Top 10 Tips for Staying Sane and Positive While Job Seeking

As a job seeker, it’s not easy pounding the pavements looking for work every day while the only thing piling up on your desk are rejection letters. It’s difficult staying sane and positive while job seeking. Explore these 10 tips for staying positive while job seeking.

According to jobs.ac.uk, they asked a part-time lecturer currently seeking employment to list the top 10 tips that help her every day in searching for an academic job. Here is the result of top 10 tips for staying sane (and positive) while job seeking:

1. Keep up to date with who’s hiring
2. Network
3. Work on your application technique
4. Do something to boost your CV every day
5. Think outside the box: what other careers would suit you?
6. Protect your self-confidence: make a list!
7. Be realistic
8. Listen to advice
9. Listen to your heart
10. Remember the high points

1. Keep up to date with who’s hiring.

It is really important in a competitive industry like Higher Education to make sure that you see every job advert relevant to your field. A job that you are suited for may only come up once or twice a year, so when it does you cannot miss it. This will probably mean checking several national newspapers and perhaps some local ones, as well as www.jobs.ac.uk of course. If there is a university that you especially want to work for, check their recruitment website too. Also, ask family and friends to keep a lookout on your behalf.

2. Network.

If jobs do come up only occasionally in your field, then make sure you tell as many academics as possible (including very senior ones) that you are looking for a job. You never know when that professor who you spoke to at a conference might turn up on an interview panel. With a brief jog of the memory, he or she will remember you and hopefully think fondly of your encounter. Also, as mentioned in point one, the more people helping you spot opportunities the better. Some part-time and temporary posts are only advertised by word of mouth, so you will only hear about them through personal connections.

3. Work on your application technique.

You know that you must specifically tailor your CV and application letter for every job you apply for. However, this does not mean that you cannot constantly check over and improve such documents. Every time you give a paper or get something published or learn a new skill, remember it should be incorporated into your CV or covering letter. Ask for the opinions of others too, they may have advice on how to increase the impact of your materials so that your next job application is successful.

4. Do something to boost your CV every day.

One of the most dispiriting things about job seeking is the feeling that nothing will ever change, you will always be chasing that perfect job.

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