out, you have to do it with strategy and a plan.
A strategy addresses the why of your job search. It’s the big picture. Think of things like getting clarity and your mindset approaching the process.
I went through the clarity piece in the first reason. But with the mindset piece, here are questions to ask yourself:
The mindset piece is important because when you go into the job search without the right mindset (which is what feeds into your strategy), it will overwhelm you.
What might happen is when you’re 3 months into the job search, you’ll start to doubt yourself, thinking that you don’t have the skills and what it takes. You feel discouraged and think that nothing is panning out.
But you must remember that 3 months is just the BARE MINIMUM timeframe for a job search. Again, 3-6 months is the average.
Another thing that could happen if you don’t have the right mindset is you’ll end up not knowing why you’re looking for a job in the first place (other than the fact that you want to escape the job you already hate). But that’s just one piece of the puzzle.
Some questions to reflect on:
Your answers to these questions will determine the kind of job you’re looking for and will help you strategically approach that process.
So, the strategy is the big picture. Why do I want this job? What is my vision for what my career is playing in my life? The very big picture.
The plan, however, answers all the other questions: what, who, when, and how. It’s any question that’s not a why:
That’s your plan. And when you go onto the job search without it, you’re literally just scrambling.
You’re spinning your wheels in your job search, and you’ll feel like nothing is panning out.
“I’m doing all these tasks. I’m doing a lot, but it’s not yielding interviews and job offers. Nothing is working!” Nothing is working because you don’t have a plan.
You need to go into it with clear targets, goals, action steps that you plan to take, and things that you can cross off because you are going in with a plan.
That being said, when you don’t have BOTH a plan and a strategy, you will continue to feel overwhelmed and stressed in your job search because it will always feel like nothing is working.
The third reason you’re likely feeling stressed and overwhelmed in your job search is that you don’t know how to market yourself.
As I mentioned earlier, when you start job searching, you immediately become a marketer and a salesperson.
You are marketing yourself for a job. You are marketing your skill sets, accomplishments, and value-ad. You’re selling what you can add to an organization.
Marketing and sales are skill sets in themselves, especially when it relates to the job search itself.
And when you don’t know how to position yourself as an expert and the right person for the role you are applying for? You might apply to multiple jobs, but you don’t hear back from companies; you either get ghosted, or you don’t get interviews, OR you get interviews, and you don’t get job offers.
The more that happens, the more you’ll start to feel stressed and burnt out over time. You’ll end up thinking, “Why is nothing working? I’ve been applying for months, and I’ve been doing everything they told me to do on the internet, and nothing is working. I hate this process!”
That’s what happens.
When you don’t know how to position yourself, you get fewer job offers, and the fewer job offers you get, the more stressed you’ll feel throughout the job search process.
A key aspect of marketing yourself for a role is learning to identify and articulate your transferable skills, so let’s get into that.
When identifying your transferable skills, it’s important to recognize that you can’t focus too much or only on what you’ve done in your work because that’s what I find many women do. “What other jobs have I had in the past?” And that’s all you’re trying to figure out.
But you have to back up and look beyond just your work experience. When you are trying to market yourself for a new role, especially if it’s a new role in a new industry or a new field entirely, you also have to look at your non-work experience because some of those things have contributed to the skill sets that you’ve developed.
When you are trying to market yourself for a new role, especially if it's a new role in a new industry or a new field entirely, you also have to look at your non-work experience because some of those things have contributed to the skill sets that… Share on XWhen you do that, you might be able to position them as the things that can make you suitable for the role. Additionally, when it comes to the skills you develop on the job, you must think outside the box.
Don’t just look at your skill sets at face value.
So, let’s say you have had jobs in the finance industry, for example. And you are now trying to get a job in, let’s say, education. Without the right strategy, you might look at those two industries and say, “Well, I haven’t had any experience in education. I’m not going to be a good fit. I can’t apply for education jobs. I’m not qualified.”
You might think, “Oh, I’ve only done revenue projections for this company. I don’t know how that applies to schools or the education system.” I get that revenue projections are not relevant to the education field. But you know what? The skill set here isn’t the revenue projection; it’s looking at data, looking at patterns of data, and taking that and making a solid hypothesis of what will happen next based on that data.
Revenue projection is that task.
Data analysis and management is the skill you’re using to accomplish the task.
Let’s say you’ve looked at the data of past customer behavior or past revenue projections or maybe even updated in that company during your time in the finance field.
If the skillset is looking at and analyzing data and leveraging that to make projections about future outcomes, you can definitely use that in the education setting.
How?
Student outcomes, academic performance, or if you’re working in higher education: enrollment data or upcoming academic outcomes. You can leverage data analysis and management to accomplish any of those tasks in the education industry.
You have to look below the name of the task you’re doing and ask yourself, “What is the skillset driving the task that I’m doing?” That’s how you identify your transferable skills.
So, I went through a breakdown of how to identify transferable skills in the last reason, so I’m hoping I gave you some ways of thinking about looking beyond just the task and looking at the skill that drives the task.
But how does not knowing how to identify your transferable skills lead to stress? Because this also means you don’t know how to market yourself.
And when you’re looking for a new job, the best way to market yourself for a role is with your transferable skills, and accomplishments, and explicitly stating your value-add.
And so, when you don’t know how to identify your transferable skills, you get fewer offers.
And if you’ve been job searching for a long time and nobody’s inviting you for an interview (a first screener interview or a second/follow-up interview) OR you’re not getting job offers over time, that will stress you out and overwhelm you.
This is why you must learn how to analyze the job description and know how to go beyond just looking at your task and identifying the skill sets that are driving the tasks.
A job description is such a rich source of information for you. But what most people do when they are job searching is pull up the job description, scroll to the bottom to look at the requirement, and think, “Oh, I don’t meet this requirement. I’m not going to apply.” But you’ve just skipped past a host of solid data points and information you can use to market yourself.
The job prescription tells you the problem that an organization has. It tells you the kind of solution and skillset they’re looking for. The job description is the first place to figure out how to market yourself because it tells you exactly what they want.
The job description is the first place to figure out how to market yourself because it tells you exactly what they want. Share on XIf you don’t know how to analyze a job description, how to look through it and see what kind of person and solution they’re looking for, it would be hard for you to:
When you look at the job description and see the company’s problem and the solution they’re looking for, the next question is how YOU can be the solution:
You need to know how to answer those questions. If not, you’ll likely continue to feel stressed and overwhelmed in your job search.
#5 You Don’t Know How to Connect with Key Decision-Makers
The fifth and final reason you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed in your job search is that you don’t know how to connect with key decision-makers.
So, what or who are the key decision-makers? They’re the…
So, any of those kinds of people can move your job search forward.
People who are referred internally are 10 TIMES more likely to get an interview than people who apply for a job online.
That’s why it’s important for you to be having conversations with people who are on the inside of companies and spaces you want to secure a role with.
But one of the biggest problems here is that you think networking is sleazy. That’s why you’re not doing it.
You hear the word “networking,” and you immediately shrivel up and think, “I don’t wanna network. I feel so sleazy asking people to help me.”
Back up and chill. That’s not even what networking is.
Networking is simply building relationships.
It will only feel sleazy if you’re doing it wrong. If you’re waiting until you need something to connect with people, that’s where “feeling sleazy” can start.
But networking starts before you even begin your job search.
It is just building relationships with people, and then you can tap into those relationships when you need them when the time comes.
And when I say “building relationships”, it’s genuinely getting to know people, who they are, what they need, and letting them get to know you back.
That is what it means to network.
And then, by the time you get to your job search, you don’t feel like you’re taking advantage of people, and networking won’t feel so sleazy.
The other thing I want you to know is that 80% of jobs are obtained through networking, and 20% are acquired through online applications. I like to call them passive and active job search tactics.
And I’ve seen this play out with my clients multiple times. They’ll have conversations with someone, and when they have a conversation, they will realize that other options are available or that there are roles available that they had no idea about in the past.
You have to build relationships because conversations lead to conversions. Meaning when you have conversations with people, again, you learn about jobs that weren’t posted online and new opportunities that are available to you, and that leads to a conversion of you getting an interview or a job offer.
Ultimately, you increase your chances of getting an interview and a job offer because when you have conversations, you also become more than just another name on a piece of paper.
Because let’s be honest, that’s what a resume is: a name and a skill set on a piece of paper. There’s no personality behind it for most people.
When you have conversations, people can see the “real life” person in front of those skill sets in that name.
So, you must learn how to connect with key decision-makers if you want to feel less stressed in your job search.
Because if you keep only applying to jobs online, you will keep getting ghosted by companies. And that will keep making you feel overwhelmed because you won’t get the desired results. You will keep feeling overwhelmed and stressed in your job search.
During the live session of this blog post, a couple of great questions were asked and answered below.
Why is LinkedIn “Easy Apply” not recommended?
First of all, if I’m being honest, it’s the lazy way of applying to your job search. No one ever got good results in their job search by taking the lazy way out.
So many people are using Easy Apply, and a few things are happening.
Unless you have clarity about what you want so you have tailored your LinkedIn profile for one specific type of job, it might be okay to use Easy Apply because you have already marketed yourself on your LinkedIn for that job.
But most people don’t do or have that. Instead, most people on LinkedIn just talk about everything they’ve done in the past.
So, when you do Easy Apply, you are not tailoring yourself in any way, shape, or form for the job. And remember, when you are job searching, you are a marketer, and you have to position yourself as the right person for the role. Easy Apply doesn’t do that.
When you use the Easy Apply option, you become one of 250 people, and you’re not standing out. So you have a 98% chance of getting ghosted when you use Easy Apply.
I live in [x] and want to work in [y], but I fear that I won’t get a great job or feel comfortable or alone there. Do you have any advice?
I’m hearing two things here. One is getting a great job, and two is feeling comfortable being alone in London.
The first thing I will say is getting a great job is totally up to you. Let me be honest. A great job is a subjective statement. A great job is a job that aligns with what you are looking for, which is why the very first thing I talked about here was getting clarity.
So, if you pause and get clarity, and you only apply to jobs that align with the kind of job you’re looking for, then you’ve increased your chances of getting a great job. So that’s number one.
And the second piece here is feeling comfortable alone in London. That’s a whole personal thing.
Let me give you my positionality. I have moved every two to three years since 2005. Like in the past, maybe 11 years. I’ve lived in Arlington, Texas, Baltimore, Maryland, Colorado Springs, Colorado State College, Pennsylvania, and St. Louis, Missouri. And even Leeds, UK, for a little while.
I move a lot. And so when it comes to relocating, I’m very biased because I do it. I’m already comfortable with moving by myself and being alone. My mindset was (back then), “I’m young. I’m single. I don’t have a job – If I’m going to be moving a lot, this is the time to do it.” Because once I have a family, that will be more complicated. Now I’m not single anymore, but that was like the driving force. I wanted to see the world. Moving for me was a chance to experience something new.
But then, there are different ways when you move to increase your comfort with that process.
You can research other areas before you move so you can relocate to a place you feel safe. Now, apps allow you to build community in new areas, and some require you to put yourself out there if you don’t want to be alone, like being willing to build relationships.
And there is an adjustment period. Like, in the first year, you will largely be alone unless you build relationships at work. And that’s just by nature of you having to figure out where you want to go grocery shopping, and what your routine is.
And once you give yourself that year to settle, you can start building other relationships.
Also, I’m a homebody. Sometimes, I’m extroverted, sometimes introverted. Like, I enjoy people, but I also really enjoy reading a book on my couch.
So, for me, moving is exciting. You get to see a new part of the world; you get to experience new things. Being alone is difficult, but you can shift that if you want.
You can find a community if you want. I’ve found community through churches. I try to find a home church and build a community whenever I move. I also make connections with like my colleagues. I would go out with them everywhere I’d move, whether for school or work. I would go out with colleagues and build relationships, so I didn’t feel alone. Those are the tips I can share.
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