Should you give up?...Possibly

Should you give up?

Possibly.

Should you give up before trying these things?

Definitely not.

Now I’m not talking about giving up on life entirely, I can’t answer the more existential questions you might be asking yourself. However, I can give some advice on if, when, or how to give up on your job search.

Before you think ‘oh god this is going to be a depressing blog post’, it isn’t. I’m hopefully going to light a fire under you and give you some ideas that you either hadn’t thought of or had dismissed as almost entirely hopeless. Right now, I don’t believe any idea is stupid and I think that the people who are willing to try anything are the ones that will inevitably succeed.

So, why am I writing this article?

The main reason is that I've spent the last year speaking with New Yorkers about their careers and search for a perfect job. The thing that I loved about dealing with Americans is their amazing optimism and positivity (not always common British traits). Unfortunately, this outlook is becoming more and more rare in my conversations, and understandably so. Things have been incredibly hard in New York over the past 6 months and there are no answers as to when things will improve. I'm writing this article to hopefully give my candidates a reason to feel positive for a little while longer. Having something to try that hasn't been tried before can give hope.

So without further ado, here are my 5 steps to take before giving up entirely on the job search.

Step 1

Decide whether you actually want to get a job

That seems like a ridiculously obvious thing to recommend. What a stupid first step. Of course you actually want a job.

But this isn’t about shrugging off that question as obvious. Have you asked yourself today whether you really want a job? How much do you want a job? Are you willing to do literally everything you can think of to get a job?

Or are you just going to apply for a couple of roles online then wait to see what happens? If someone asked me if I wanted to win the lottery, I would say yes, but I’ve never bought a ticket. So clearly I don’t actually want to win the lottery as I’m not even doing the only thing required to win. Getting a job right now is in some ways harder than winning the lottery. Buying a ticket isn’t enough. You need to buy every ticket you can. I’m going to tell you what all of those tickets are in this article to give you the best possible chance of winning.

But first you must decide: do you actually want to win the job lottery?

Once you’ve decided that yes you want a job, and more importantly that you’re willing to do everything possible to get that job, you need to forget about everything that’s happened so far. Start a fresh. No more thinking about the interviews that didn’t go your way, the applications that never got a response or the silly excuses you heard as to why you’re not right for the job. That’s all irrelevant. You’re a totally new candidate who is going to go into the next opportunity armed and ready with everything you’ve got. No doubting yourself, no worrying about the amount of time you’ve been out of work and no complaining about anything that’s happened so far. You’re positive, confident and absolutely certain in your ability to get this job and do it better than anyone else.

Step 2

Understand what you’re good at

Right now, being good at a few things isn’t enough to get you the job you want. Perhaps even being good at everything isn’t enough. You have to be demonstrably great at everything that these roles require.

Analyzing your skill-set is tough. How do you know how you rank on the capability scale compared to other candidates? Feeling like you’re good at something is hardly a scientific method. The Dunning Kruger effect also plays a part on tasks that you may be unfamiliar with. Assuming you can do something, that you can’t, could be your undoing in an interview.

To find out your true ability, set out to test yourself. There are online tests for Microsoft Office, think back to previous performance reviews to look at areas for improvement, speak to fellow EAs and ask about aspects of the role that they struggle with and try to assess your level in comparison.

Once you’ve established what you think your strengths and weaknesses are, use this as your blueprint to create a plan of action.

Step 3

Get better at stuff

We all have things we’re good at and things we’re rubbish at. I’m rubbish at gymnastics and I’m excellent at cooking scrambled eggs. If I were applying for jobs that required both, I would do everything I could to steer conversation towards breakfast, whilst practising my gymnastics every hour of the day that I wasn’t at interviews.

Ignoring my strange example, you will have things you’re great at in the job, so you can use these for confidence when talking about skills in an interview. But once you’ve identified your weaknesses in step 2, you need to go about improving them.

How do you improve a weakness? It’s not easy. Practise isn’t always straight forward. How do you practise using outlook other than sending a range of differently formatted emails to yourself. How do you get better at time management when you have nothing to do with your day? Set yourself 10 tasks round the house and put a time limit on it? Perhaps. But there are more guaranteed solutions. If you need to brush up on your Microsoft Office skills, you can take a course online. Vickie Sockol Evans is the person I’d recommend for that. If you struggle with interview technique, speak to a recruiter for tips and tricks. If you find you can’t remember things easily, create a system for the interview that allows you to remember only the important things you need. Whatever the weakness, come up with a solution to address it and don’t stop addressing it until you can call it a strength.

If you catch yourself watching TV, daydreaming, sitting staring at a wall and not addressing one of your weaknesses, you’re not doing everything you can to get a job.

Step 4

Try again

Now that you’re armed with an iron will to get a job, a clear knowledge of what your strengths are and no conceivable weaknesses (or at least fewer than before), you’re ready to apply for jobs, only this time, you’re going to do it differently.

What not to do:

• Send a sub-par resume to every job you see that pays just above the liveable wage.
• Forget what you’ve applied for and don’t bother chasing up.
• Sit and wait for people to get back to you then complain to your friends there are no jobs.

What you are going to do:

• Rewrite your resume, highlighting all of your strengths (including the new ones). Format it beautifully and make sure all of the info they want to see is clearly visible.
• Research roles that your resume is best suited to. Research companies you’re passionate about joining and apply only to those.
• Talk to people in those companies on LinkedIn and get some advice on how to apply and get noticed.
• Write a personalized cover letter with every application outlining why you’re right for THAT role, not just a generic ‘I want a job please’ note.
• Create a spreadsheet of all the roles you applied for, when you applied, how you applied, who you applied to and whether you’ve spoken to them, dates for chasing and a system of following up. You’re good at Excel. Use your skills.
• When you hear back and land and interview, do as much prep as humanly possible. Speak to people in the company again, read news about them, look at their website, make sure your home set up is right and internet is strong, pick an outfit that matches their culture, practise your answers, come up with some questions to ask them, do everything you can think of!

If you try all of these things, I’m pretty certain you will see different results. Even if you don’t, you know that you gave it everything you have and you can be happy in the knowledge that you didn’t waste any opportunity. Nothing right now is guaranteed but you’d be silly to think that 50% of your effort is going to get you anywhere. At least 100% is slightly closer to a guarantee than that.

Step 5

Give it time

This is the tricky bit. How long should you give? You need a time limit on this. If you think that you’ll be doing these things for the next 5 years, you won’t even bother starting. Knowing that there is an end is motivating when it comes to putting everything you have into something.

So set yourself a time limit that you think you can keep up this energy for. It might be 3 months, it might be 6 months, but make sure when that time limit is hit, you’ve given it everything and you crawl over that finish line. You might have got a job by then, you might not, but no one can say you didn’t try.

I recommend thinking in smaller time frames. Give yourself 3 months. After 3 months you might have seen some real progress and want to give it another 3. You’ll have learned things along the way that you can put into practise moving forwards so you might want to give it another shot.

Step 6

Give up

This doesn’t mean just wander off into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Floating out to sea is tempting when it seems like nothing is going your way but unfortunately we were never meant to live in the ocean so it’s not an option. I often look at my cat and think ‘God I’d love to live your life’. However that’s not an option either.

Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. It means changing plans. There are a million other things out there that you could do. Some great, some not so great. Some people discover the thing they were born to do through forced situations like this, others have to struggle by on something they don’t want to do until things get better.

I don’t know which you might end up with but when the time comes, you have to make a tough decision. Do you continue putting quarters in the slot machine waiting for the jackpot or do you take what you have left and invest it in something else. It’s a tough decision but one that many people today are going to have to face.

How do you discover what to do if your career plans have been thrown out the window?

• Speak to recruiters in other fields that you’re interested in. They can tell you if you have potential.
• Start from the bottom up in a company you like, rather than a role you want.
• Don’t be embarrassed about having to start again. A lot of people have to do it, now more than ever.
• Use friends and family. Your network might hold opportunities you haven’t considered before because it wasn’t in the field you’ve pigeon-holed yourself into.

Step 7

Whatever happens, don’t blame yourself

The world is a little upside down. A lot of people are suffering and it’s not your fault. You gave it everything you had and sometimes it doesn’t work out. It doesn’t devalue you, it doesn’t mean you weren’t amazing at what you did and it doesn’t mean that you won’t get back there again. It’s just a bit crap and unfortunately it’s slightly more crap for you than some and not as crap as it is for others.

All you can control is how you view it. See it as a chance to try something new, keep moving forwards and things will get better again.