Managing Job Search Anxiety: Tips for Mental & Emotional Health During a Time of Limbo.

Since Men's Mental Health Month is almost over, I decided to write a post about a topic that has been very personal to me for the past while. In total transparency, I thought of the idea for this blog post after a terrible dream I had last night, where Mark Carney was grilling me in a courtroom about all the mistakes I've made in my career, and that I'm getting rejected for jobs because I'm just not good enough.

Absolute insanity, I know. But it's also interesting to me where the subconscious mind goes during times of extreme stress and uncertainty. We all process our emotions so differently, and there's no one-size-fits-all solution to mental health during "situationally unhealthy" times.

So, how do we maintain our sanity and feeling of worth when we keep hitting dead ends in our job searches?

Start By Setting a Schedule (and Stick to It!)

Job searching, especially at the executive level in a niche field like Sustainability Strategy, can be absolutely soul-sucking at times. You spend countless hours customizing cover letters and tweaking resumes to perfectly align with job descriptions, only to have ATS auto-reject your application before any human eyes ever see it. Just the other day, I sent off a beautifully crafted and personalized cover letter and resume to a sustainability role that I was laughably overqualified for, only to get an auto-reject email within 24 hours.

The best piece of advice I have for you is to set a daily schedule and weekly goal for the number of applications you want to send out, and stick to it. I typically tell myself I'm going to send out 20 applications a week. That works out to around 4 per day, with 45-60 minutes for each application to customize and tailor to the specifics of the role.

This works out to about 4 hours per day during the week, the equivalent of a part-time job.

This way, you have a routine schedule that you know you'll stick to, while also freeing up your day for other relevant job search tasks. I like to give myself an hour or two a week to go over my portfolio and edit copy, polish sections, etc.

The key is to maintain the same type of schedule you would have in a job, so you still feel sharp and organized. This is extremely crucial, for me at least, to maintaining a sense of routine and normalcy in a working environment.

Incorporate Personal Health & Wellness Daily

As a former Personal Trainer and Kickboxing Instructor, this one has always been kind of a no-brainer for me. The healthier we eat and the more we move, the better we perform, both physically and mentally.

Get up. Move around. Have fun!

Yes, the stress of the job search sucks. It's so easy to feel defeated, sit on the couch, and get inside your head about the thousands of things that are wrong with you. Self-doubt is one of the greatest determining factors in our lives, and something we all deal with when we're looking for that new role.

Find time in the day to remind yourself what you're really capable of.

This time last year, I was over 320lbs and had really let myself get into some terrible habits. I had spent 3 years, both during my MBA and my first role after Uni, sitting in front of a computer, eating terrible fast food, and drinking soda. The gym didn't matter to me anymore, and my physical and mental health were in the toilet.

I knew I had to make a drastic change for myself and my family.

Around the end of July last year, I lost a job that honestly meant the entire world to me. It was my first "real" sustainability strategy role where I was working on real, tangible things that made a difference locally. It was really meaningful work, and showed me exactly what I was capable of as a sustainability leader.

At the time, I was pretty heartbroken over losing it. But the big silver lining was that they were gracious enough to offer me a very comfortable severance package. On top of that, I was eligible for almost a full year of EI benefits.

I decided to take advantage of this opportunity and take as much time as I needed to get back to a place where I felt healthy, happy, and confident in myself. It took months and months of grueling workouts, tossing weights in my hiking packs and pouring sweat, and an entire transformation of my relationship with food to get back there, but I'm down almost 70lbs and feeling more confident in myself than ever before.

I still get rejection letters and get ghosted all the time. It doesn't make the job search any easier. What it does is give you that little daily reminder that you're capable of some amazing and powerful things. Those rejection letters end up weighing much less than that barbell you just lifted!

No Doomscrolling...No Doomscrolling...No Doomscrolling!!!

I was sitting with my family in the living room a while back, scrolling for what seemed like hours. Not only was I completely ignoring my wife and 2 kids, but I was also filling the room with this silent, toxic, anxious energy that ended up ruining the evening for everybody. Not my proudest moment.

Doomscrolling is the habit of constantly checking the job boards every minute of the day, driven completely by anxiety (and, in my case, too much coffee) and doing absolutely nothing positive for your job search or mental health. This is the biggest challenge I have to overcome in my own job search. I always want to check the boards for new postings and make sure I'm one of the first applicants.

It can be so taxing on your mental state for a few different reasons. I think the main one for me is the feeling of hopelessness, like you've checked the entire job database of the globe for the roles you want, but nothing is coming up for you. It also takes you away from reality, making you obsess over refreshing your feed every few minutes, just in case.

Again, this is why creating that daily schedule matters so much. You wouldn't take your part time job home with you and obsess over it while you're with your kids, so why are you doing it with the job search? Even if you do find a perfect role by doomscrolling at 1 in the morning, do you really think their P&C team will read it?

Remember: The job search can be scary and intimidating, especially if you don't have much money coming in, but it doesn't have to be all-encompassing.

Having the discipline to balance the challenges and frustrations of the job search with the importance of your mental health and well-being will make you:

• More productive at your job search

• More focused and tactical with your applications

• Less stressed out about the volume of applications you're sending

• More emphasis on the quality of applications you're sending.

Celebrate Small Wins

Not every day will look the same in your job search, and that's OK!

Make sure to take the time to recognize even the smallest of steps forward. A tweak you made to the formatting of your cover letter that makes it really pop out from the page. A section of your portfolio that you added some new material to that helps highlight some of your best qualities. Just sending in a single application in a day. All of these are little steps in the right direction.

We live in a time where the workforce is extremely saturated with talented, driven people all gunning for the same roles you are. With the majority of the developed world switching to Hybrid/Remote work environments, we're often competing with international talent for local jobs. If you focus on all the obstacles in your way, if can become pretty daunting to say the least.

Instead, try focusing on the little things you're doing every day that better position you in that job market.

For me, I quantify my weekly wins in a few ways:

• Did I send out at least one quality application?

• Did I post something cool on LinkedIn that would engage my audience?

• Did I update my portfolio with any new relevant topics or content? (For me, this is usually blog content, but you can measure this any way you want)

• Have I added value to my network?

Being able to celebrate small victories along the road to your next role will help you focus on incremental productivity every day rather than on what can sometimes seem like an impossible challenge to overcome. It's all about your mindset and what you choose to put your attention and energy into.

Conclusion

Like I mentioned earlier, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to mental health, especially during times of total uncertainty like a job search. It can be really easy to let the stress of it all get the better of you, throwing your mental health and self-confidence into the gutter.

The biggest advice I can share that has worked for me:

• Set a Schedule, and Stick to It.

• Incorporate Health and Wellness into Every Day

• No wasting hours on the job boards doomscrolling...Just dont.

• Celebrate the Small Wins

Whichever way you go with how you take care of your mental health during the job search, just remember to be kind to yourself and give yourself some space to breathe and grow. You are a lot more than your resume. Good luck!