How long? How long is it going to take to get that job you always wanted? How long is it going to take for employers to realize how perfect you are for the job?
The job search can be stressful in it by itself, you adding additional and unnecessary pressure on yourself won’t help. Yes, I know, each person responds to stress in a different way, and you want to know something, stress while job hunting can be quite helpful, to a certain extent. I’m not talking about mental breakdown level stress, I mean the kind of stress that keeps you on your toes. It just goes to show that you care, and being stressed can help you increase your attention to detail during the whole process from getting your CV ready to filling out an application form.
HOWEVER, stress can certainly have a negative effect on you as well. It can make you take the wrong decisions and even put you off the whole job hunt. Stress can cause anxiety and anxiety can cause procrastination. A crippling cycle that everyone must avoid being sucked into.
Let me tell you a little story, a while back when I was knees deep in my job search, I decided to take a break and go on a trip with my friends to Petra. I’d been unemployed for quite some time and the job search was starting to get to me, it was literally all I can think of, even while I was on my trip. My friends were very quick to notice and they just didn’t understand why I couldn’t forget about my job search, and to be honest, neither did I.
I really needed a break to relax and enjoy myself for a bit. Thankfully, my friend told me something that helped me snap out of this obsession that I had with my job search by simply clarifying to me that searching for a job is in fact a full time job. Where tasks should be distributed evenly and breaks should be taken as well. Which helped me realize the main problem I had with my job hunt: I had no strategy. And yes, applying to a million jobs within a very short time period made me feel productive, but it was adding a lot of unnecessary stress, and to be frank it wasn’t getting me anywhere simply because I had no strategy.
So, morale of the story: develop a strategy! And here’s how:
If you want to feel less anxious about your job search, one of the first things you can do is to get your act together, get organized and form a schedule. You can get this done by getting a calendar and/or agenda and spread out your tasks according to your goals for the week. For example, Sunday and Monday can be for searching and applying for jobs, Tuesday can be for following up with jobs that you have previously applied to, Wednesday can be for reviewing and editing you CV and cover letter, and so on. Also, don’t forget to give yourself a break as well, employees get the weekend off, why shouldn’t you? Not to mention that, getting organized can also get you prepared for a call at any moment.
With over 20,000 jobs on Bayt.com job seekers can get overwhelmed by the amount of jobs there are out there in the market and start applying to as many as possible to increase the chances of getting hired, which can lead to stress. In order for job seekers to reduce their stress they should review all the jobs that they are actually interested in, form a shortlist and prioritize the jobs that they see fit for them and that actually are within their skill reach. This way they can spend their effort and time on the ones that matter.
You should always remember that you’re not a robot, you can’t expect to achieve all that you want from the get-go. Job hunting can be a lengthy process that includes a lot of learning on the go. The more jobs you search and apply for, the more familiar you are with the process and the faster and more relaxed you will be with the whole process. Also, there are different stages of the job search process and each needs different amounts of time, you can’t do it all at once.
Look at you, you made it here to this blog for a reason, you’re trying to enhance your job search. Which is great! You’re putting in the effort and you should be proud of yourself for doing that and appreciate the fact that you’re actually getting something done. Not to mention the fact that appreciating yourself can make you feel more motivated to put in even more effort.
