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How to Avoid Job Search Fatigue, with Leigha May

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Do you feel exhausted by your job search? If you’re facing discouragement, heaviness, or burnout, Find Your Dream Job guest Leigha May says you could be dealing with job search fatigue. Leigha is here to share ways to overcome that feeling of fatigue. She says it starts with setting a daily intention for the time spent and the actions completed in your search. Next, you must adopt a positive mindset. And finally, tap into your network. Spending more time with other humans will give you a boost in motivation. 

About Our Guest:

Leigha May is here to talk about how to avoid job search fatigue. She’s a career coach for high-achieving professionals.

Resources in This Episode:

Transcript

Find Your Dream Job, Episode 471:

How to Avoid Job Search Fatigue, with Leigha May

Airdate: October 9, 2024

Mac Prichard:

This is Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired, have the career you want, and make a difference in life.

I’m your host, Mac Prichard. I’m also the founder of Mac’s List. It’s a job board in the Pacific Northwest that helps you find a fulfilling career.

Every Wednesday, I talk to a different expert about the tools you need to get the work you want.

Looking for work takes time and energy.

And along the way, there’ll be highs and lows.

Leigha May is here to talk about how to avoid job search fatigue.

She’s a career coach for high-achieving professionals.

Leigha helps you earn more money, get promoted, and manage job transitions.

She joins us from Portland, Oregon.

Well, let’s jump right into it, Leigha. What is job search fatigue?

Leigha May:

Job search fatigue is that feeling we get when we are looking to create a new opportunity for ourselves. We are excited in the beginning, and then, after a while, that initial excitement, it kind of dies down. It kind of goes away, and it starts to feel a little bit monotonous.

Then, it starts to feel really tiring, and then the idea of even going after a new opportunity feels heavy, and that heaviness is what comes from that extended process, and that process taking a lot of time, or maybe just not getting the traction.

It’s that feeling that we have when we aren’t getting the traction we want, but the effort keeps going in. That is how I would define job search fatigue.

Mac Prichard:

Monotony, heaviness; any other warning signs that you might be experiencing job search fatigue?

Leigha May:

I think that feeling of dread, that feeling of, “Ugh, I need to go on LinkedIn again. I need to pull up the job boards again today.” Just that “ugh” kind of feeling.

Mac Prichard:

What happens when you have those feelings: monotony, dread, heaviness? How does that affect your job search?

Leigha May:

Well, just like anything, if you have to force yourself to do it, if you have to face resistance to push through, you’re not likely to show up in the same way, so you’re going to show up less confidently. You’re probably going to show up less consistently as well, so your overall performance in the job search is going to decline when your feelings are so heavy.

Mac Prichard:

How does this happen, Leigha? Is it a factor of time? The longer you look, the more likely you are to experience job search fatigue, or are there other things going on that cause it?

Leigha May:

You know, I think there are a few things. Certainly, I think the amount of time, absolutely, plays into it. Also, the amount of time that you go without having positive traction. So if the job market is feeling more intense, it’s harder to get those interviews and those first recruiting calls coming in, if you feel like you’re putting your resume into a black hole, the longer that you experience that, the more likely you are to feel that fatigue.

Mac Prichard:

Does this happen to everybody, or is it just a smaller group of job seekers?

Leigha May:

I will say the majority of folks that I have worked with have experienced it. I would say at least 75% of folks I talk to are feeling this on a regular basis.

Mac Prichard:

Well, let’s talk about how to prevent this, Leigha. You’ve got some practical steps that you take your clients through. One of them is to get clear about your intention, to set an intention for your job search. Tell us more about this. What do you have in mind?

Leigha May:

Yeah, so setting intention is the number one thing you can do to avoid the fatigue, and what I often chat with my clients about when I ask, “What are the actions that you’re taking?” so many of them are starting a job search, and then they get distracted, or they put it on their back burner, and then a week or two later, they’ll come back, and they’ll apply to a couple of jobs, and then they’ll step away, and it is that lack of intention, it’s that lack of consistency that really creates the fatigue because suddenly, it feels like you’ve been looking for a job for two months when maybe the actions have only been a couple of weeks’ worth of effort.

Having an intention, I think about it as we’re going to train for a marathon, so we can’t just workout here or there, or sometimes, we have to know where we’re going, plug in that GPS, what’s the intention. When you have a goal, the brain is much more likely to get excited for a challenge if it knows where it’s going. Without that, we just kind of aimlessly wander. We do the dreaded doom scrolling online, and it starts to give that heavy feeling that we talked about.

Mac Prichard:

Many candidates will struggle with setting a goal. In your work with job seekers, what’s your best advice for how to get clear about your job search goal?

Leigha May:

Well, I think you need to be really honest about what is your sense of urgency? Are you curious about a new opportunity, or do you need a new job by the end of the year? I would think it in terms of timeline. What’s the sense of urgency?

And then, what’s my intention? Is my goal this week to connect with three people to learn about this industry or this pivot? Or is my goal this week to land my first interview, so I can start prepping how I speak about myself and how I pitch myself in that interview? Creating a tangible intention. Not just applying for X amount of jobs, but really, what is the outcome that I’m looking for?

Your brain is going to get a lot more curious for how to solve for that when there’s something tangible that it can work towards

Mac Prichard:

You mentioned a timeline. What is a reasonable timeline for someone who is doing a job search? Does it depend on where you are in your career? Should you expect it to take less time when starting your career, more time to find to your next job mid-career or farther along? What’s been your experience?

Leigha May:

That’s a really great question. I think it depends on a few different things. The first is, how open-minded are you? Are you open to a variety of things, or is there a very specific title, a very specific salary requirement, and a very specific industry? The more specific, it may take a little bit longer, but also your search and your efforts can be more pointed.

I would say, in general, 6-8 weeks is the minimum standard. The job market can be a little bit more intense from time to time, so I think it depends on how stringent your requirements are.

Then, of course, location. Are you able to work from home? Are you open to hybrid? Are you in a major metro? Those things will all play into it as well, but I would say 6-8 weeks is kind of the minimum time you should expect, and that’s if you’re really doing the paces. If you’re setting the intention and the other steps we’ll talk about today as well.

Mac Prichard:

Talk more about those specific steps that you recommend people do because I’m sure we all know candidates who are out there, and they engage in a lot of activities, and it’s well-intentioned. They send out a certain number of resumes every day or do easy applies.

How do you sort out, in setting your intentions, which activities are going to be most effective and get you the results you want as quickly as possible?

Leigha May:

I would really encourage focus on specifically the action-creating results. Does this action create a direct result? Things that won’t do that: revamping my resume for the tenth time is not going to create a result for me that day. Doom scrolling, clicking around on a bunch of links, that’s not necessarily getting me to the result that I want, which the result that I want is as many conversations and interviews as possible. I would really focus on what would get me to that end result.

I’m going to recommend that folks are networking. That you’re talking to real humans as much as possible. Whether that’s your warm connections that you personally know, friends of friends, or colleagues, you’re asking those connections, even cold reach-outs, but can we talk to humans, and can we avoid the easy applies? Not that you can’t get a job that way, but those channels are so much more noisy. You’re going to have much better results if you’re speaking to real humans and networking along your way.

Mac Prichard:

Why is that, Leigha? Why have you found that candidates who focus on talking to humans, going out, networking, and having those conversations get better results?

Leigha May:

Absolutely. At the end of the day, folks want to work with great people and how do I find who’s a great person, who’s skilled, who’s talented? Well, the people that I see, the people I talk to and I meet, I have rapport with them. I’ve met them, I’ve heard them communicate, I’ve learned about their skillset, so I’ve had direct experience in talking with a human.

Now, as a former recruiter, if I’m just clicking through a bunch of online resumes, I have no context for who these folks are and the sheer volume, you know. I would post a job and, within a couple of days, have 500 applicants. As a recruiter, there might not be time to sit down and have 500 individual conversations, so if you can circumvent that process and have a human connection, we’re much more likely to lean into that experience versus a digital one, where you don’t have context for who the person is on the other end.

Mac Prichard:

Terrific. We’re going to take a break.

Stay with us. When we come back, Leigha May will continue to share her advice on how to avoid job search fatigue.

We’re back in the Mac’s List studio. I’m talking with Leigha May.

She’s a career coach for high-achieving professionals.

Leigha helps you earn more money, get promoted, and manage job transitions.

She joins us from Portland, Oregon.

Now, Leigha, before the break, we were talking about how to avoid job search fatigue, and one of your first tips was to set an intention for your job search, to pay attention to networking, and having clear goals, and looking at how you manage your time and doing it a way that’s going to produce the most results.

A second tip that you have for avoiding job search fatigue is to pay attention to mindset. Tell us more about mindset, Leigha. What is it exactly, and how does it help you avoid exhaustion when you’re looking for work?

Leigha May:

I think mindset is everything in life, in general, but especially when we start talking about the job search and the job search fatigue. How you choose to think about something creates your experience.

I’m going to give you a really unrelated example. If we both looked outside right now, Mac, and we saw that it was pouring rain, one of us gets really excited, “Oh, I love rain. I wanted to have a cozy day, and this is amazing.” And then the other one says, “Oh, everything is doomed. I was going to run errands today, I don’t like driving in the rain. This is an awful day.”

Well, the circumstance is the same. It’s raining for both of us, but the way that we choose to think about the rain will create a really different reality for these two examples. One of us is going to have a great day, one of us is already off to the races in a negative way.

How we choose to think about the job search – this is not the most exciting process for a lot of people, but if you lean into this in a begrudging way, if you are dreading it, if you are frustrated by it, if your inner self-talk is negative, you’re going to have a really negative experience.

As we just talked about, this could take 6-8 weeks. Can you imagine setting yourself up for the drudgery, having that heavy feeling for 6-8 weeks? That sounds like an awful experience.

Mindset is the thing that we can control. You can’t control how many interview requests you’re going to get. You can’t control whether or not you’re going to hear back from this or that job, but you can control how you choose to show up and engage with this process.

Mac Prichard:

That’s the benefit of choosing a positive mindset, but how do you do that, Leigha? How do you look out the window when it’s raining and see the opportunities and focus on those? What has worked with the people that you’ve worked with?

Leigha May:

I think, to start, just be honest about it. If this feels like a heavy process, “How can I make it feel less heavy?” The goal isn’t – we don’t have to get fully to positive, but can we at least get to neutral?

Instead of doom scrolling and sitting at your computer, again, because I have that intentioned, I’m going to go in for 15 minutes, I’m going to see what new job opportunities are there, I’m going to apply, or I’m going to reach out to my network, and then I’m going to close out the tab, and I’m going to go do something fun.

We’ve set an intention, we’ve time-bound it, and we’ve just chosen, “I’m going to go in, I’m going to do what I need to do, and I’m going to get out.” That’s me proactively managing my mindset. If I allow myself to doom scroll, if I allow my negative thoughts to spiral, again, it’s a very different experience.

Managing yourself, setting up parameters can be really helpful when you’re working towards a positive or even just a neutral mindset.

Mac Prichard:

Having a specific to-do list for how you’re going to move ahead in your job search can help you both create and maintain a positive mindset. Any tips for how to build that list and how much activity you should do on a regular basis in order not only to get the job that you want but to create that positive mindset that’s going to help you get there?

Leigha May:

Yeah, absolutely, and I think it depends on a little bit on how much time you have to give, but I would really think about, going back to your sense of urgency. “Am I casually looking to learn about a new industry, or do I need a job by the end of the year?” That’s going to set up how much action I go for. I like to work in bursts, so I’m going to give myself an hour, and I’m going to gamify this. How many applications can I get out? How many folks can I talk to? Really setting a goal.

When I’m working with clients, I love to have them applying but very quickly. Let me get my applications out. I’d rather them have their time spent networking and having those real conversations. Depending on what your schedule allows, for my clients, I recommend no less than three networking chats a week, so if I need three people to say yes, I might need to reach out to 10 people. If those ten people aren’t getting back to me, I’m going to go for another 10.

Again, kind of gamifying it. Giving yourself tangible goals can be really helpful, and it also helps with the mindset. When you see the balls moving, when you see traction actually coming in, in the way of informational interviews or coffee chats, that can be really helpful to your mindset to actually be connecting with real folks instead of just staring at the screen.

Mac Prichard:

You’re going to hear “no” fairly frequently throughout your job search. You’re not going to get every job that you applied for, and not everyone that you reach out to for an informational interview is going to say yes. What’s your best advice, Leigha, for handling those nos and that rejection in order to maintain a positive mindset and get the job that you want?

Leigha May:

It’s reframing those as part of the process. As you mentioned, we’re going to get far more nos; we only need one job, right? So we don’t need ten job offers, but it would be nice to choose from a few. To get a few job offers, you’re going to get dozens if not even more nos. I like to reframe them as every no is a step in the right direction.

One of my first coaches, when I was getting started, asked me, “I want you to go out and collect 100 nos.” Most of us are just working towards the yes, but if you think about it, let me collect the nos; let me tally on my board; every time I get a no, I want to high-five myself and say, that is me putting in the effort to create the path to a yes.

Every no is one step closer to a yes, so we’ve got to reframe this and just welcome it as part of the process. You’re absolutely going to get a ton of nos, and so is the person next to you and the person that’s next to them. It’s just part of it, so if we can take the heaviness and the rejection out of the no, and like, ‘high-five, did it again, got another no today, let’s keep going, let’s see if we can get another one, let’s see how many nos does it take to get to a yes.’

Mac Prichard:

A third way that you recommend for avoiding job search fatigue is to do something every day. You’ve talked about this a little bit, Leigha, when you talked about setting intentions, making sure that you’re identifying tasks that you’re going to do, and then committing to a schedule and gamifying your activities, but in general, why does doing something every day help you avoid job search fatigue?

Leigha May:

When I say do something every day, I want this to become habitual, so I think of this as brushing your teeth, flossing your teeth, getting in your job search reps. I want it to be as easy as, “Of course, I wake up in the morning, and I brush my teeth. I’m looking for a job; of course, I go to my computer, and I do my action-producing activities.” When we can make it habitual; when we can make it feel normal, this isn’t a heavy thing; this isn’t a begrudging thing that I have to do. This is just what I do. I wake up. I brush my teeth. I do my job paces, and off I go.

The more normalized we can make this, the easier it is to approach and the less heavy it feels. Now, again, this is keeping in mind that we’ve time-bound it. I’m not going to sit for three hours at my computer to do my action-producing activities, but I’m going to send out my coffee chat requests, I’m going to apply to the jobs, I’m going to ask who knows a recruiter at this company, and then I’m going to close my computer and go to my next activity. The more typical this can feel, the less heavy, the less fatigue it causes.

Mac Prichard:

What stops people from adopting these habits and from doing these things every day?

Leigha May:

I think it’s a combination of the negative mindset, which, let’s just normalize, when you get a bunch of nos, or you don’t hear back, it can feel defeating. Not being intentional about mindset; if it feels heavy, of course, I’m not going to want to do it. If it feels hard, of course, I’m going to procrastinate.

That’s why the steps of setting an intention and managing your mindset came first. Before I take the action, I’ve got to have the foundation of my intention and my mindset. Otherwise, it’s going to be really hard to stay in the game and keep showing up day after day.

Mac Prichard:

You set that intention, you identify the activities, and you start practicing them on a regular basis, but is that enough? Or are there other barriers that people might encounter, and if so, how do they overcome them?

Leigha May:

I think feeling isolated is one of the heaviest things that folks deal with in this process because if you’re not hearing back if you’re not seeing the traction right away, it can feel very isolating. Chatting with other people who are also looking for jobs, talking to your network; the more connected and the more in the community we can stay, the less isolating it is.

I really encourage folks to have community. Share with a friend, share with a family member throughout the process. Ask them to keep you motivated. Ask them to check in with accountability. “Did you reach out to folks in your network? How many coffee chats or networking events did you go to this week?”

I’d ask for some accountability. It’s really hard to feel isolated when you stay connected to community.

Mac Prichard:

Well, it’s been a terrific conversation, Leigha. Now, tell us, what’s next for you?

Leigha May:

Absolutely; what’s next for me is my own podcast, actually, called The Work-Life Coach Podcast. It is a write-in style show where you can write in for job search advice, for job place advice. I’m a leadership and executive coach, and I answer all things HR recruiting-related. You can catch my new season coming out very soon.

Mac Prichard:

Terrific. I know listeners can also learn more about you, Leigha, by visiting your website, leighamaycoaching.com, and that you invite listeners to connect with you and LinkedIn. When you do reach out to Leigha, please mention that you heard her on Find Your Dream Job.

Now, Leigha, given all of the great advice that you’ve shared today, what’s the one thing you want a listener to remember about how to avoid job search fatigue?

Leigha May:

The number one thing I would want folks to take away is what is in your control. One of my favorite phrases is, “Control your controllables.”

There are a lot of pieces of the job search I can’t control, but I can control my intention, I can control how I choose to show up each day in my mindset, and I can choose to control the actions that I’m taking every day. That’s within my reach, that’s within my power, and so if I stay focused on that week after week, there’s no way an amazing job doesn’t come your way very soon if you stay focused on controlling your controllables.

Mac Prichard:

Next week, our guest will be Ruthie Ditzler.

She’s part of the Talent Career Coaching team.

Ruthie helps you navigate a job search or a career pivot with more confidence and less stress.

As we heard today, every job search has its ups and downs.

And how you handle the low moments makes a big difference in your career, too.

Join us next Wednesday when Ruthie Ditzler and I talk about how to build job search resilience with a positive mindset.

Until next time, thanks for letting us help you find your dream job.

This show is produced by Mac’s List.

Susan Thornton-Hough schedules our guests and writes our newsletter. Lisa Kislingbury Anderson manages our social media.

Our sound engineer and editor is Matt Fiorillo. Dawn Mole creates our transcripts. And our music is by Freddy Trujillo.

This is Mac Prichard. See you next week.