Career Chat // Building resilience for job seeking // Tues 12 Sep, 7pm AEST

Hi everyone.

My name is Nathalie and I will be facilitating tonights chat.
I am really excited about tonights topic and would love to hear about your experiences
with how you handle rejection while job searching or anxiety during interviews.

Did you know that 94% of candidates want to receive interview feedback,
however only 41% of them have actually received it before.
So how do we know which areas we can improve on?

Tonight we will explore some tried and tested ways to manage our anxiety before or during
an interview and also discuss how we can develop your resilience during the job searching process.

When I was 18 I had an agreement with my father that I did not have to attend university the
following year after graduation so long as I had a full time job.
As I did not want to study more after high school, I worked hard at finding a job and eventually I
was successful. However the fear I had of thinking I would have to attend University meant that when I eventually got bored of this job doing data entry, I knew I needed to find another job before I left.

This pattern led to me always having work and getting that work purely from referrals from friends or former colleagues.

Last year I thought I wanted to do something I had never done before and so I left my job
and decided to try being unemployed and experience having to look for jobs like other people
without referrals. (I know that sounds odd but coincidently it led me to my current job which is
helping others find work - so it kind of worked out).

I set about creating a resume and a cover letter and making a profile on Seek.com and CareerOne
and I was so pumped to find some new work.
I assumed that with 20 years in the workforce, 12 of them being a business coach, multiple
university degrees (yes, I did eventualy go study) and heaps of experience with some well known
clients, that I would find a job really easy.

Wrong.

It took 7 months before I got my first interview and by that time I had no less than between 10-15 different types of resumes and cover letters and I had a profile on almost every single recruitment site and job board I could find.
InitialIy I was frustrated.
Then as the weeks went by and the response letters weren't coming, I got confused.
Then upset, then stressed out and eventually I started to have feelings of self doubt, low feelings
of self-worth and all over just a feeling of depression that I hadn't realy had since I was approx 17 yrs old.

I couldn't understand why I wasn't getting phone calls or letters or interviews.
I remember getting angry and thinking why am I not getting any correspondence?

So I started ringing around the companies I could find I had applied for and enquiring as to my application.
I was being told I was over qualified.
A recruitment agency told me employers quite often think over qualified people will get bored and leave.
I remember getting angry because that's not their decision to make that judgement. I applied for the job so I knew I wanted it right?

So I started applying for everything out of desperation.
And the emails started flooding in.
However they were rejection emails.
Why didn't they want me? I couldn't even get work at a supermarket!
So I started to spiral again into anxiety.
How am I going to pay my bills? What if I never get work again? Maybe I'm not as good as what I thought?

Eventually I stopped and thought, if I am not getting all these jobs that I am applying for perhaps it
is because I am not meant to. I am a firm believer that everything will happen as it should and so I
took time out to really think about what I wanted to do.

I made 2 lists - my hobbies/ interests and my skills.
This list helped me find out that I basically wanted to help people.
Now I needed to find out why wasn't I getting interviews?

The problem solver in me said, "well, they've never met me. If they meet me they'll like me.
How can I meet them?

At the interview. How can I get an interview? What is it they have that is not getting their attention?"
My resume".

Obviously my resume was not great and fair enough,I'd never had to do one before so I changed
it up by googling different templates and eventualy I found that Linked In have some amazing
articles to help all of this and I started trial and error with my resume until I found the one that
started getting responses.

In short - I handle rejection by translating it into a "challenge accepted" type of mentality and
problem solving to kepp my brain active and busy so it doesn't have time to sit in the little grey pit
of anxiousness and cause me worries.

So has anyone else felt this way whil looking for work?
How do you manage rejection in the job hunting process or anxiety at interviews, or even ensure that
looking for work is productive and effective? Do you think like a winner and problem solve? or do you have another way you get through it?
Maybe you know of some things your friends did and you can share.

Hello @OstaraAust, @NikNik

hello @Teej @Hamsolo01 and @Kirin

Hi Nathalie, @OstaraAust,

I haven't experienced rejection yet because I haven't applied for jobs but I'm about to experience it lots at some point soonish in the future. I have a gap of 22 years in my resume for a variety of reasons.

In my younger years I got all my jobs through someone I knew as well. I've only ever had one interview before about 29 years ago.

Have you any advice as to how to go about preparing for the huge amount of rejection coming my way?

Sorry for spelling your name wrong Nathalie, autocorrect decided it was better to write it their way 😳:face_with_rolling_eyes:

Hi @Shaz51 👋

Hello @Teej, @NikNik, @OstaraAust

My husband who has had Mi all his life have been through soo many jobs , some have lasted a little while , and some he lost quickly

We went self employed after this and we have stayed in over the years with a huge amount of rejection where we have a job for a littlw while , but Mr shaz takes it to heart and questions himself WHY , we do have some regulars that we have had for a few years but he focus`s on the ones we have lost jobs

Hi @Shaz51
How are you?

Thank you for sharing this.

I can understand this must be very difficult.

Everyone has their own way of dealing with things but I do find asking the question "why" is very popular.

It depends HOW you ask it though. Is it being asked in a "why me?" kind of way or is it more of a "why is this happening" kind of way.

Sometimes we accept jobs that are not necessarily what we ousl want to be doing but it is a quick way to keep our bills being paid and we can sometimes fall into a little pattern of just accepting the job that pays the bills but is not truly making us happy.

It might be tha reason why your husband is not staying in jobs for very long?

Perhaps he would benefit from trying the lists I mentioned earlier where he makes 2 lists and with the help of career planner is able to find a job that matches both his skills and his hobbies which would give him both job satisfaction and job security.

I know some employment service providers such as Ostara have career planners you can see so it may be worth looking into that and seeing if it helps your husband.

I hope this answers your question and maybe provides you with something to try.

Hello @OstaraAust, wondering if you are the same ostara that put us on being self employed years ago

I am ok , work is a bit slack and mr shaz questions what he is doing wrong