Will You get another job?
Did you launch your job search activities with a burst of energy, set goals, seek support and launch your actions plan with lots of positive energy and hope? Did you get a lot of initial positive response from helpful friends, colleagues and business contacts, feel great about the process and then suddenly everything ground to a halt?
Over the past 14 years coaching senior executives through their career transitions, I’ve found that even the most pro-active job seeker may experience a dip in activity at some stage. Even though this is quite normal, if the lull continues for more than a couple of weeks you will become discouraged. It’s now time to reassess each job search method and get creative.
At the start of a job search campaign, people update their resume, register with a number of recruitment agencies, and make a list of companies to target and make contact with their network to gain referrals. Things may go along well, perhaps even a few interviews may be secured and then … nothing. People who seemed so enthusiastic at first don’t return calls or emails; suddenly there is a deadly silence. If this happens time and time again, insidiously doubt slithers into your mind and you start to question your ability to secure a new role.
The momentum is lost. It’s easy to slip into catastrophic thinking at this stage if the months start to slip by and finances get tighter and you have mouths to feed, a mortgage to pay off and multiple expenses.
This experience is not unusual. Many job hunters find that getting moving initially is not that difficult however, as opportunities fall through and that initial list of contacts is exhausted, the search for work can move into a more difficult phase. Perhaps you have ‘hit the wall.’ Does this sound familiar to you?
Sometimes the people you speak with initially create the mistaken impression that finding a new position will only take a few weeks, or that the process is easy. Perhaps you are interpreting the feedback you are receiving (calls that are not returned, lack of response from recruiters, positions that suddenly are placed ‘on hold’ or filled by internal applicants) as a measure of your marketability, or lack of it, and you start to make negative emotional judgments on yourself that are not correct. With that sort of thinking, even the most successful professional may question the very elements that made them a success in the previous career.
You may feel like giving up. If you give up, you will not succeed. I remember a saying I once heard that only when it really gets dark can you see the stars.
