Job hunting may not make the list of life’s top 10 most stressful events (though being fired does), but it should.
Anyone who’s ever had to look for a new job knows that there is nothing more guaranteed to sap your self-confidence and induce panic than job hunting, and its the effects are cumulative and exponential: Weeks 1-4 of a job hunt are tolerable, but by Week 8, even the most confident, optimistic and employable of us can find ourselves filling out applications for part-time minimum-wage positions at local fast-food restaurants, or leaving “Please, I’m desperate, I’ll take anything! Call me! Please!” voicemails for recruiters.
Neither of which is likely to further your career goals.
Desperation is a buzzkill
Remember in high school, when the ‘cool, popular’ kids were the ones who didn’t seem to care whether anyone liked them or not, while the ‘losers’ were the ones who seemed needy and too eager to make friends?
The job market is like that: The more desperate you seem, the less attractive you are to potential employers, because it makes them wonder why you haven’t been able to get a job (“This candidate seems desperate, which tells me she’s been looking for a job for a while now. If she hasn’t been hired by now, there must be something really wrong with her. I think I’ll just take a pass on this one.”).
In other words, the longer you can keep your (very natural) feelings of panic and desperation out of your interactions with recruiters and potential employers, the more successful your job hunt will be.
Click here to read the rest of this post
