Whether you are employed or not, job search is tough on the psyche. As it's your psyche that gives you the competitive edge, here's to keep it strong.
Your secret weapon in search is a strong psyche. It’s your resume or contact that gets you in the door; it’s the strong psyche that closes the sale and lands you the role.
The resumes from people in your profession will likely read very similar. Several candidates will be pulled out because they show the ‘promise’ of succeeding within the role. When you speak to the company, it’s your strong psyche that truly brings the differences between you and the other candidates to life.
A strong psyche gives you confidence, poise and the ability to look anyone in the eyes when you answer or ask a question. Sitting across the table as the interviewer or networking contact, a strong psyche is almost tangible, as though that person has a shield in front of themselves and no matter what you toss at them – nothing is going to make them stray.
The strong psyche is driven by the hope that you will see an office, cubicle, nametag, or paycheck with your name on it – or whatever the symbol you think of when being employed. It’s that vision that gives you the hope. Anyone has let their hope dip will tell you it’s like living in slow motion.
Here’s the good thing about hope, it can live on a small diet. Hope is driven by the small events of a day or week, not only major events.
This is good because most of us don’t experience many major events or opportunities that get us ‘discovered’ to be immediately hired. Sure it happens to people, but you cannot count on it – sort of like that winning lottery ticket (I could have sworn the Powerball was going to be ‘10’ this week!)
Keep track of the small positive events in your search, the act of keeping track of these actions helps build your hope as well by reminding you of what is going well.
For example, any action that moves you closer to the hiring manager, information you discover that helps match your resume to a company, holding a great networking meeting, getting useful or positive feedback on your experience, finding someone who will connect you to a highly-desired networking contact, shortening your pitch or resume without losing any potency, etc.
Here’s the other good thing about hope. Whatever hope you give to someone will increase yours by an equal share.
Good luck today.
Mark