Supporting your mental health while job searching...

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Job searching can be an emotional rollercoaster as well as hugely time consuming, it is important to ensure that you look after your mental health to ensure you are in the best possible frame of mind for your job search.

 

Here are our top 10 tips for supporting your mental health whilst job searching:

 

1. Focus - it can be tempting just to apply for every job that you see without really understanding if you might be a right fit for the role and if the role is right for you which will take lots of your time and energy.  Focus on the sort of role that you really want and the type of organisation you want to work for and put your effort into a smaller number of targeted applications.

 

2. Be planned - planning is key to your job search and identifying what you want to achieve each week, e.g. a set number of job applications, ensures that you maintain momentum and feel a sense of achievement when completing your tasks.

 

3. Manage expectations - it is important to accept that it may take a while to find a new role and when you are planning your tasks, ensure there are realistic and achievable within the time frames you have set.

 

4. Get into a routine - treat job searching like a job and create a structure for yourself.  If you are job searching full time try to keep to ‘office hours’ in which you work, maintaining your usual routine of when you get up, go to bed and have your meals and ensure you also take breaks throughout the day.

 

5. Stay connected and ask for help - staying connected with people is crucial to supporting our wellbeing and can take our mind off the situation we are in.  If you are struggling reach out to family and friends for support or to look through your applications or to help you with interview practise.

 

6. Maintain a balance - job searching can become all encompassing and take up all our spare time and whilst it does need time dedicating to it, ensure that you also make time for things that you enjoy and that will allow you to relax and recharge.

 

7. Get feedback - try to ask for feedback wherever you can, either with regards to your application or post an interview and try to get as specific feedback as possible.  This helps with your preparation for the next interview and can boost your confidence of what you did well.

 

8. Remember it’s not personal - it can be really difficult when you don’t get a job that you really want, however it is important to remember that sometime even the best applicants don’t get jobs.  If you don’t get a role, try to see it more as a mis-alignment to your skills and experience and that it is not down to you as a person.

 

9. Focus on what you can control - there is much that is out of our control when job searching such as who the interview panel is or what a company may be looking for and all too often we focus on this too much.   Place your time and energy on areas that you can control such as the quality of your applications, the research you do on organisations to ensure a good fit and the preparation you do for interviews.

 

10. Unplug - being connected 24/7 can be overwhelming and it isn’t healthy for your mind or body, both your brain and body need to recover from working all day so take time to reconnect with yourself by unplugging after work hours and try to not use any electronic items for at least 30 minutes before you go to sleep to help with the quality of your sleep.​