How to Keep Motivated During Your Job Hunt

As part of the move across the world in "The Great Canadian Adventure", I had to quit the job I'd been in for 2 and a half years. It was terrifying, but also somewhat exhilarating, like cliff diving or bungee jumping. ...Until I remembered that now I had to start job hunting again; yay, my favourite pastime!

Anyone who's had to search for a job while not in work knows that it can take a while to hear anything back from a prospective employer, and the vast majority of answers are going to be "No". This gets disheartening very quickly, let me tell you.

So how do you keep your spirits up enough to keep going, but not feel guilty about time away from your search? Below there's a few things I'm taking up, maybe they'll help you out as well:

1. Be Prepared to Wow your Future Employer

Nowadays most people looking to fill a job role seem to be looking for a custom fit; like you were made for that role. This doesn't mean writing up a good CV and getting endorsements on LinkedIn - it means tailoring your CV and killer cover letter for every role, matching their job specification as much as possible, and delivering an interview which really impresses. It's an employer's market at the moment by anyone's standards, so make sure that you know your resume, skills and their company inside out, and that you can really stand out from the crowd.

I've started to compile a database of my former positions, each job's duties and responsibilities, my strengths and weaknesses, and how to go about answering common interview questions. I can use this to tailor my CV and cover letter to whatever an employer needs from me. Have a look at the STAR technique for competency based interviews and application forms - it's a really great way of helping you get to the root of how good your skills are and how you've demonstrated that!

2. Give Back to your Community

You know that non-profit you always wanted to get involved with, or that community clean-up group looking for help? Sign up! Not only can volunteering be a great talking point in a interview and helpful for explaining job hunting gaps in your CV, but it’s also a great mental break from the process of getting torn down with every polite refusal.

That feeling of giving back and making a difference in someone else’s life is great for keeping you focused on the good things in your life, and it’ll also get you out of the house for a while. For me, it’s also something I'm going to try as a way to meet new people and build up a contact base in a new country.

3. Learn Something New

While I was in my notice period for my last job, I took the opportunity to take an online “Train the Trainer” course. It tied in with my career goals (I’d love to move towards HR or Learning & Development), gave me another qualification to add to my CV, and helped distract me from the whole scary process of leaving Ireland again. In the fall/autumn, I’m hoping to take up

another part time course in Human Resources Management – again, working towards the career goals while allowing me to use the skills I already have to provide for myself. Even if it’s taking that evening art class you’ve always wanted, that feeling of productivity can really support your mental health.

Getting back into education can be helpful for many of the same reasons as getting involved with a community group: it’s a talking point for interviews and employment gaps, a great way to show that you’re interested in progression, and it helps to take the pressure off the job hunt in your head by making you focus on something different.

A word of warning with this one, however. Make sure you keep your time management under control, or you’ll end up spending so much time on the learning that the job hunt gets pushed to the side, and you end up no closer than you started!

4. Get Healthy

I've been really trying to get healthy and get fit this past year, and sometimes it hasn't gone remarkably well! The thing I've discovered about my little area of Canada is that while fast and convenient food is incredibly difficult to avoid, there’s also a huge availability of fresh produce (and the high price of meat makes it a great incentive to go vegetarian a few times each week!), which you can cram into your diet for a nutritional boost fairly easily. Being in a city also means that there’s plenty of incentive to walk everywhere and lots of opportunities to take a fitness class (if you can get a monthly membership it works out cheaper and helps you keep focused).

Focusing on starting a healthy lifestyle while you’re job hunting can be a fantastic side project, because not only do you have a little more time (something people cite as one of the most popular reasons for not being able to commit to an exercise regime) but the creation of all those feel good hormones and generally helping the body feel better has been found to be brilliant for mental health.

Even just getting outside in the fresh air can help get you away from a computer screen or the last phone interview.

…Just try to schedule any cutting out of alcohol, cigarettes or caffeine for a time you’re likely to be able to take a few days off and avoid stressful interviews or rejections. Trust me, even detoxing the light stuff isn't pretty.

5. Know your Goals

The whole point of this blog is figuring out how to get to where I want to be in twenty, thirty, fifty years’ time (and what it is that I actually want). So what better time to focus on figuring out what makes you happy and what you want than when you’re already evaluating your entire self for employment purposes?

What do I want out of a career? What’s on my bucket list and how do I start to fulfil it? What would my ideal 50^th birthday look like? A great way to start to discover what you want out of life is to pick a point in your future and describe your perfect day – are you running your own business or running a marathon, are your kids grown up or have you escaped having them completely? No caveats or maybes; we all know that life throws curveballs but this is giving you an ideal to aim for. Take that person that you want to become and figure out how to get there.

My perfect day, by the way? St. Patrick’s Day in ten years, with a young family and a career I love, being fit and healthy and absolutely content with where life has taken me, celebrating my heritage and the people and culture I am so proud of. Now to figure out how to get there.

What do you do to keep your mind healthy and stop getting distressed while you’re on the lookout for work?