May 28, 2024 • 38 mins
You're not imagining it! The job market is getting harder, especially for 20-somethings who are entering the job market for the first time and trying to find their path. In today's episode we break down the psychological toll that the job hunt takes on us, the constant rejections, unrewarded effort, resentment and frustration. We also discuss why our generation has it tougher and it's not just a you problem but also how to improve your odds and keep your head up! All that and more, listen now :)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we, of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Let's be
real for a second. The job market, the job hunt,
the economic climate, all of the above have gotten so
(00:47):
tough in recent years, and if you're in your twenties,
you're probably feeling the pressure and the impact of this
more than any other age group. It is so much
more difficult than it was for our parents generation even
a few decades ago, to find a job that can
pay our bills but is also fulfilling, or to even
(01:08):
find entry level opportunities in our chrosen industry, much less
a stable career path. And I think this experience of
struggling with unemployment and continuous job hunting, the pressure to
have it all figured out, the pressure to have some fulfilling,
rewarding job lined up. Some fulfilling, rewarding career is really
(01:29):
feeling increasingly impossible in this day and age. So I
wanted to talk about it, and I wanted to help
you understand the science behind not only why it's so difficult,
but why there is so much shame and frustration and
at times even anger and resentment when it comes to
job hunting in our twenties. I think that this topic
(01:50):
definitely doesn't get enough of a spotlight, and I'll admit
I've even fallen into I think a bit of complacency myself.
I have taken my own circumstances for granted because I
was really lucky to kind of fall into something I
loved quite early on. I don't think that is the
case for everyone. I really think that a more universal
experience is one of struggling to find your professional place
(02:13):
in the world early on in your career. And just recently,
I have had so many friends going through redundancies and
periods of unemployment, constant rejections, and it's emotionally challenging. I
can see them really struggling with it. So much of
our self esteem and our self concept is tied to
what we do for work. It is tied to how
(02:36):
we make money. It is tied to our sense of purpose.
So when that is taken away from us or it's unavailable,
no matter how hard we try, no matter how many
job applications we put out, we feel firstly quite aimless,
but secondly like we have somehow failed in a way
that so many others have been successful. We think there
(02:57):
must be something wrong with us. We make assumptions about
what other people are thinking about us, that we're lazy,
that we lack discipline, that we aren't skilled, when there
are so many other explanations for unemployment and struggling with
job searching, struggling with your career during this decade. So
today we are going to talk about the psychological impact
(03:21):
of job hunting, unemployment, setbacks, and rejections in our twenties.
How we can manage our emotional well being must also
staying focused and keeping optimistic about opportunities that come our way.
We're also going to talk about concepts like bridging jobs,
why there is no shame in doing something that you
don't necessarily love for a paycheck, why it's okay to
(03:44):
not have a five year plan, the myth of the
dream job, and how to find your purpose during a
very confusing period of life. I strongly believe that when
we talk openly about these situations, we reduce a lot
of the invisible shame we're feeling that I think forces
us to keep things to ourselves when they would become
(04:05):
so much easier and lighter out in the open. Trust me,
if you're going through this right now, I really cannot
express how many people have reached out to me with
similar situations, how many friends of mine are going through this,
some of them even in their late twenties, early thirties,
and even broader than that. How every single trend is
(04:27):
pointing to this being more difficult for this generation, to
this being harder. It is not just you, I promise.
So we're going to slow it down. We're going to
look at the psychology. We're going to talk all about
it and hopefully make you feel a little bit better
about your situation. So all of that are more after
this shortbreak. We talk about it a lot on the show,
(04:54):
but there is definitely this unspoken pressure in our twenties
to know what we are doing with our lives. There
is an emphasis on having a five year plan, on
having a dream job, financial independence, job security, that can
feel really suffocating if that just hasn't been your path
so far, or perhaps you just don't.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Want it to be. I think I will continue to
repeat this for as long as I can. But this decade,
our twenties is a period of flux, and that is
both a blessing and a curse. It is this time
in our life where there is so much available to us,
but all of our timelines, the timelines of yourself and
(05:35):
everybody around you, is splintering. For the first like eighteen
nineteen years of our lives, we were in school. We
are typically doing the same things in the same environment,
with the same ultimate goal as everybody around us, which
is to graduate before we kind of get stuck into
the real world. It is very structured, It is very uniform,
(05:59):
very repetitive for each and all of us. When we
walk across the stage, when we graduate, suddenly, after eighteen
years of always having somebody tell us what is next,
what the requirements of moving forward are, we have agency
and choice and freedom to choose where we want to go,
(06:19):
who we want to be, and the goalposts kind of disappear.
Maybe you do end up going to university in the
goalpost to kind of reinstated, but only for another three
for maybe five years. At some point, school is going
to kind of spit you out into the world, and
you have to kind of figure out a way of
(06:40):
operating in this new environment, one that you know, I
do think the education system doesn't really get us prepared for.
You know, it's not just about grades and assignments anymore.
You have to put into practice everything that you've learned,
and there will definitely be a learning curve, and it's
only natural to be struggling with that. This whole period
(07:01):
in the field of psychology is known as emerging adulthood,
and the word emerging there is really important because I
think it highlights how transitionary this period is. It is
not the final chapter. It is the first chapter in
a very long life, in a very long career. Hopefully.
I think that there is not one thing about our
(07:23):
career during this decade that is permanent. Those the jobs
that you're applying for, for example, they could not exist
in like twenty years. The unpaid internships. Eventually you won't
have to do them anymore, the terrible bosses. One day
you will quit that job and you will find something
more meaningful and purposeful, the job interviews, the confusion. Eventually
(07:44):
that will go away. Eventually it will become more clear
to you what you want to do, where you want
to be, who you want to be. But all of
those things that we really struggle with, they are to
be expected when we're kind of first starting out. I
think the misconception that makes us feel really terrible is
that this will be like this forever. Right, we are
(08:06):
always going to feel this lost, we are always going
to feel this aimless, this purposeless, We're always going to
be in this state of striving for an opportunity. But
secondly to that that it is an us problem, not
a societal one. So when I was researching this episode,
I came across two articles that were super enlightening when
(08:29):
it came to this exact point, job hunting and a
lack of success that many of us are experiencing is
a societal problem rather than an individual one. So the
first article was published by the BBC last year, and
it essentially said, nearly all young workers, so people between
(08:49):
eighteen and thirty are struggling to cope with economic uncertainty
but also the instability of the job market. And what
this article said was that about no ninety one percent
of us are experiencing or have experienced at least one
instant of stress around our future career and our future
(09:10):
job insecurity or security. In the last six months, ninety
one percent of us in our twenties essentially are feeling
very much unstable and unsure of what is next. A
lot of this also came down to three large scale stresses.
(09:30):
A fewer entry level jobs that has a proven fact.
There are less opportunities for people who are junior or
just starting out to get their foot in the door,
b increasing competition for a smaller pool of opportunities. It's
not just that there are more people who want a
smaller amount of jobs, but that those people are more educated,
(09:51):
more proficient, have done more internships, have more job experience
than ever before. And see there is this rising cost
of life living, which means that even if you do
get one of those coveted entry level jobs, even if
you do, you know, surpass all those dozens hundreds of others,
you still might not be able to pay your bills.
(10:13):
That is one component of why this is so increasingly stressful.
The second article was from Time magazine and it was
titled you're not imagining it. Job hunting is getting worse.
I'm going to leave a link to this article in
the description, because if this describes your experience, you need
to read this article. And what they explain is that
(10:35):
the tightening kind of labor market. Not to make this
like an economic podcast rather than a psychological one, but
we'll get to the psychology, I promise. Essentially, the tightening
labor market has triggered two changes. Firstly, because a lot
of companies are really scared about a recession, they take
a lot more time to choose people that they're hiring
(10:55):
because they want to make sure that they are choosing
the right person. Something that we may not realize is
that we obviously know it costs money to employ people,
but it actually costs also a significant amount of money
to find the people that we want to employ, and
so companies like just getting a lot more stingy and
a lot more cautious. I have heard stories of people
(11:17):
doing like three or four levels of interviews for entry
level jobs. My friend Emily, she is applying for jobs
in the public service in Australia at the moment. She
went through three interviews for an entry level position and
she didn't hear anything for two months, and eventually they'd
offered her the job, but she was like, it's been
(11:39):
two months. I can't wait for that long. So they're
kind of like back to the drawing board. Companies are
just taking longer. They're making you jump through more extravagant
and extreme hoops. The second element of this is that
because the job market is becoming more limited, more experienced
and educated people are now applying for the kind of
(12:01):
jobs that used to be reserved for individuals like fresh
out of UNI. You know, there has been mass redundancies
across tech, across so many other industries. That has meant
that people with master's degrees and multiple bachelor's degrees who
have five to ten years of experience, they're getting replaced
by AI. They're getting let go of and they have
(12:22):
to start again, along with people like you and I,
people in their twenties who are starting out for the
first time. I know that this has taken a very
pessimistic turn. I am sorry this is not being like
empowering pump up speech that I wanted for this episode.
But all of this is just to say, I promise
it's not just you. It is systematic it is just
(12:44):
as hard for so many other people out there. I'm
hoping that that is a comforting statement to hear, right
that you might be putting a lot of pressure on yourself.
You might be feeling terrible that it's you, that you
don't have what it takes, that you're being lazy, that
no one likes you, that it's a personal thing, when
actually across the board people are struggling with this. It's
(13:07):
a really hard time to be new to the job
market and unemployed. So there are some really tangible, real
and true psychological and emotional consequences that come with being
stuck in this limbo jobless period, you know, perhaps taking
on bridging rolls to make money, not fully satisfied or
(13:29):
sure when one of these countless interviews or resumes is
going to hit the desk of the right person. It's
a waiting game. And I'm sure you know this already,
But there are a lot of ways that this bleeds
into our well being, into our state, our mental state essentially,
and I want to talk about four of the main
ways that we can see this in our lives and
(13:52):
how to address it before it gets out of hand. Firstly,
job hunting, it is a lot of effort, from building
your resume to finding jobs whose criteria and requirements you match,
to cover letters, to interviews, to references, sometimes most of
the time doing this for multiple opportunities at a time
(14:14):
with little payout that is bound to get exhausting. There
comes a point where we hit a wall, and it's
actually called the law of diminishing return. Essentially, what it
means that at some point, no matter how much we
put into an activity, say a job hunt, the output
(14:34):
getting a job doesn't change. At a certain level. There
is only so much effort we can put in before
we become disheartened, before we can't give any more, and
we're not getting the outcome that we want. And this
can lead to two distinct feelings, resentment and pessimism. Resentment
(14:55):
firstly because we feel like the system is unfair. We
feel like we just deserves some reward for what we're
putting in, how much we want it, how much harder
we're working than other people who are getting these opportunities
seemingly easily. Like I know, it's not a good feeling,
and it's a very shameful feeling, but it is a
feeling that we do experience seeing other people get the
(15:18):
opportunities that we wanted and feeling kind of upset about it.
When things just keep going the same way, when we
are not hearing back, when we're not getting the response
that we want, we develop a mental attitude or an
expectation that it's going to continue much the same. Getting
into that mental rut, it can be really hard to
(15:40):
climb out of because your efforts and your hard work
that is required to keep going are not being reinforced.
And as humans, we do really thrive off of reinforcement.
There does come a point where our expectations are going
to be dashed, our hopes are going to be in
the dumb star, and it's just going to feel like
(16:02):
there is absolutely no.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Hope for us.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I get it. I totally get it, and I want
to say that sometimes though it is just a numbers game,
it is just about responding to the adverts, responding to
you know, the calls, and forgetting about it. I had
a friend who says, post and ghost. I think that's
a great way to put it. She's an actor, and
(16:26):
I know it's a little bit different, but the other
day I was asking her about this advert that she
went for. I was like, Hey, how did that? Like
phone advert girl? And she was like what are you
talking about? And I was like, you know you when
you know you want an audition? She was like, Nah,
you don't think You're not meant to think about it.
Don't think about it unless you get a positive response,
because it keeps your expectations low so that you don't
(16:50):
keep spiking your expectations when you think that this one's
going to work out. You think that this one's going
to be the one, and then it's not, and you
fall back into that failure mindset. You continue to be
feel like you are being negatively punished for your efforts.
You feel like there is no hope. The second reason
(17:10):
job hunting is so hard comes down to the constant rejection.
Maybe you are lucky enough to get the first job
you apply for, but that is the exception, not the rule.
Most of us will receive about six to ten rejections
before we get a job offer. According to Forbes, rejection
is such a heavy emotion, It is such a primal
(17:32):
state because we are hardwired to avoid it at all costs.
Rejection on a very basic level signifies a lack of
approval from those whose opinion we value, and when that
is repeated, we begin to internalize a number of secondary
assumptions about ourselves. That we are not good enough, that
we are not as intelligent as we thought, we're not capable,
(17:55):
that we are failures, and that hurts our ego. Our
ego is related to our confidence. When our confidence is low,
that can really interfere with what jobs we apply for,
how secure we come across in interviews, because we begin
to believe that these rejections are in some ways defining us,
(18:16):
that somehow these other people must know that we're getting desperate,
they must know that all these other companies rejected us,
and that kind of begins to overwhelm what we do
actually bring to the table, our wonderful qualities, our wonderful assets.
I think it's even worse when you just don't get
(18:36):
any feedback at all, You don't receive anything. Honestly, the
places that just ghost you are awful, especially when you
are young, and especially like when they just don't have
the empathy to remember what it was like to be
in your position when you could really benefit from the feedback,
You could benefit from having some closure and not still
(19:00):
thinking about that job in two months not still thinking
you had a chance. Two things to counteract the rejection treadmill,
that it sometimes feels like we'ron firstly after each disappointment,
do something kind for yourself. So there is this brilliant
article published by Psychology Today that I'll also link in
(19:20):
the description. And this doctor, her name is doctor Genie Schneider.
She said something so perfect about this. Looking for a
job can feel like a punishing experience. We look at
the prize that is getting the job as the only
reward for all the work. Instead, you need to provide
ample rewards for all your job hunting efforts. Apply for
(19:45):
the job. Then give yourself a break to have fun.
Go through like your fourth interview, take a friend to dinner,
go and like go for a walk, get out of
your head, tell yourself you will you know, reward yourself
with like a small after preparing for a lengthy interview,
after finishing that ruling, cover letter or case study. I
(20:08):
think rewarding yourself for the effort, not the outcome, helps
you maintain that motivation and that momentum that you really need.
It's also valuable to remember that it's not always about you.
Of course, we are at the center of our own universe.
That's how it is. We are the only person who
we truly can understand, and even then we don't really
(20:30):
understand ourselves fully. But it's our reality that we are
most aware of, and so we tend to think every
failure or rejection must relate back to something that was
wrong with us, something that we were lacking, that we
did incorrectly. Instead, I want you to consider this concept
or this kind of like idea I came across called
(20:53):
the mustard effect. So the mustard effect came from the
story of a really talent an actor who went to
meet with the director for a new movie. He was
perfect for the role. He was like the leading man
of the day, super attractive, talented, perfect like resume. But
right as he got to the restaurant, the director he
(21:15):
was meeting spilled mustard on his favorite shirt and he
was so frustrated. He was so distracted that he passed
on the actor. He didn't offer him the movie. You
can be the most amazing candidate, and sometimes the recruiter
is just in a bad mood. There is just someone
had a bit more experienced than you and something really
(21:37):
niche that they need somebody spills mustard, so try not
to take it too personally. Sometimes it's not even like
the disappointment and the exhaustion of the constant efforts and
the letdowns. It's the simple fact that not having a
job means we can't do certain things that truly bring
us joy and that fill our cup because we simply
(22:00):
don't have the money for them. When you are watching
all of your friends buy new clothes, go out for dinner,
book vacations, that can't be a very nice feeling, as
much as we try and suppress it, And me is
an especially loud emotion, So I don't blame you. It's
hard to see everybody else living perhaps a life of
(22:21):
ease while you're still struggling. You know, this day and age,
it is the age of social comparison. Of course we
are going to compare paychecks. Of course we are going
to compare career progression, job titles or lack thereof, because
all of those things serve as proxies for what we
see as progress. Our jobs also bring a sense of
(22:44):
purpose in productivity, like we can say we're doing something
that our degrees were worth something. Those internships, those extracurriculars,
those you know, stupid jobs that we didn't want to do.
It was all worth it because we have something to
do with our day. When we don't have that, there
is definitely a level of shame and stigma. I think
(23:05):
we implicitly feel we're adults. This is what we should
be doing, this is what we were always taught we
should be doing. We should have a job. That's how
we stay useful in society, especially in a society where
it's our output that really counts. So I read this
story about how in Japan, businessmen will actually get dressed
(23:29):
up in the morning in their suits, in their ties.
They'll take the train to the city, they'll leave their apartments,
and they'll just sit in the park all day until
they return home because they don't have jobs. And it's
not that they're being productive with that time. It's that
the shame of not having a job, the shame of
(23:50):
being unemployed, causes them to want to keep up the
facade for those around them. And I think that's not
too dissimilar to what you may be experiencing a sense
that you are lazy or that you're going to be judged. Obviously,
you may not be going as far as to put
on a business suit and go and sit in the
park all day. But there is perhaps a tendency to
(24:12):
conceal things, a tendency to perhaps I don't know, not
want to reveal to your friends or your family that
you are struggling, how hard it has been, how many
rejections you have gotten, how lost you feel. I also
heard this from a lot of friends of mine who
are currently on the job hunt, looking for a cool
(24:35):
thing to do, that there is this tension, this kind
of pool between wanting to simply get a job, not
wanting to get left behind, wanting to make some money,
but also wanting to be happy in what you're doing
and not just settle for the first job that comes
your way. It feels like a really significant choice, and
(24:55):
that is the confusion that also comes along with this.
We spend ages trying to find a job, only to
have doubts about what might be right for us. I
think job hunting is hard enough, but when you add
purpose and mission and ambition into the picture, it gets
even more complicated. So we're going to take a short break,
(25:16):
but when we come back, we're going to kind of
discuss how we can discover purpose whilst also looking for
that paycheck, and also how you can lessen the pressure
or the mental load of job hunting and the shame
when it isn't going your way. All of that and
more after this short break. One of my favorite like
(25:41):
tumbler Instagram, that kind of genre of posts that I've
ever seen, which was quite popular back in the day
but still feels very noteworthy, is this post that recounts
when famous actors and public figures first got their big break. Oprah,
for example, got fired from her first reporting job at
(26:02):
twenty three. Harrison Ford, he was a carpenter at thirty.
Morgan Freeman, he wasn't in like a major movie until
he was fifty two. I'm sure that a lot of
us have seen this post, but I think that every
time I see it, it is such a simple reminder
that the stakes feel really high right now. They feel
(26:23):
really significant in our twenties to get it right. But
there are so many paths to your dream destination and
so many parts of the journey that you just cannot
foresee in the moment that you are in right now.
I think uncertainty is part of the twenty something package.
It's part of the deal. Not knowing what comes next,
(26:45):
feeling like you have these big dreams and not knowing
what to do with them, feeling like there are other
dreams you have to put on hold out of necessity.
That is all kind of part of what this decade promises.
So firstly, I want you to take the press sure
off a little bit. You don't need to be searching
for or working your dream job right now to be happy.
(27:07):
In fact, I personally don't think that the dream job
even exists. There is so much hype around this idea
that if you love what you do, you never work
a day in your life. I think that neglects the
role of practicality just needing something to give you a paycheck,
having those intermission periods where you are in transition, like
(27:27):
after graduation, or when you're making a career jump, or
after getting fired, It is okay to be working casual
jobs in the meantime. It is okay to not necessarily
know what comes next. I think this idea of the
dream job makes a lot of us feel like if
we're not totally sold and in love with what we
(27:50):
are doing as a career, we are bound to be miserable.
But it doesn't consider that life is more than work,
and that sometimes you don't really know what you want
to do until much later in life when you have
had experience. And maybe that is what this time is
right now. It is about experience. It is about applying
(28:12):
for jobs you never saw yourself doing and maybe doing
them for a couple of months, doing them for a year,
and just seeing where it takes you. A perspective that
I kind of love. As an alternative to the dream
job concept is this Japanese idea of ikigai, so that
(28:32):
kind of roughly translates to reason for being. I was
introduced to this concept through a book that was written
about it a couple of years ago by these two authors.
And in the process of writing this book, they went
to this small town in the Okinawa district in Japan,
and it's what is known as a blue zone, So
(28:53):
there are a bunch of blue zones around the world.
These are essentially locations where the population in those areas
are some of the happiest and some of the healthiest
and who live the longest. And what they found was
that amongst all these kind of like elderly Japanese people,
all of them had a sense of ika guy. They
had a sense of being. Instead of looking for one
(29:16):
thing that is going to light your fire, instead of
looking for a job that just pays you a lot
of money, or trying exorbitantly hard to just find the
one thing that you absolutely love doing and nothing else
at all, focus on asking yourself for specific questions. What
do you actually like doing, what do you actually enjoy,
(29:37):
what are you good at doing, What do you receive
praise for, What do people tell you that you have
a special knack for. What does the world actually need?
And what can you get paid for? So, if we
have like the example of being a psychologist, that might
be your dream job right now, It's probably going to
take like quite a few years of study to get there,
(29:59):
probably a lot of probably a lot of setbacks in
the interim. You still need to make money. You still
want to be doing something, So think about how you
can fulfill your ecer guy in other ways. I'm guessing
if you want to be a psychologist, you're probably really
good at talking to people. You enjoy talking to people.
They connect with you, they open up, it feels fulfilling.
(30:21):
I think the world needs more people who can hold
empathy and space for others. But right now, you can't
get paid for it in the specific way that you
would like. But if you were a grocery store clerk
or a disability support worker, if you worked in customer service,
you can still utilize your unique abilities and gain those
(30:43):
vital skills, even if it's not your dream destination. You know, personally,
before I did this full time, you know, a lot
of people might assume this is my dream job. I
didn't even know this existed three years ago, and before I,
you know, stumbled into podcasting. I've spoken about how I
worked in consulting, and especially I did health consulting and
(31:04):
big mental health programs for the government was something that
I really focused on. It was not my dream job,
but besides that, there was so many things that I
took from it that have made my current career so
much more fruitful. Obviously I spoke a lot about mental
health during that time, but it also made me really
(31:25):
proficient in academic research. It made me really proficient in
time management, in science communication, in writing applications for grants
and things like that, and I'm so grateful for that. Now,
I think I firmly believe that our twenties are not
our time to be perfect, especially when it comes to
our careers and our professional lives, it's a time for experimentation.
(31:48):
It's a time for discovery. Your purpose might not be
entirely clear to you right now, but that is what
this period is for. It's getting to see what's out there,
doing jobs that might not be high on your list
of things that you thought you would like doing, applying
for those random positions that you've never considered, and just
seeing what happens. I know that it's very easy to
(32:12):
compare to people who seemingly have it all, who are
already looking like they're uber successful, but that is again
the exception, not the rule. Another component of the job
hunt of an unemployment in our twenties is taking on
roles where you are just going to have to swallow
the toad. You are going to have to start from
(32:33):
the bottom and maybe do things that you don't necessarily
want to do, but it can lead you to something bigger.
When you look at those people you might see online
who you think, oh my god, they have it all together.
What did they do differently? What do they do that
I didn't do, you have to remember that they might
just be a few steps ahead of you, or they
may have had networks, they may have had shortcuts, or
(32:57):
they may have done these tedious, unfulfilling job that you're
doing now that are actually really valuable because they give
you that work ethic that doesn't disappear the older you get,
and they give you those connections, they give you that experience.
You just have to start somewhere, even if it's not
where you imagined yourself starting. Some final tips for managing
(33:20):
both the stress and the practicality of job hunting in
our twenties. Firstly, find someone else who is going through
the same thing and meet up with them to job hunt,
to write cover letters, to write applications together. Treat the
job hunt like a job, like there is structure, like
(33:40):
there are things and KPIs and tasks that you need
to tick off. So you don't feel like this is
a waste of time, so you don't feel like this
is just an endless cycle of not knowing of effort
and setbacks. But alongside that, when you do it with
somebody else, you have that support, kind of have somebody
(34:01):
almost like a colleague or a coworker, a coworker and
your job hunt to complain to and to kind of
just have a whine too about how rough it is,
and to know that they experiencing they are experiencing the
same thing. It also just obviously helps combat loneliness of
unemployment as well, which is a big thing. Secondly, don't
(34:22):
be afraid to tell people that you are looking for work.
Not only does this train us out of the feeling
of shame, which is important. There is no shame in
just getting started and trying to find what's right for you.
But I think when we are vulnerable about something that
we don't like to speak about, people feel a natural
(34:44):
inclination to help, and there is a natural like eliciting
of empathy. They will, I think, connect you with new people.
They will connect you with places that are hiring, with
friends that they know in the endie with opportunities that
they've heard of. People want to be in your corner.
(35:05):
Those empathy centers in our brain start lighting up when
we see somebody else who is not only struggling, but
as being open and sensitive about that struggle. Finally, I
want you to know that it will happen, even if
it is taking time, even if you're going slower than
you imagined, even if you are not where you thought
(35:26):
you'd be. No one wakes up a success. So many
success stories start with shitty jobs, start with being broke,
start with not having the perfect job, or any job
at all. There are so many steps in between where
you are now and where you want to be in
the future. And I don't know, as someone who went
(35:46):
through periods of unemployment and who've worked terrible jobs and
who got rejected from so many jobs and so many internships,
there will come a point where you do get to
look back and be like, you get to tell the
story in hindsight, and it feels kind of magical that
you got to where you are, and you do feel
in some ways grateful for the lessons that you learn
(36:07):
and the fact that you didn't just come to you easily,
that you actually had to try and work hard and
test yourself. Every small piece, every small thing that you
are doing, every small action, is contributing to the process.
It's contributing to you getting a job, finding your career path,
figuring out what you want to do. But right now
(36:28):
it doesn't have to be perfect. You are doing enough,
You are doing the best you can, and I'm just
sending a lot of love. I'm sending a lot of
encouragement and support your way, because I know it is
tough when everyone around you seems to have it together,
when you're broke, when you don't have the money for
the opportunities that you would like to be pursuing, when
(36:50):
it feels like you waste it all your time and
uni in college and nobody wants you. It's temporary. Something
will come your way, I am sure of it. So
I really hope that this episode has been of some
solace to you, or has at least provided you with
some new information, something else to consider, some tips, some tricks,
(37:11):
some comfort. As always, if there is somebody that you
know in your life who is also job hunting, firstly,
maybe hit them up and start applying for some jobs together.
It's a great idea. Otherwise, share this episode with them.
Maybe they'll get something out of it as well. Make
sure that you are following along. I post so many
(37:31):
different episodes, so many different concepts, ideas, so many different
aspects of our twenties, and I'm always looking for episode suggestions,
So feel free to dm me at that psychology podcast
with your thoughts, your feelings, your questions, your qualms, whatever
it is. I would love to hear from you and
as always, until we see you next week, Stay safe,
(37:52):
stay kind, be gentle with yourself, and we will talk
very soon. One
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we, of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Let's be
real for a second. The job market, the job hunt,
the economic climate, all of the above have gotten so
(00:47):
tough in recent years, and if you're in your twenties,
you're probably feeling the pressure and the impact of this
more than any other age group. It is so much
more difficult than it was for our parents generation even
a few decades ago, to find a job that can
pay our bills but is also fulfilling, or to even
(01:08):
find entry level opportunities in our chrosen industry, much less
a stable career path. And I think this experience of
struggling with unemployment and continuous job hunting, the pressure to
have it all figured out, the pressure to have some fulfilling,
rewarding job lined up. Some fulfilling, rewarding career is really
(01:29):
feeling increasingly impossible in this day and age. So I
wanted to talk about it, and I wanted to help
you understand the science behind not only why it's so difficult,
but why there is so much shame and frustration and
at times even anger and resentment when it comes to
job hunting in our twenties. I think that this topic
(01:50):
definitely doesn't get enough of a spotlight, and I'll admit
I've even fallen into I think a bit of complacency myself.
I have taken my own circumstances for granted because I
was really lucky to kind of fall into something I
loved quite early on. I don't think that is the
case for everyone. I really think that a more universal
experience is one of struggling to find your professional place
(02:13):
in the world early on in your career. And just recently,
I have had so many friends going through redundancies and
periods of unemployment, constant rejections, and it's emotionally challenging. I
can see them really struggling with it. So much of
our self esteem and our self concept is tied to
what we do for work. It is tied to how
(02:36):
we make money. It is tied to our sense of purpose.
So when that is taken away from us or it's unavailable,
no matter how hard we try, no matter how many
job applications we put out, we feel firstly quite aimless,
but secondly like we have somehow failed in a way
that so many others have been successful. We think there
(02:57):
must be something wrong with us. We make assumptions about
what other people are thinking about us, that we're lazy,
that we lack discipline, that we aren't skilled, when there
are so many other explanations for unemployment and struggling with
job searching, struggling with your career during this decade. So
today we are going to talk about the psychological impact
(03:21):
of job hunting, unemployment, setbacks, and rejections in our twenties.
How we can manage our emotional well being must also
staying focused and keeping optimistic about opportunities that come our way.
We're also going to talk about concepts like bridging jobs,
why there is no shame in doing something that you
don't necessarily love for a paycheck, why it's okay to
(03:44):
not have a five year plan, the myth of the
dream job, and how to find your purpose during a
very confusing period of life. I strongly believe that when
we talk openly about these situations, we reduce a lot
of the invisible shame we're feeling that I think forces
us to keep things to ourselves when they would become
(04:05):
so much easier and lighter out in the open. Trust me,
if you're going through this right now, I really cannot
express how many people have reached out to me with
similar situations, how many friends of mine are going through this,
some of them even in their late twenties, early thirties,
and even broader than that. How every single trend is
(04:27):
pointing to this being more difficult for this generation, to
this being harder. It is not just you, I promise.
So we're going to slow it down. We're going to
look at the psychology. We're going to talk all about
it and hopefully make you feel a little bit better
about your situation. So all of that are more after
this shortbreak. We talk about it a lot on the show,
(04:54):
but there is definitely this unspoken pressure in our twenties
to know what we are doing with our lives. There
is an emphasis on having a five year plan, on
having a dream job, financial independence, job security, that can
feel really suffocating if that just hasn't been your path
so far, or perhaps you just don't.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Want it to be. I think I will continue to
repeat this for as long as I can. But this decade,
our twenties is a period of flux, and that is
both a blessing and a curse. It is this time
in our life where there is so much available to us,
but all of our timelines, the timelines of yourself and
(05:35):
everybody around you, is splintering. For the first like eighteen
nineteen years of our lives, we were in school. We
are typically doing the same things in the same environment,
with the same ultimate goal as everybody around us, which
is to graduate before we kind of get stuck into
the real world. It is very structured, It is very uniform,
(05:59):
very repetitive for each and all of us. When we
walk across the stage, when we graduate, suddenly, after eighteen
years of always having somebody tell us what is next,
what the requirements of moving forward are, we have agency
and choice and freedom to choose where we want to go,
(06:19):
who we want to be, and the goalposts kind of disappear.
Maybe you do end up going to university in the
goalpost to kind of reinstated, but only for another three
for maybe five years. At some point, school is going
to kind of spit you out into the world, and
you have to kind of figure out a way of
(06:40):
operating in this new environment, one that you know, I
do think the education system doesn't really get us prepared for.
You know, it's not just about grades and assignments anymore.
You have to put into practice everything that you've learned,
and there will definitely be a learning curve, and it's
only natural to be struggling with that. This whole period
(07:01):
in the field of psychology is known as emerging adulthood,
and the word emerging there is really important because I
think it highlights how transitionary this period is. It is
not the final chapter. It is the first chapter in
a very long life, in a very long career. Hopefully.
I think that there is not one thing about our
(07:23):
career during this decade that is permanent. Those the jobs
that you're applying for, for example, they could not exist
in like twenty years. The unpaid internships. Eventually you won't
have to do them anymore, the terrible bosses. One day
you will quit that job and you will find something
more meaningful and purposeful, the job interviews, the confusion. Eventually
(07:44):
that will go away. Eventually it will become more clear
to you what you want to do, where you want
to be, who you want to be. But all of
those things that we really struggle with, they are to
be expected when we're kind of first starting out. I
think the misconception that makes us feel really terrible is
that this will be like this forever. Right, we are
(08:06):
always going to feel this lost, we are always going
to feel this aimless, this purposeless, We're always going to
be in this state of striving for an opportunity. But
secondly to that that it is an us problem, not
a societal one. So when I was researching this episode,
I came across two articles that were super enlightening when
(08:29):
it came to this exact point, job hunting and a
lack of success that many of us are experiencing is
a societal problem rather than an individual one. So the
first article was published by the BBC last year, and
it essentially said, nearly all young workers, so people between
(08:49):
eighteen and thirty are struggling to cope with economic uncertainty
but also the instability of the job market. And what
this article said was that about no ninety one percent
of us are experiencing or have experienced at least one
instant of stress around our future career and our future
(09:10):
job insecurity or security. In the last six months, ninety
one percent of us in our twenties essentially are feeling
very much unstable and unsure of what is next. A
lot of this also came down to three large scale stresses.
(09:30):
A fewer entry level jobs that has a proven fact.
There are less opportunities for people who are junior or
just starting out to get their foot in the door,
b increasing competition for a smaller pool of opportunities. It's
not just that there are more people who want a
smaller amount of jobs, but that those people are more educated,
(09:51):
more proficient, have done more internships, have more job experience
than ever before. And see there is this rising cost
of life living, which means that even if you do
get one of those coveted entry level jobs, even if
you do, you know, surpass all those dozens hundreds of others,
you still might not be able to pay your bills.
(10:13):
That is one component of why this is so increasingly stressful.
The second article was from Time magazine and it was
titled you're not imagining it. Job hunting is getting worse.
I'm going to leave a link to this article in
the description, because if this describes your experience, you need
to read this article. And what they explain is that
(10:35):
the tightening kind of labor market. Not to make this
like an economic podcast rather than a psychological one, but
we'll get to the psychology, I promise. Essentially, the tightening
labor market has triggered two changes. Firstly, because a lot
of companies are really scared about a recession, they take
a lot more time to choose people that they're hiring
(10:55):
because they want to make sure that they are choosing
the right person. Something that we may not realize is
that we obviously know it costs money to employ people,
but it actually costs also a significant amount of money
to find the people that we want to employ, and
so companies like just getting a lot more stingy and
a lot more cautious. I have heard stories of people
(11:17):
doing like three or four levels of interviews for entry
level jobs. My friend Emily, she is applying for jobs
in the public service in Australia at the moment. She
went through three interviews for an entry level position and
she didn't hear anything for two months, and eventually they'd
offered her the job, but she was like, it's been
(11:39):
two months. I can't wait for that long. So they're
kind of like back to the drawing board. Companies are
just taking longer. They're making you jump through more extravagant
and extreme hoops. The second element of this is that
because the job market is becoming more limited, more experienced
and educated people are now applying for the kind of
(12:01):
jobs that used to be reserved for individuals like fresh
out of UNI. You know, there has been mass redundancies
across tech, across so many other industries. That has meant
that people with master's degrees and multiple bachelor's degrees who
have five to ten years of experience, they're getting replaced
by AI. They're getting let go of and they have
(12:22):
to start again, along with people like you and I,
people in their twenties who are starting out for the
first time. I know that this has taken a very
pessimistic turn. I am sorry this is not being like
empowering pump up speech that I wanted for this episode.
But all of this is just to say, I promise
it's not just you. It is systematic it is just
(12:44):
as hard for so many other people out there. I'm
hoping that that is a comforting statement to hear, right
that you might be putting a lot of pressure on yourself.
You might be feeling terrible that it's you, that you
don't have what it takes, that you're being lazy, that
no one likes you, that it's a personal thing, when
actually across the board people are struggling with this. It's
(13:07):
a really hard time to be new to the job
market and unemployed. So there are some really tangible, real
and true psychological and emotional consequences that come with being
stuck in this limbo jobless period, you know, perhaps taking
on bridging rolls to make money, not fully satisfied or
(13:29):
sure when one of these countless interviews or resumes is
going to hit the desk of the right person. It's
a waiting game. And I'm sure you know this already,
But there are a lot of ways that this bleeds
into our well being, into our state, our mental state essentially,
and I want to talk about four of the main
ways that we can see this in our lives and
(13:52):
how to address it before it gets out of hand. Firstly,
job hunting, it is a lot of effort, from building
your resume to finding jobs whose criteria and requirements you match,
to cover letters, to interviews, to references, sometimes most of
the time doing this for multiple opportunities at a time
(14:14):
with little payout that is bound to get exhausting. There
comes a point where we hit a wall, and it's
actually called the law of diminishing return. Essentially, what it
means that at some point, no matter how much we
put into an activity, say a job hunt, the output
(14:34):
getting a job doesn't change. At a certain level. There
is only so much effort we can put in before
we become disheartened, before we can't give any more, and
we're not getting the outcome that we want. And this
can lead to two distinct feelings, resentment and pessimism. Resentment
(14:55):
firstly because we feel like the system is unfair. We
feel like we just deserves some reward for what we're
putting in, how much we want it, how much harder
we're working than other people who are getting these opportunities
seemingly easily. Like I know, it's not a good feeling,
and it's a very shameful feeling, but it is a
feeling that we do experience seeing other people get the
(15:18):
opportunities that we wanted and feeling kind of upset about it.
When things just keep going the same way, when we
are not hearing back, when we're not getting the response
that we want, we develop a mental attitude or an
expectation that it's going to continue much the same. Getting
into that mental rut, it can be really hard to
(15:40):
climb out of because your efforts and your hard work
that is required to keep going are not being reinforced.
And as humans, we do really thrive off of reinforcement.
There does come a point where our expectations are going
to be dashed, our hopes are going to be in
the dumb star, and it's just going to feel like
(16:02):
there is absolutely no.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Hope for us.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I get it. I totally get it, and I want
to say that sometimes though it is just a numbers game,
it is just about responding to the adverts, responding to
you know, the calls, and forgetting about it. I had
a friend who says, post and ghost. I think that's
a great way to put it. She's an actor, and
(16:26):
I know it's a little bit different, but the other
day I was asking her about this advert that she
went for. I was like, Hey, how did that? Like
phone advert girl? And she was like what are you
talking about? And I was like, you know you when
you know you want an audition? She was like, Nah,
you don't think You're not meant to think about it.
Don't think about it unless you get a positive response,
because it keeps your expectations low so that you don't
(16:50):
keep spiking your expectations when you think that this one's
going to work out. You think that this one's going
to be the one, and then it's not, and you
fall back into that failure mindset. You continue to be
feel like you are being negatively punished for your efforts.
You feel like there is no hope. The second reason
(17:10):
job hunting is so hard comes down to the constant rejection.
Maybe you are lucky enough to get the first job
you apply for, but that is the exception, not the rule.
Most of us will receive about six to ten rejections
before we get a job offer. According to Forbes, rejection
is such a heavy emotion, It is such a primal
(17:32):
state because we are hardwired to avoid it at all costs.
Rejection on a very basic level signifies a lack of
approval from those whose opinion we value, and when that
is repeated, we begin to internalize a number of secondary
assumptions about ourselves. That we are not good enough, that
we are not as intelligent as we thought, we're not capable,
(17:55):
that we are failures, and that hurts our ego. Our
ego is related to our confidence. When our confidence is low,
that can really interfere with what jobs we apply for,
how secure we come across in interviews, because we begin
to believe that these rejections are in some ways defining us,
(18:16):
that somehow these other people must know that we're getting desperate,
they must know that all these other companies rejected us,
and that kind of begins to overwhelm what we do
actually bring to the table, our wonderful qualities, our wonderful assets.
I think it's even worse when you just don't get
(18:36):
any feedback at all, You don't receive anything. Honestly, the
places that just ghost you are awful, especially when you
are young, and especially like when they just don't have
the empathy to remember what it was like to be
in your position when you could really benefit from the feedback,
You could benefit from having some closure and not still
(19:00):
thinking about that job in two months not still thinking
you had a chance. Two things to counteract the rejection treadmill,
that it sometimes feels like we'ron firstly after each disappointment,
do something kind for yourself. So there is this brilliant
article published by Psychology Today that I'll also link in
(19:20):
the description. And this doctor, her name is doctor Genie Schneider.
She said something so perfect about this. Looking for a
job can feel like a punishing experience. We look at
the prize that is getting the job as the only
reward for all the work. Instead, you need to provide
ample rewards for all your job hunting efforts. Apply for
(19:45):
the job. Then give yourself a break to have fun.
Go through like your fourth interview, take a friend to dinner,
go and like go for a walk, get out of
your head, tell yourself you will you know, reward yourself
with like a small after preparing for a lengthy interview,
after finishing that ruling, cover letter or case study. I
(20:08):
think rewarding yourself for the effort, not the outcome, helps
you maintain that motivation and that momentum that you really need.
It's also valuable to remember that it's not always about you.
Of course, we are at the center of our own universe.
That's how it is. We are the only person who
we truly can understand, and even then we don't really
(20:30):
understand ourselves fully. But it's our reality that we are
most aware of, and so we tend to think every
failure or rejection must relate back to something that was
wrong with us, something that we were lacking, that we
did incorrectly. Instead, I want you to consider this concept
or this kind of like idea I came across called
(20:53):
the mustard effect. So the mustard effect came from the
story of a really talent an actor who went to
meet with the director for a new movie. He was
perfect for the role. He was like the leading man
of the day, super attractive, talented, perfect like resume. But
right as he got to the restaurant, the director he
(21:15):
was meeting spilled mustard on his favorite shirt and he
was so frustrated. He was so distracted that he passed
on the actor. He didn't offer him the movie. You
can be the most amazing candidate, and sometimes the recruiter
is just in a bad mood. There is just someone
had a bit more experienced than you and something really
(21:37):
niche that they need somebody spills mustard, so try not
to take it too personally. Sometimes it's not even like
the disappointment and the exhaustion of the constant efforts and
the letdowns. It's the simple fact that not having a
job means we can't do certain things that truly bring
us joy and that fill our cup because we simply
(22:00):
don't have the money for them. When you are watching
all of your friends buy new clothes, go out for dinner,
book vacations, that can't be a very nice feeling, as
much as we try and suppress it, And me is
an especially loud emotion, So I don't blame you. It's
hard to see everybody else living perhaps a life of
(22:21):
ease while you're still struggling. You know, this day and age,
it is the age of social comparison. Of course we
are going to compare paychecks. Of course we are going
to compare career progression, job titles or lack thereof, because
all of those things serve as proxies for what we
see as progress. Our jobs also bring a sense of
(22:44):
purpose in productivity, like we can say we're doing something
that our degrees were worth something. Those internships, those extracurriculars,
those you know, stupid jobs that we didn't want to do.
It was all worth it because we have something to
do with our day. When we don't have that, there
is definitely a level of shame and stigma. I think
(23:05):
we implicitly feel we're adults. This is what we should
be doing, this is what we were always taught we
should be doing. We should have a job. That's how
we stay useful in society, especially in a society where
it's our output that really counts. So I read this
story about how in Japan, businessmen will actually get dressed
(23:29):
up in the morning in their suits, in their ties.
They'll take the train to the city, they'll leave their apartments,
and they'll just sit in the park all day until
they return home because they don't have jobs. And it's
not that they're being productive with that time. It's that
the shame of not having a job, the shame of
(23:50):
being unemployed, causes them to want to keep up the
facade for those around them. And I think that's not
too dissimilar to what you may be experiencing a sense
that you are lazy or that you're going to be judged. Obviously,
you may not be going as far as to put
on a business suit and go and sit in the
park all day. But there is perhaps a tendency to
(24:12):
conceal things, a tendency to perhaps I don't know, not
want to reveal to your friends or your family that
you are struggling, how hard it has been, how many
rejections you have gotten, how lost you feel. I also
heard this from a lot of friends of mine who
are currently on the job hunt, looking for a cool
(24:35):
thing to do, that there is this tension, this kind
of pool between wanting to simply get a job, not
wanting to get left behind, wanting to make some money,
but also wanting to be happy in what you're doing
and not just settle for the first job that comes
your way. It feels like a really significant choice, and
(24:55):
that is the confusion that also comes along with this.
We spend ages trying to find a job, only to
have doubts about what might be right for us. I
think job hunting is hard enough, but when you add
purpose and mission and ambition into the picture, it gets
even more complicated. So we're going to take a short break,
(25:16):
but when we come back, we're going to kind of
discuss how we can discover purpose whilst also looking for
that paycheck, and also how you can lessen the pressure
or the mental load of job hunting and the shame
when it isn't going your way. All of that and
more after this short break. One of my favorite like
(25:41):
tumbler Instagram, that kind of genre of posts that I've
ever seen, which was quite popular back in the day
but still feels very noteworthy, is this post that recounts
when famous actors and public figures first got their big break. Oprah,
for example, got fired from her first reporting job at
(26:02):
twenty three. Harrison Ford, he was a carpenter at thirty.
Morgan Freeman, he wasn't in like a major movie until
he was fifty two. I'm sure that a lot of
us have seen this post, but I think that every
time I see it, it is such a simple reminder
that the stakes feel really high right now. They feel
(26:23):
really significant in our twenties to get it right. But
there are so many paths to your dream destination and
so many parts of the journey that you just cannot
foresee in the moment that you are in right now.
I think uncertainty is part of the twenty something package.
It's part of the deal. Not knowing what comes next,
(26:45):
feeling like you have these big dreams and not knowing
what to do with them, feeling like there are other
dreams you have to put on hold out of necessity.
That is all kind of part of what this decade promises.
So firstly, I want you to take the press sure
off a little bit. You don't need to be searching
for or working your dream job right now to be happy.
(27:07):
In fact, I personally don't think that the dream job
even exists. There is so much hype around this idea
that if you love what you do, you never work
a day in your life. I think that neglects the
role of practicality just needing something to give you a paycheck,
having those intermission periods where you are in transition, like
(27:27):
after graduation, or when you're making a career jump, or
after getting fired, It is okay to be working casual
jobs in the meantime. It is okay to not necessarily
know what comes next. I think this idea of the
dream job makes a lot of us feel like if
we're not totally sold and in love with what we
(27:50):
are doing as a career, we are bound to be miserable.
But it doesn't consider that life is more than work,
and that sometimes you don't really know what you want
to do until much later in life when you have
had experience. And maybe that is what this time is
right now. It is about experience. It is about applying
(28:12):
for jobs you never saw yourself doing and maybe doing
them for a couple of months, doing them for a year,
and just seeing where it takes you. A perspective that
I kind of love. As an alternative to the dream
job concept is this Japanese idea of ikigai, so that
(28:32):
kind of roughly translates to reason for being. I was
introduced to this concept through a book that was written
about it a couple of years ago by these two authors.
And in the process of writing this book, they went
to this small town in the Okinawa district in Japan,
and it's what is known as a blue zone, So
(28:53):
there are a bunch of blue zones around the world.
These are essentially locations where the population in those areas
are some of the happiest and some of the healthiest
and who live the longest. And what they found was
that amongst all these kind of like elderly Japanese people,
all of them had a sense of ika guy. They
had a sense of being. Instead of looking for one
(29:16):
thing that is going to light your fire, instead of
looking for a job that just pays you a lot
of money, or trying exorbitantly hard to just find the
one thing that you absolutely love doing and nothing else
at all, focus on asking yourself for specific questions. What
do you actually like doing, what do you actually enjoy,
(29:37):
what are you good at doing, What do you receive
praise for, What do people tell you that you have
a special knack for. What does the world actually need?
And what can you get paid for? So, if we
have like the example of being a psychologist, that might
be your dream job right now, It's probably going to
take like quite a few years of study to get there,
(29:59):
probably a lot of probably a lot of setbacks in
the interim. You still need to make money. You still
want to be doing something, So think about how you
can fulfill your ecer guy in other ways. I'm guessing
if you want to be a psychologist, you're probably really
good at talking to people. You enjoy talking to people.
They connect with you, they open up, it feels fulfilling.
(30:21):
I think the world needs more people who can hold
empathy and space for others. But right now, you can't
get paid for it in the specific way that you
would like. But if you were a grocery store clerk
or a disability support worker, if you worked in customer service,
you can still utilize your unique abilities and gain those
(30:43):
vital skills, even if it's not your dream destination. You know, personally,
before I did this full time, you know, a lot
of people might assume this is my dream job. I
didn't even know this existed three years ago, and before I,
you know, stumbled into podcasting. I've spoken about how I
worked in consulting, and especially I did health consulting and
(31:04):
big mental health programs for the government was something that
I really focused on. It was not my dream job,
but besides that, there was so many things that I
took from it that have made my current career so
much more fruitful. Obviously I spoke a lot about mental
health during that time, but it also made me really
(31:25):
proficient in academic research. It made me really proficient in
time management, in science communication, in writing applications for grants
and things like that, and I'm so grateful for that. Now,
I think I firmly believe that our twenties are not
our time to be perfect, especially when it comes to
our careers and our professional lives, it's a time for experimentation.
(31:48):
It's a time for discovery. Your purpose might not be
entirely clear to you right now, but that is what
this period is for. It's getting to see what's out there,
doing jobs that might not be high on your list
of things that you thought you would like doing, applying
for those random positions that you've never considered, and just
seeing what happens. I know that it's very easy to
(32:12):
compare to people who seemingly have it all, who are
already looking like they're uber successful, but that is again
the exception, not the rule. Another component of the job
hunt of an unemployment in our twenties is taking on
roles where you are just going to have to swallow
the toad. You are going to have to start from
(32:33):
the bottom and maybe do things that you don't necessarily
want to do, but it can lead you to something bigger.
When you look at those people you might see online
who you think, oh my god, they have it all together.
What did they do differently? What do they do that
I didn't do, you have to remember that they might
just be a few steps ahead of you, or they
may have had networks, they may have had shortcuts, or
(32:57):
they may have done these tedious, unfulfilling job that you're
doing now that are actually really valuable because they give
you that work ethic that doesn't disappear the older you get,
and they give you those connections, they give you that experience.
You just have to start somewhere, even if it's not
where you imagined yourself starting. Some final tips for managing
(33:20):
both the stress and the practicality of job hunting in
our twenties. Firstly, find someone else who is going through
the same thing and meet up with them to job hunt,
to write cover letters, to write applications together. Treat the
job hunt like a job, like there is structure, like
(33:40):
there are things and KPIs and tasks that you need
to tick off. So you don't feel like this is
a waste of time, so you don't feel like this
is just an endless cycle of not knowing of effort
and setbacks. But alongside that, when you do it with
somebody else, you have that support, kind of have somebody
(34:01):
almost like a colleague or a coworker, a coworker and
your job hunt to complain to and to kind of
just have a whine too about how rough it is,
and to know that they experiencing they are experiencing the
same thing. It also just obviously helps combat loneliness of
unemployment as well, which is a big thing. Secondly, don't
(34:22):
be afraid to tell people that you are looking for work.
Not only does this train us out of the feeling
of shame, which is important. There is no shame in
just getting started and trying to find what's right for you.
But I think when we are vulnerable about something that
we don't like to speak about, people feel a natural
(34:44):
inclination to help, and there is a natural like eliciting
of empathy. They will, I think, connect you with new people.
They will connect you with places that are hiring, with
friends that they know in the endie with opportunities that
they've heard of. People want to be in your corner.
(35:05):
Those empathy centers in our brain start lighting up when
we see somebody else who is not only struggling, but
as being open and sensitive about that struggle. Finally, I
want you to know that it will happen, even if
it is taking time, even if you're going slower than
you imagined, even if you are not where you thought
(35:26):
you'd be. No one wakes up a success. So many
success stories start with shitty jobs, start with being broke,
start with not having the perfect job, or any job
at all. There are so many steps in between where
you are now and where you want to be in
the future. And I don't know, as someone who went
(35:46):
through periods of unemployment and who've worked terrible jobs and
who got rejected from so many jobs and so many internships,
there will come a point where you do get to
look back and be like, you get to tell the
story in hindsight, and it feels kind of magical that
you got to where you are, and you do feel
in some ways grateful for the lessons that you learn
(36:07):
and the fact that you didn't just come to you easily,
that you actually had to try and work hard and
test yourself. Every small piece, every small thing that you
are doing, every small action, is contributing to the process.
It's contributing to you getting a job, finding your career path,
figuring out what you want to do. But right now
(36:28):
it doesn't have to be perfect. You are doing enough,
You are doing the best you can, and I'm just
sending a lot of love. I'm sending a lot of
encouragement and support your way, because I know it is
tough when everyone around you seems to have it together,
when you're broke, when you don't have the money for
the opportunities that you would like to be pursuing, when
(36:50):
it feels like you waste it all your time and
uni in college and nobody wants you. It's temporary. Something
will come your way, I am sure of it. So
I really hope that this episode has been of some
solace to you, or has at least provided you with
some new information, something else to consider, some tips, some tricks,
(37:11):
some comfort. As always, if there is somebody that you
know in your life who is also job hunting, firstly,
maybe hit them up and start applying for some jobs together.
It's a great idea. Otherwise, share this episode with them.
Maybe they'll get something out of it as well. Make
sure that you are following along. I post so many
(37:31):
different episodes, so many different concepts, ideas, so many different
aspects of our twenties, and I'm always looking for episode suggestions,
So feel free to dm me at that psychology podcast
with your thoughts, your feelings, your questions, your qualms, whatever
it is. I would love to hear from you and
as always, until we see you next week, Stay safe,
(37:52):
stay kind, be gentle with yourself, and we will talk
very soon. One
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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