There are thousands of articles online discussing employee burnout during the pandemic. The average American is working longer hours, and the lines between work and home are getting blurry. Although many people are feeling the pain of working from home, not enough people are talking about job search burnout. As of the February 2021 Jobs Report, there are still over 10 million unemployed persons due to the coronavirus outbreak. If you are feeling overwhelmed and anxious, here are three ways to overcome job search burnout.
Create a realistic routine or schedule
Many people make the mistake of treating a job search like a full-time job. You wake up, spend all day searching the web and connecting with people online, and rarely give yourself a break. Avoiding this strategy is the easiest way to overcome job search burnout. Instead of staring at your computer all day, create job search alerts on your go-to job boards. Many job search sites (like JSG’s Talent Network) allow you to create notifications when a new job matches your skills and career goals. Say goodbye to strained eyes and hello to a refreshed optimism for your job search!
Creating a routine or schedule is good, but don’t let it turn into a 9 to 5 job. You want to give your best self to your job search to have more success, and ultimately, secure a new job opportunity.
Be more selective
It’s true what they say – less is more. If you want to avoid job search burnout, you must be more selective with your applications. If you are sitting there and applying for every single job that you stumble upon, you are setting yourself up for failure. Before applying for any job, you should carefully review the job description, visit the company website, and spend some time to see if this position and company is a good fit for you. If you use the “spray and pray” method, you will not receive very many interview requests. It’s better to focus your efforts on applying for jobs that better fit your professional experiences.
Also, if you are more selective with your search, you will have more time to tailor your resume. If you fail to customize your resume for every application, your resume will get caught up in an ATS, and a hiring manager may never see your resume. Tailoring your resume will make you stand out to hiring managers, beat the resume bots, and improve your response rate.
Expand your job search
The last way you can mitigate job search burnout is to expand your search. Job seekers often get stuck in the cycle of searching for new opportunities in the same field or industry. However, this may be a bad strategy as some sectors are performing better than others as we edge closer to the end of the pandemic. If the virus impacted your current industry particularly hard, you may want to expand your search to another field. You can take your experiences and transferrable skills you have worked so hard to hone and enter a new career path. According to LinkedIn’s latest Workforce Confidence index, women are much more likely to switch industries or functions. 82% of unemployed women are willing to pivot their careers and go into another field of work, while 58% are also willing to start their own line of work.
Are you looking for more job-search advice?
These are three new strategies you can implement today to overcome job search burnout. If you are looking for more job search resources, visit our Candidate Resources for tips, tricks, and strategies to elevate your search.
