5 Tips for Surviving Your Job Search Journey

By Kelley Bridenbaugh

Are you one of the many workers recently laid off? If so, I’m right there with you. This year hundreds of thousands of employees in the tech industry alone have had their professional lives uprooted. With that many people losing their jobs, it means that applicant pools are looking more like oceans… and treading the job-hunting waters is exhausting.

It’s been 11 days and 6 hours since I sat stunned in the conference room with my colleagues after learning our entire company had been laid off… and it’s been about 11 days and 5 hours and 30 minutes since I started the job hunting process.

While this is my first time facing layoffs, it is not my first go-round at job applications… In fact, I’m pretty experienced at applying to jobs thanks to my younger years of globe-trotting and Australian visa restrictions that required me to find a new employer every six months when I was living abroad.

So if you feel like you’re drowning in oceans of applications, I’m here to throw you a life jacket and help you out with these 5 tips for surviving your job search journey.

1. Maintain a Work/Life Balance

You might be thinking, “but Kelley, I don’t have a job”. And I know that, but I still stand by what I said.

Hear me out.

Searching, filtering, and applying for jobs can feel like a full-time job and it can take up just as many hours, if not more if you let it.

That’s why you need to find time to step away, close the laptop, and do something for yourself. Get some fresh air, call a friend to catch up, or read a couple of chapters of a book you’ve been meaning to start. Anything that will divert your brain from focusing on the search. I know it can feel like you need to be job hunting 24/7, but much like how you can’t (and shouldn’t) be working 24/7, if you try to sustain around-the-clock job hunting you will burn out.

So if you’ve been falling asleep in bed scrolling job sites as the last thing you do at night and then immediately opening them again first thing in the morning, give yourself a break. Set some boundaries and put your mental health first.

2. Switch It Up

Every so often, play around with changing your job description keywords. For example, maybe you’ve only been searching for “teacher” positions, so you’re only going to see openings with that exact word. Try “instructor”, “educator”, or “trainer” to see what comes up, or enter keywords based on your ideal industry instead of just the role.

What’s the best way to find new search terms? There’s the old right-click synonym trick that can get you some fresh words, or you can take it up a notch and use keyword search tools and websites. These tools are usually used for search engine optimization (SEO) or search engine marketing (SEM), but isn’t that what you’re doing when you’re job hunting? Using search engines to display different results?

Play around with some different combinations and see how you can switch it up, you might be surprised at what you find.

3. Don’t Limit Yourself

Companies have to pay to have their job postings up on most sites which means they might not be advertising on every site. By limiting yourself to only one job board, you’re missing out on tons of different opportunities. Take the extra few minutes to set up your profile on a handful of sites. You can also control your email preferences and most sites have the ability to send you daily recommended job postings.

This can help you keep your finger on the pulse and make sure you didn’t miss the perfect job when you were offline (because we are still taking time for ourselves during this process, remember tip #1….).

Here are a couple of sites that you can use for job searching: LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, Monster, and SimplyHired. Depending on what type of work you’re looking for you can also try finding an industry-specific job board such as TeamworkOnline for jobs in sports.

4. Increase Your Surface Area for Serendipity

Now, this tip is not my own. I have to credit it to entrepreneurial guru, Ryan Miller. This point was one of the main lessons in his TED-Talk style presentation at Magnifi U Voices. But what does it mean? Well, if you want to get lucky… increase your opportunities to get lucky. In the context of the lottery, you’d have to buy more lottery tickets. In the job-search context, I’d say this involves not just applying to more jobs, but also talking to as many people as you can.

After I was laid off I drafted a text to some of my friends letting them know the unfortunate news and I also included that I was seeking a content development role in the EdTech industry in case they heard of anything. This means that for each person I told, I was increasing my surface area for serendipity. By having more open ears and eyes out there, who knows when one of them might overhear a neighbor talking about a job opportunity or see a posting in their network? Use the people in your corner to support you through these times. Most people you know want you to succeed and will help you if you ask.

5. Stay Positive

You might think this is me trying to wrap up this article with a feel-good cliche piece of advice, but it’s not, I’m being serious and there’s some science to back me up. According to PlanStreet Inc., based on data from Gallup Research, “Unemployment and depression are inextricably linked.” During the job searching process, day after day, week after week, feelings of rejection, worry, and apprehension can compound and lead to a dark cloud looming over your head when you think of future prospects.

“Unemployment and depression are inextricably linked.”

That’s why it’s essential that you do your best to remain optimistic. The process is a marathon, not a sprint. You will find something, it might just take some keyword tweaking and patience. It’s easy to fall into a downward spiral of negative thinking when you’re putting in all of this time and effort and not getting anywhere, but losing sight of the end goal won’t get you anywhere either. Clarify your career goals and what really matters to you and let those values guide you and keep you moving forward.

Whether this is your first-time job hunting, or you’re back to the drawing board which seems all too familiar by now, remember these 5 tips when you start to get discouraged.

1. Maintain a Work/Life Balance

2. Switch it Up

3. Don’t Limit Yourself

4. Increase Your Surface Area for Serendipity

5. Stay Positive

And if you feel like paying it forward and helping out a fellow hunter, please engage with this article (like/comment) or share it with your network. Let me know in the comments what type of job you’re looking for (...who knows who might see it!). Here’s to hoping for opportunities to come our way.

Happy Hunting,

Kelley

Originally Published November 21, 2022