Originally Published: April 5th, 2023
Updated: November 18th, 2023
This article is for passionate people who need tips to increase their odds of success with job searching.
Social media can make it seem like companies are giving away jobs. Everyone and their mama seem to be able to get competitive and high-paying jobs with no experience on Tiktok. When your feed is filled with videos like these, it is easy to become frustrated at your lack of job-searching success.
The job search is not nearly as easy as people would like you to think for the vast majority of the population, especially when trying to break into a career. Some industries have an invisible threshold that requires you to have had x years of professional experience to apply for their entry-level positions.
Yeah, I don’t understand that either.
This post will hopefully give you some perspective on the job application process and let you know that you are not alone.
If you find yourself wondering “Why don’t I have a job yet?”, here are some things that you might consider:
![job searching](https://thrivingindependently.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Im-a-great-believer-in-luck-and-I-find-the-harder-I-work-the-more-I-have-of-it.-—Thomas-Jefferson-683x1024.png)
Job Searching Tips to Guaranteed to Help You Through The Process
Be skeptical of Social Media
I think that if you told the majority of the U.S. population that Social Media is not real, they would agree. But that does not stop them from believing that the people they follow are the exception.
In terms of job searching, I mainly have Tiktok in mind, I suspect that there is always something that the creator is withholding. It became trendy at one point for people to film their workday at Google.
Some of them claimed that they cracked the code to get Google to hire them with no experience. I interpret that as them saying they got one over on Google and you can too!
Now, the natural skeptic in me suspects that there is ALWAYS something being withheld from the person sharing this information. You have to dress it up like that to get others to engage with your content.
If the information in the video is true, then you would at least need to consider the hidden intent of posting a video like that in the first place.
Comparing your success to what you find on social media is a recipe for disappointment. Your journey is your own and you should use social media as a source of inspiration.
If your viewing experience leads to more comparison than inspiration, then your job search will yield unproductive results.
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Set your expectations low
If this is the first time that you find yourself actively searching for a job, you may have envisioned a different scenario of how this was going to go.
You apply to ten job postings and you get seven replies. You go to 5 interviews because you don’t have time for all seven and you leave with 3 job offers.
If this is similar to your experience searching for a job, you are doing very well! I don’t want to portray finding a job as a burdensome process that has a 99% disappointment, but I can’t overstress the fact that it is soooooo uneven.
One part that helped me in the job searching process was having no expectation of a return on my time. It didn’t hurt so much when I received rejection emails because I did not expect to be accepted.
For every application that I submit, there are probably 10 being submitted by someone else who is more qualified and that is okay.
You will definitely work your persistence muscle throughout the process, so no application that you complete and submit will be in vain.
You may get no more than a confirmation email
I took the opportunity to rant about this in my post Optimize | How to Win the Job Hunt, but one thing that I really dislike about the job application process is the lack of communication after the application is submitted.
All that I want is an email letting me know that the company has chosen to proceed with another candidate. It is a notification that I no longer need to pursue that application.
I think that it should be a common courtesy to the people who take time out of their day to apply to the company’s job posting.
I may be alone in my line of thinking and that is perfectly okay with me.
Job hunting is slow
People can vastly underestimate the number of applications that they will submit before they actually find a job. I plug my post here about the things you can do to have a better experience applying for jobs here.
I think that it is safer to overestimate the time that you think it will take to you to find a job rather than underestimate it. If you don’t expect fast results with your job applications, you might spend more time on each job application.
You can give yourself the time to learn what makes a good job application. The drafts that you create will be great practice material. They help you fine-tune your writing and get more test material.
Another tip that can help you through the job searching process is to keep some sort of documentation of your progress. A simple journal like this one can make a world of difference in helping you see how far you have come.
You can document the days, and the number of applications, create summaries about your interviews, and much more. Using a journal as inspiration will make the job searching process significantly easier.
Making your goal to complete “X” amount of applications will motivate you much more than shooting for a certain amount of interviews. Keeping your goals in the locus of your control will empower you to keep trying despite your frustration.
Lack of salary transparency
Job searching becomes much more difficult when companies are not transparent about their salaries. They may suggest that they are only looking for people who are passionate about the work and don’t want people to focus on the salary, but that isn’t reasonable.
People will spend the majority of their time working and they deserve to be compensated fairly for that. Lack of salary transparency for a job can be a red flag. It is not unheard of for a company to wait until they give an offer letter to lowball you with the salary.
I would advise that you communicate that the salary is a priority to you and that you would like to know what they are offering. If they can not provide a number, I would insist on them giving a range.
In a way, the companies that do this are playing a risky game themselves. If they were transparent about the salary, then only those who are okay with the salary would apply.
They could also waste their time by interviewing candidates who know they as an employee are worth more than what the company is offering.
You shouldn’t have your time wasted by a company that does not plan on compensating you fairly.
Comparison is hard
Having other people to compare yourself to can be a great or terrible thing. It is natural for humans to compare themselves to other people.
You can use comparison to gauge your performance when assessed objectively. It is difficult to know whether you are doing well or not if you don’t have any reference points.
Comparison can also be detrimental to your self-esteem and confidence if you involve your emotions. If you go in with the baseline assumption that anything someone else is doing, you can do that too then you’ll find it more difficult to beat yourself up.
Always remember that there are so many things you don’t see, so you should never place too much weight on someone else’s highlight reel.
There is no such thing as too many cover letters
If you do not enjoy writing, the job application process will only enhance your distaste. You don’t have to enjoy writing to write a good cover letter, but I figured that I would warn you.
Depending on where you choose to submit your applications, it may be unclear whether or not you should include a cover letter. Cover letters can enhance your application by giving the company a better picture of who it is that they are hiring.
Depending on the field, you may be writing quite a few cover letters.
Your resume is never done
This is one truth that I actively try to reject. Updating my resume has to be on my top 10 least favorite things to do. But it is a necessary evil and you never regret having an updated resume in the future.
Your resume will go through several revisions and will constantly change as you advance in your career.
Conclusion
I am happy to share the harsh reality of job searching with you. If you know these things beforehand, you may avoid the frustration that comes with the process.