Job Search Success: Emotional Resilience, Community Support, and Actionable Tips for Your Next Role

After a long arduous job search, I am happy to share that I landed a role as Group Product Manager at Paycor. I wanted to share some tips and tricks that helped me navigate the emotional roller coaster and many feelings during this journey. I hope this helps you get your ideal role, gives you more energy in your search, and that you see there is hope even in the darkest of periods.

Shame Happens

If you are like me, you might feel shame in this situation and just as Brene Brown says, it can become toxic. Please ask your friends and family for help. Go to therapy, if you aren't already, and be completely open to the experience. You can feel alone in this battle but you are not alone. However, it’s not enough to be here reading this, take the steps you need to become a better you to handle these tough situations. We will likely all be back in this challenging phase of our careers again, please use this time to build up your muscles to carry this load more easily when it returns.

Your Job is now securing a Job

If you're open to work, the job search must be treated like a job. I worked normal hours, took lunch breaks, went on walks, and even took time off. However, I had a hard time unplugging, but when I did, for things like a garage project I wanted to do for years or going out of town, I felt rejuvenated. I will admit that after a vacation I felt reality hit on the first day back, and it was very tough. But my search gained momentum as soon as I could pull out of that (it took a day or two usually) and be ok with reality again.

I couldn't have done it without Community Support

The next two bullet points are CRITICAL since they helped me get through the roller coaster of emotions, helped me identify and validate what I should focus on for my preferred role, and helped me get my new role.

• Never Search Alone : this community, based on the book by phyl terry , has grown exponentially since it was published. I joined in the late summer of 2023 and the number of job search groups, more on this in a bit, grew by 5x! There is no marketing, it’s a volunteer-driven community with word-of-mouth advertising. It works. I have recommended this book to dozens of people, many of whom used it and they also have seen the benefits in both their careers and emotionally. If you haven’t heard of it before, you join a Job Search Council (JSC) composed of 4 - 6 people that is focused on people helping each other in the isolated world of job searching. You create a safe space where vulnerability is welcome with people you haven’t met before (the group agrees to this first), you build an ideal list of attributes for your next opportunity (Mnookin Two Pager), get feedback from past colleagues and managers on what went well/didn’t go well in your time together (Listening tour), and ultimately define a Candidate Market Fit (CMF) statement. The CMF is to share with people you know or meet to help them know what you are looking for. The JSC is instrumental in this and so much more such as debriefing on interviews that went well/didn’t go well, negotiations, having a hard day, and you help others too which will make you feel so much better about life. There is also some great advice after you land a role. Buy the book, and more importantly, buy into the process. It's the best money you can spend, IMHO.
• CareerSprout : This coaching service was introduced to me by a friend and I was impressed with how they moved quickly to get me a new resume, and LinkedIn profile, and optimize my networking and interview skills. All in a couple of weeks. Then I could prepare with a coach for each interview, and record the interview to share it with my coach for feedback on how I did compared to what I should be doing in an interview. They are also there to help you when you’re feeling down and they help you with negotiations. I know someone who, through CareerSprout's help, had their counteroffer accepted which ultimately “paid” for these services. What a deal! The best part is the price for their services is a one-time, lifetime payment (you can pay it over time through a BNPL setup, too). I will use them again, hopefully not any time soon though.

Networking can be innovative

One thing I did was create LinkedIn posts on my thoughts, ideas, or anything else to help my LinkedIn SEO. After reflecting on this journey, I could have done more early on but again, the shame was keeping me from doing that. I had a couple of posts get thousands of impressions, one even got up to over 100k impressions with ? of those being unique ??. I know this led to better SEO on LinkedIn, more people seeing my profile, and I felt more confident overall. If you want to get an idea of topics to cover, go with what is top of mind for you that is positive, fun, innovative, or helpful to others. You can see all of my posts on my LinkedIn Profile to get some ideas for yourself.

Keep your network updated with a newsletter. I used my email to keep people I know updated on what I was doing, how I was feeling, and asking them for help. It's important to keep your network engaged and remember you if a role pops up in their network that fits your background.

I learned about a cool LinkedIn trick (Page 2) for how to ask your network about who they know at your list of target companies. I had a ~10% return rate from a 500-person email and my meeting rate was roughly 5% overall.

One other way to network is through cold email networking by using email search sites. These sites are used for lead generation typically and they offer free accounts. If you spread the searches out across multiple sites, it gives you more “credits” to work with for finding emails for people you want to meet with. Here are some that I used:

• Skrapp
• Rocket Reach
• SignalHire
• GetProspect
• Tomba
• Hunter.io
• MailScoop

Practice, Practice, Practice

If you are getting interviews, going through several rounds, but not getting offers then you should look at doing, or doing more, mock interviews. You probably need to make very small changes to your presentation and it goes a long way when you can practice away the less-than-ideal habits you display in an interview. I know it helped me and I felt more confident in subsequent interviews, which can only help you. The real trick is to practice a lot with different communities in your network. For example, I have a local Product Management meetup group in my area where I asked if anyone was interested in doing some mock interviews and several were, along with several other online communities. Your goal is to get a lot of mock interview volume and also a lot of feedback from different people. I even practiced with people in India who needed mock interview help, too. I loved the well-rounded feedback I received along with hearing common themes to help me get better.

Create a Job Mission & OKR during interviews

When interviewing, I used the Never Search Alone Job Mission OKR mentality as my central doc for taking notes and the questions I would ask. This is what caught my attention in the Never Search Alone process and where I bought into the process completely. The Never Search Alone community has many templates including a Job Mission OKR template that you can use for free. This volunteer-led community is incredible. I created my own OKR template to help me understand it and I am confident it can be modified to work for almost any role.

Job Boards & Recruiters tools that helped me

A common question I hear and ask myself is “What search methods, job boards, or recruiter did you utilize in your search?”. I used many for both FTE and Contract opportunities and I suspect you probably use many of these as well. Below is my list of places to check out:

• LinkedIn with several alerts on
• Based on my target company list, I would visit their career pages to check weekly or set alerts if they offer that
• EarnBetter
• Talentify
• The Mom Project
• Marc Baselga (monthly GSheet posts on open roles)
• Swooped
• USAJOBS (great for Federal jobs)
• Google Jobs (an excellent aggregator of many job boards)
• TechFetch
• Worqstrap
• Otta
• Built In (both locally for hybrid roles and nationwide for remote roles)
• MBO Partners
• 80,000 hours
• Idealist
• Impact Opportunity
• Tech Jobs for Good
• The Impact Job
• Paylocity trick: I learned that you can search for jobs posted on the tool Paylocity with the following Google search “site:recruiting.paylocity.com "product manager" OR "product Management" AND remote OR virtual”
• Remote Rocketship
• The Muse
• Levels FYI
• LinkedIn keyword search: use the following keywords in your search “ “product management” AND hiring ”, it will show you who posted these keywords in the feed, it’s a global search FYI
• LinkedIn 1st-degree search: go to your entire network, click 1st-degree connections, and select “Actively Hiring” to see who you know with the purple hiring banner on
• Many of my Slack communities have job opening channels, set keyword notifications or check it regularly

Recruiters

• EM Circle
• Robert Half
• Braintrust
• Apex Systems
• Many more you can find with a Google search. I recommend you build a profile and submit your resume to a role close to what you want to get into their system and it can start a conversation, the most important part of this process.

Don't Give Up

Don’t give up on interviewing. Some people will speak to their KPIs on applications, networking calls, interviews, offers, etc. I did not track this for my mental/emotional well-being as I knew it would not be helpful. However, I can say that I completed 11 different interviews, at least four of which were canceled after completing the process, one offered (the one I took), and the other six I had two offer up feedback. This was very tough to handle but at the same time, very helpful in feeling like I had something to offer. I was getting the interviews, and I was good enough to go the distance in them. But I did not get an offer until the 11th one, how could I get past this hurdle? The answer was the two critical points above, Never Search Alone and CareerSprout.

Do Give Back

If you are not working for money right now, please take this time to give back. I did this and hope to continue this while working by coaching and mentoring others. I am also seeking out tech volunteer projects which are tough to find. I did not do more traditional volunteering and I regret that. Honestly, I was too depressed to even do that early in this journey, and once I was volunteering and job searching, I was out of available time. If you are similar to me, please give back and tell me how it helped you. I will do better in this area if I am in this situation again.

Don't forget to ask for help

Remember, please ask your family, friends, and network for help. They want to support you. Go to therapy and use this time to both giveback and invest in yourself. This investment of this time, while challenging as it is, can be a blessing in disguise. You will get through this as a better person because of it.