Posted in Career Advice Job Hunting Recommended Resources on August 19, 2009 at 9:24 pm
This guest post is by Sandra Naiman, author of The High Achiever’s Secret Codebook: The Unwritten Rules for Success at Work.
At best, looking for a job can feel like a roller coaster ride. For many people, the longer they search, the more they get discouraged. This is especially true in a flailing economy where there’s more competition for fewer jobs.
So how does a job seeker remain positive throughout the job hunt? While this certainly is a challenging time, there are steps that can help people stay upbeat:
1. Engage in activities that make you feel good about yourself. Identify the skills and aptitudes that make you good at your work and also make a list of what you like about yourself, such as sense of humor or empathy. Then find a way to demonstrate those skills and characteristics. For example, if you are good at planning, organize the book drive at your child’s school. If you pride yourself for your ability to put people at ease, volunteer to work in the waiting room for families of surgery patients.
2. Achieve tangible results. Many job search related activities do not provide an immediate tangible outcome. To maintain a sense of control, do something every day that does afford concrete results. It can be as simple as cleaning out a closet, organizing the garage or waxing the car. It can also be related to volunteer or family activities, such as writing a neighborhood watch newsletter or making cookies with the kids. Make sure, that at the end of each day, you can point to something you accomplished.
3. Surround yourself with positive, supportive people. Identify those people who have confidence in you and build your own confidence in yourself. Avoid the people who always see the glass as half empty or those who drain your energy.
4. Keep promises to yourself. Now is a good time to end a bad habit, take a class that you’ve wanted to pursue, or learn a new skill.
5. Reward yourself. At the end of each day, chronicle the things you did well and reward yourself with a good book, a soak in the tub, or some other activity that says to you “job well done.” As far as job searching goes, pride yourself on the things you accomplished that day, rather than waiting for results before you celebrate what you’ve done. The latter usually doesn’t come as quickly as you would wish.
6. Follow a healthy routine. Eat well, exercise and take good care of your body.
7. Allow yourself some down time. You can’t be up and optimistic all the time, so give yourself permission to have a bad day. If you diligently follow the above suggestions, you can count on tomorrow to be better.
Read more helpful career tips in Sandra Naiman’s book, The High Achiever’s Secret Codebook: The Unwritten Rules for Success at Work.
If this book interests you, you might also enjoy:
My book: Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World
Secrets of the Young and Successful
They Don’t Teach Corporate in College
Me 2.0
All of this is good advice. Being unemployed is akin to suffering a huge personal loss and it can be depressing. Surrounding yourself with positive people is key, staying active and healthy is key but when you are applying to job after job and not getting results, it erodes your self-confidence. Remind yourself of all your capabilities & accomplishments but also use this time to acquire a new skill or polish a rusty one. Do you have only a basic familiarity with Excel spreadsheets? Use this time to become proficient. Gaining a new skill or improving a less than adequate one can be very empowering. You can search the Internet for free, interactive websites such as GCFlearnfree.org. (When you’re out of work, free is good!) Just know that you are not alone in your job search.
Thanks for the information. I believe it is very important to maintain a positive attitude during job search, or else one may end up taking a job that does not interest him.
Changing jobs is often seen as a stressful and daunting task; however properly executed it can be an exciting and challenging experience. You can enlist your family’s help.
[...] to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Great post on Lindsey Pollak’s blog called 7 Ways to Stay Positive During a Long Job Search. I’ve always been a big believer in the power of staying positive and this piece has some [...]
Great post. I had a fun time responding to it on my blog, which is about my long job search: http://jessified.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/due-date/
These are all good, and I especially like how five, six and seven are basically designed to keep people from becoming obsessive about job hunting, which is easy and understandable but not helpful – you have to have some time away even from such an important activity. My free “Hard Times Handbook” eBook addresses this aspect of things too.