Keeping Your Head in Your Job Search

Looking for a job when you're unemployed is always a difficult challenge. When you seek a job while you're employed, it's not a full time endeavor and you're free to pick and choose those jobs for which you're truly interested - usually to advance in your career. You can afford to be more open to the serendipitous networking opportunity, the happy coincidence of meeting someone at a party that knows someone who knows someone. It doesn't have to be the focus of your pursuit.

When you're not working, it does have to be that. You're focusing your energy on the pursuit of your next career challenge, or perhaps you're focusing on just landing a job so you can pay your bills. It can take a toll on your mental well-being, which in turn can have deleterious effects on your interpersonal relationships, and can affect your chances of performing well in any interview you do land.

Unless you're a sales professional, you're likely not use to the level of rejection that comes your way while you're seeking that next opportunity. You can send hundreds of letters of interest and submit your resume for jobs you once never thought you would. And you wait. The phone call for an interview, an email asking you a question. Almost anything to get your mind focused on the idea that you have something of value to offer an organization. Like in sales, however, it only takes that one call, that one interview, that one offer of a job to make it all worthwhile. Good sales professionals can mentally take a level of rejection - they have to be able to do this. The rest of us, however, usually just aren't wired like that.

Here are three useful tips help keep your mind on the goal at hand:

Keep a routine. Constructive habits of mind take work. Set a constructive pattern for yourself. Wake up at roughly the same time every morning. Go to the gym consistently in the same pattern. Set time aside for the work that is your job search - and think of your job search as your job. It can be tempting, if not downright easy, to wallow in your situation, and to become a consumer of those abominable television commercials running between the breaks of "Regis & Kelly" or "The People's Court" or whatever else is on during the daytime broadcasting slots.

View Your Search as Your Job. Sounds simple enough, almost to the point of truism, but it is important. Family and friends may come up with errands or small tasks for you, after all "you're not doing anything," but if you manage your job search as you would a job you are working and you have a schedule to run and jobs to do. This isn't to say that you don't have some time available to help out, but it is to say that you have be able to keep your schedule and your routine. Unemployed does not mean you're not working, just as being a "stay-at-home" mom or dad doesn't mean you don't do anything. This work has value and if you do not respect it, there isn't anyone else in your life who will.

Executing your search as a job, means you are your own boss. Spend the time with each position for which you apply. Write a new letter for each one. Customize your resume to speak to the position, by highlighting those activities in your background that match what the hiring company is seeking. If there isn't a contact listed on the job posting, find out to whom you are sending your materials. Speak to your experience through the lens of what the company is seeking. Do your job search as you would your job.

Build a positive construct for yourself. This means that despite the level of rejection you're bound to face on the job hunt, you cannot allow yourself to view yourself through the lens of rejection. It's hard to know what's worse, the "thanks, but no" letter/email or the waiting some word after an application or interview and that feeling can being to sink in. Review your resume, consider the work you've done in the past and your accomplishments. Ask yourself the hard questions and be honest with yourself, but don't judge yourself too harshly either. If you can view yourself as someone with positive traits, knowledge, skills, and abilities, you can look at your successes and shortcomings with a view toward improving. The only wrong is not doing the work to improve. Successful interpersonal communication begins with a positive self-image. We like others who smile. Be the person who smiles and believe the reasons you give yourself for smiling.

In the end analysis, If you don't believe in yourself, no one will take the risk of believing in you either. You have to believe you have "the stuff" to be successful. You have to demonstrate the self motivation and self-analysis an employer will be seeking. If it's not like you to "toot your own horn," create that persona for yourself. Self-aggrandizement is frowned upon. Self-confidence is sought. Self-depreciation or short-selling yourself will not get you where you want to go.