You know that part of a project where everything is a slog? You’ve done the creative work of planning and the exciting work of launching and now you’re just doing the same thing, over and over and over again. And you’re far from the end (or the project is open-ended enough that you might not know where the end is). The muddy middle (or the belly dip) of any project can be a grim time, and your job search is not immune from this natural project flow.
Below I share a four-part system for breaking out of this stage and re-invigorating your job search. We’ll talk about how to make sure you are tracking the right data to identify the specific job search activities that are providing you (not someone else!) with a strong ROI; then we’ll focus on reflection, evaluating how you feel about your search; then we’ll put that all together with an evaluation process that allows you to reinvigorate your existing job search strategy.
This process of Data Collection, Reflecting, Evaluating, and Strategizing should hopefully help you take more control of your job search and allow you to eliminate parts of the process that aren’t serving you well or push you to identify time savers for things that have to be done.
One of the reasons that I’m writing this post right now is that there’s a lot of advice about searching for jobs, especially targeted to educators and, increasingly, folks in edtech. And a lot of it is good advice. There are some LinkedIn hacks in the business but there are also a lot of really top-notch career coaches who can give you real perspective and expert advice.
But it can become very easy to feel a lot of pressure when you see all this advice and to create an unhealthy inner dialogue around it:
- I have to set up a million job alerts and scan my LinkedIn feed every time I take a break (or I’ll miss the perfect job!).
- I have to tailor every bullet point in my resume for every job I apply to (or they won’t read my resume).
- I have to find and message every hiring manager (or they’ll hire someone they ‘know.’).
Job search stress comes from the nature of the activity. But it can also come from having a job search system that isn’t:
- tailored to your strengths, and
- that doesn’t tracking or reflect the job search activities that bring you good results
It’s important to tailor your job search strategy to reflect your strengths as well as the roles you’re looking for. For example, a particular style of networking might be essential for an extrovert applying to sales roles but for an introvert it might cause more stress than it’s worth, especially if you’re applying to roles that don’t require broad networks and regularly talking to cold contacts.
It’s also important to track the (right) results of your job search activities. If you’ve sent out a 100 cold messages to hiring managers and received one back, you may remember that one and think, “I just need to keep doing that more, and I’ll get that offer” when in reality you can save yourself a lot of messages if you figure out why that person responded and then find more people like that person.
Or you may realize that you talked to one hiring manager despite sending out 100 messages and give yourself permission to stop sending out messages and focus instead on applying and spending the time you saved doing something that nourishes you.
There’s no right or wrong answer here – you simply have to identify what’s working for you and do more of that.
People get jobs in a million different ways. Some people get their job from a close connection. Other people from a cold email. Other people get their job because they applied alongside hundreds of people, but they were the one hired.
I’ll repeat – there’s no right way or right system for your job search except the one that works for you.
That means you can save time and energy in your search if you find out what is and what isn’t working and give yourself permission to stop doing what isn’t working (or shift it to something that is).
In creative writing, we call this ‘killing your darlings,’ cutting those scenes we spent hours crafting and that are beautifully written and that show us something about the characters that we really love but aren’t doing the work of driving the plot (or characterization) forward.
In a job search, we’re often committed to a particular activity because it worked for someone else. And because it’s even a good idea. But if it isn’t working for you, send it to the guillotine!
There’s another reason to engage in this process of reflection at various points in your job search: it builds resilience and confidence in yourself as a candidate.
In the muddy middle, we become discouraged and doubt ourselves. (This is so normal – it happens to people who have successfully written three bestsellers or launched two previous businesses or delivered ten presentations in front of very scary people.)
When we step back and reflect objectively, we gain a measure of control. We know what to do because we know why we’re doing it and what results we can expect from it. We have diagnosed issues that we previously ignored (because we were in the doldrums of that muddy middle). And we have problem-solved solutions, experimenting with intention, until we have created a system that is flexible and efficient.
Reflection, though, also can help us re-center. We often focus on the losses – the interview you crushed and they still went with another candidate or the snarky post a gatekeeper made on LinkedIn that made you doubt your potential – and minimize the wins. When you line up both next to each other, you remember that you are talented and that you will find the right role that allows you to lean fully into your skills and passions.
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