CEO Lauren Herring provides advice to ensure you lead the best job search – without letting your emotions take over.
In a recent job search networking meeting, I met with a senior executive who walked me through endless process flows, spreadsheets and PowerPoints to show me how ready he was for his next role. Despite all this, my takeaway from the meeting was not how competent he was or how perfect he would be for any number of leadership roles. Unfortunately, my takeaway from his presentation was that he was absolutely desperate to land a job. Fear was practically dripping off him.
If I could sense this in our brief meeting, imagine the number of employers he had spoken with who had sensed it too and what effect that had on the results of his search.
This was before COVID-19.
Now that a global pandemic is disrupting lives, businesses and supply chains around the globe, many people are finding themselves looking for new jobs and determining how to conduct the best job search. We are in the midst of extremely challenging times — both personally and professionally. To get through it, we need to acknowledge our emotions rather than bury them.
The emotional toll of a job search is real. This career uncertainty is often times accompanied by the real fear of the financial consequences of unemployment. Throw in the anger from constant rejections from potential employers and the overall anxiety of the unknown and you have yourself quite the emotional brew. Augmenting the problem is the fact that this brew is likely bubbling up to the surface. The sadness over losing a job or the frustration of not finding a new one can be debilitating personally, but if not managed properly, these emotions can also be detrimental to leading your best job search.
Managing the roller coaster of emotions is one of the biggest challenges in launching the best job search possible during this time.
However, it is rarely addressed in all the self-help literature out there on the topic. At my company, we provide tools and tactics to help people have a successful job search, and our career coaches spend significant time supporting the emotions that come up in this process. In our experience, people who are successful at managing their emotions are generally more successful in landing a new role.
Continue reading at Forbes to discover what is needed for a healthy job search and how to address intense emotions that may arise.
