How To Take Unemployment In Stride

The only way from here is up

Job hunting sucks. Nobody likes it, and I am sure everyone who has ever gone through it or is going through it right now will understand the weight of that statement. There are so many elements of job hunting that leaves the individual drained, demoralized and engulfed in self-doubt over whether they are truly capable of ever finding that job of their dreams.

Unfortunately this is not my first encounter with unemployment. Granted the very first time I experienced this I was right out of University and had advantages specific to a new graduate, but now that I am back in this arena, I have since realized some fresh perspectives that can better help me in playing and winning this game.

Yes. Job hunting sucks. It is awful and tiring, and there is nothing wrong with admitting to that. Regardless of whether you were dismissed, or left a job that wasn’t suited for you, you are someone that right now is working hard to find another job and you need to remember that the value of your capabilities and work ethic doesn’t diminish with each rejection or ghosting.

The fact of the matter is that the candidate does not enjoy an equal level of playing field, especially if you are someone like me who is still relatively young and inexperienced. Almost all the power lies in the hands of the employer, right from the moment the application is done and delivered. All the candidate can do, is to wait patiently for a response, up until a certain point where optimism becomes foolish and you acknowledge that you are never getting a response.

As many others have said, it really ends up becoming a numbers game, as well as a huge test of your patience. The more jobs you apply for, the higher the probability of you getting a response back for an interview. It is risky to apply for, say 15 jobs, and just sit around waiting for the 15 companies to get back to you. There’s no industry certified rule of thumb for when employers will get back to you — it can take days and weeks if you are lucky, or else months, and sometimes even never. (I once had a company get back to me 3 months after my application, asking not even for an interview, but just an online test.)

Applying for 100 different positions (or even more), shouldn’t be something that gets you down. It is normal to be applying for so many different roles, and just being at this first phase of the job-hunting process, will take up to months to see some progress being made. It can start to get mentally draining — no one likes knowing that they are being rejected, especially if it is from job openings that you are qualified for and am extremely passionate and interested in.

I used to get so consumed with the number of applications I was sending out. When I hit the 50th mark, rejection began to get to me, churning out feelings of desperation and impatience, and it ended up clouding my judgement. Instead of staying focused on what I wanted to do, and what I was looking for, I ended up clawing at every single opening and potential opportunity and placing it on a much higher pedestal than it deserved.

Somewhere down the road, I had forgotten that — true it might have been an unequal playing field at the beginning - but as you move on down the process, you can wield as much power as the other side. As much as asking what you can offer to the company, it is also important to always ask what the company can offer to you.

When I graduated from university, it took me around 3 months and close to 100 applications, before I landed my first job. By then desperation to land a job fast and the mental toil of all the ghosting and rejections was taking on me and I had already become overwhelmed in the process of job hunting, losing clarity and focus. I have since realized that that can cost you some serious long term consequences (such as accepting an offer that turns out to be an ill fit).

We all know that as unemployed individuals, we don’t have the luxury to take our time perusing and nitpicking over each and every job. Time is of the essence and every day gone is potentially a day of opportunity cost in terms of loss of income. However, a certain degree of desperation and rush will always be bubbling under the surface, and it is up to us to strike a balance and not be blinded by the short term benefits that exist.

The balance can sometimes be a fine line between the immediacy of drawing a paycheck right away but locking yourself down to potentially years at an unfilled and under-valued role, versus taking a few extra months to land a job that is more aligned with what you were looking for, and provides learning opportunities and growth potential.

Out of all this shit that comes with job hunting, the one ray of light I see is that I now finally get some time to think about the underlying questions that ultimately direct our course in life. As someone who had always been in a mad rush to be “moving” in life, not allowing myself time to pause and think had led me down a path with a series of regrettable actions and ending up in places that I didn’t enjoy.

Perhaps having been burned before by an unfulfilled job experience, it was all the more important to me that I don’t fall into this mistake twice. And that means taking this time to understanding what are my interests and plans for my career and how I can go about finding the right job fit for myself. As much as it is a tedious journey of finding the next job asap to pay my bills, I like to also see it as a journey of discovering something that I may have missed out along the way.

It is a hard, exhausting journey, and we will sometimes feel like shit. But the journey to finding that right thing can be the hardest.

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