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June 15, 2025 21 mins

Happy Sunday.

I know many people are at church right now praying and healing and doing a bunch of other beneficial acts. 

Need some healing from your job search?

Have you ever heard of the “wild horse effect?”

Story goes the horses in the African savanna tend to get bitten by bats.

The bats draw a miniscule amount of blood, but the horses, because of the minor irritation, go crazy, run around, get exhausted, and basically realize their downfall.

All from a tiny little bite that is the equivalent of pinch.

I don’t think you need a neon sign to get the analogy, but to give you a scoot, the employers are the bats.

I’ve got a little something today to heal those bites so you don’t start running around stressed and exhausted…

If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings:

1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums.

2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel.

3. Grab any of my three books related to interviewing, hiring, and goal setting. All can be found on my Amazon Author Page.

4. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), TikTok, Threads, and Facebook.

5. Stay in touch with me in your email inbox by joining my newsletter here!

--Andy

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Job search burnout is it's a real thing it's June and especially if you've been searching
for three four five six months maybe it gets really really hard it wears on the soul job
searching in general whether you do it for a day a month or a year it stinks it's It's lonely it's

(00:21):
confusing it doesn't work the way we think it should we have expectations about about getting
hired that always seem to take longer than it than it should so I'm here today to yet again give you
another way to think about how to look at the job search i've talked before at least a half a dozen

(00:41):
times there are videos on my YouTube channel about how to look at your job search to have
a better frame of mind to get better results but most importantly to maintain that good attitude
realize the benefits of what you're going through even though it's difficult and so I've I've I've
given you different ways to do this tactically mechanically statistically but today I thought

(01:04):
I'm looking for I'm always looking for new ways to kind of illustrate the same points because
I know we all think differently and and certain messages sometimes repetition helps us remember
and realize things or or make it click but also different different stories and different perspect
perspectives also have a way of helping you with that so I want to I want to do that today and I I

(01:27):
I want to talk about a story from from from my life with somebody who that I worked with and
on the recruitment side of things but it has the exact parallels to what a lot of you are
going through on the job candidate side of things and the first thing that I want to say just just
I always like to benchmark any talk like this with why we get stressed out in the first place

(01:51):
and much of the time our our stresses in life come from our expectations and I'm not talking let's
put aside for a second any grave situation that you have a death a divorce uh anything of that
nature that is obviously traumat traumatic and traumatizing in ways but when it comes to most

(02:13):
of what we do the everyday walking around lives that we lead much of our stress comes from our
expectations the way we think things ought to be as if we are truly the center of the universe and
everything should revolve around us and happen in a manner that makes sense to us or that we believe
it to be true and one of the things I always like to say is whenever you don't understand something

(02:37):
um it just doesn't make any sense to you i always tell people everything makes sense with enough
information how somebody's behaving what somebody says what somebody does or doesn't do but when it
comes to our own lives our own careers our own job searches we have expectations about the value we
can bring and why should somebody should desire us based on our historical performance but the fact

(03:03):
of the matter is your job searching success has literally nothing to do with how well you do your
job these are skills that you you likely don't have or at least haven't practiced them in this
format marketing yourself selling yourself high levels of communication all of this stuff these
are things you're just not an ace at you get paid to do something else and our expectations of how

(03:25):
long a job search should take or whether it should be fair as if life is fair it just isn't true and
so I want you to start there and just just just just remember that and park that for for right now
but I want to tell you about this woman Jen who I who I absolutely love she was a client of Milew
Walks we would recruit job candidates for her and her company we built a relationship that

(03:50):
lasted a number of years in a uh a client type of of relationship and she would we became friends I
would say and then she would seek my counsel on things outside of work and inside of work
uh when it came to her career she decided she wanted to leave the the organization that that she
and I were working uh to together to support she took a new job that job didn't turn out very well

(04:16):
and and she reached out to me and and and said "Hey I I'm going to be leaving this organization
could we get together i'd love to talk with you." So we got together when we got together I said to
her "I'd love for you to come and work with me at Milew Walk and be a recruiter an executive
recruiter and I can teach you the ropes you're a corporate recruiter." She had a lot of she had a

(04:40):
good understanding of recruitment processes was an awesome awesome corporate recruiter she was a
joy to work with as a client of mine and I thought I can teach you what you need to know about being
an executive recruiter she was game I and she was interested so I brought her on to Milew Walk
but the one thing that I I said to her before you know she came to the to the organization is I need

(05:05):
you to be committed to give this a shot because you're going to go through some some difficult
times things that you think should work out a particular way or not i need you to understand
the kinds of things that are going to happen what this is going to look like how difficult what it
is that we do um executive recruitment is is the single greatest most difficult job I've ever done

(05:29):
in my life and there are so many skill sets that you absolutely need in order to be successful and
I want you to think about the level of difficulty you're working on behalf of a client that you need
to go and recruit somebody else who doesn't work for you or for them you have to make two sales to
make one and you have the only product in the world that can actually say no to the sale so

(05:52):
there is an awful lot outside of your control so there are a certain set of disciplines and
protocols and operating behaviors and other things that you need to do not to mention all the skills
that you're going to need to build but I will teach you i will take my time i will invest in
you to get this right but the one thing that I need you to do is I need you to commit i need
you to mentally make a commitment you can make it verbal to me but I need you to make it true

(06:17):
to yourself that you will heads down for two years pour your heart and soul into this not
think about quitting because you're going to have these ups and these downs it's a huge odyssey but
I guarantee you if you if if you just start in two years from now you won't believe what your life
will look like if you do what I say if you stay true to the protocols and the principles and the

(06:39):
practices and you do the work day in and day out and here's the last thing I'm going to say every
there's 22 days in a month generally speaking that you will work on 20 of those days you will end up
empty zeros it will look like a failure of a day but nothing could be further from the truth and
two of those days you're going to make placements and you're going to get big paydays but the other

(07:03):
20 are going to be a grind and so when you look at each month there's a certain bogey you want
to have in your mind that you will get you get your salary that I will give you which will be
a modest salary a base salary and then there will be two huge bonus checks so to speak because two
of those days you're going to make placements and that's going to be a lot of money but it's going

(07:26):
to look like 0000 big 0000 big and so you need to understand that and so at the end of each month
you can look at how you did but each day that you work you're going to be building a portfolio of
candidates you're going to be building your skills you're going to be looking at the no pile the no
pile is going to is going to get big the yes pile might be empty or or stay small each day so you

(07:52):
need to understand that this is a box it's a process but you got to commit to the process
you can't just be happy on the days you win and sad on the days you lose otherwise 90% of the
time you're going to be miserable who understands what I'm saying so far so when you look at your
success it's found in the doing of the processes and being disciplined and staying true to your

(08:17):
recruitment so here's what we'll do i will get the clients i will get our searches the the pe the the
the jobs that we are going to recruit for i will educate you on who the client is what they need
we'll go through all the practices i'll teach you how to how to operate the cold calls to
recruit the cl the job candidates and so on how to screen them you screen them you pass them to

(08:40):
me i will I will manage the relationship with the client we will put the candidates in i know
that statistically that every 2.7 candidates that we send out into the world we make a placement so
what I need you to focus on is not the placement i need you to focus on high quality candidates that

(09:02):
actually will make good potential employees for our clients and if you send me three statistically
this is years of mile walks statistics we will actually make a placement so for every six or
so you're going to make two placements if not better so I said to her "Okay so let's go."

(09:23):
So she worked a couple of weeks she'd found some candidates and wouldn't you know it she
made a placement she said "This is great this is the check and the payday is great the process is
great everything's working." She works another couple of weeks makes another placement so far
so good then we get into a situation where she's working right 22 days she 22 days of the month 20

(09:46):
she ends up empty couple of those days she makes placements each day she's building her her book
of of business her her job candidate portfolio she's meeting people who are leads in marketing
in sales in operations in project management in program offices she's meeting engineers and and
all the different types of roles that we would recruit for and then and then um she started in

(10:11):
the fall about beginning of the summer maybe six months in we had a an opportunity to work with
a client who had a a great job they were looking for somebody to build their knowledge practice it
was a very large privately held organization jen did a masterful piece of recruiting found three
candidates and what she did was she submitted the candidates to to me i evaluated the candidates

(10:35):
these were fantastic the client interviewed the candidates the client loved every one of them the
client would have hired every one of them they only needed one they go through this process and
what ultimately happened was the client without getting into all the details completely botches
up this process they literally would have hired all three of the candidates if they could have
they would have hired any of the three but as it turned out they botched up this process so

(10:59):
badly without going into the details for brevity and because it's not even that gerine to this
story is they ended up empty we lost all three candidates for a variety of reasons one decided
to leave early the other one decided she wanted to take a different job and then the third one they
offered they offered it to two of them um decided to choose another job the behavior that the client

(11:20):
demonstrated caused us to no longer work with the client it was it was such an awful situation i It
was nearly impossible to screw this up but they managed to do it but anyway the more important
thing about this this element of the story is how it affected Jennifer because she could she
emotionally could not recover from something that she thought was was right in her hand and what I

(11:44):
tried to explain to her is this is going to happen but the reason that we recruit so many candidates
the reason that we keep our process going irrespective of what happens on any given day
what any job candidate might do if they wig out or a client who mishandles a recruitment process
no matter what happens we control what we can control and you will be more successful based on

(12:06):
where you place your attention than your ability but the fact that you are placing your attention
so greatly on something you have absolutely no control over is making it difficult for you to
actually function and this is what was happening so she worked a couple of more months and then she
came to me she says "Andy I just can't handle the ups and the downs." And I was so disappointed that

(12:27):
nine months into this process where she was having success but then had one mega hiccup because it
wasn't even a failure because she did everything absolutely beautifully that she could not wrap her
mind around the fact that something outside of her control or what she thought was unfair happened
which in her mind cost her money so she ended up leaving then what happened is within the next few

(12:50):
months we ended up placing six of her candidates she literally in one year would have earned three
times the amount of money that she had earned as a corporate recruiter had she stuck with it
she was so close and when I said I needed you to commit mentally to two years and not really worry
about the ups and the downs but just think at the end of the day this is a black box you're going to

(13:11):
go in you're going to come out and so the reason I'm sharing this story with you is because she
would have been ragingly successful had she just maintained consistent kept her focus in the right
place and what a lot of the job candidates that I coach do is their attention is placed in the wrong
place and the reason that they are so burnt out is because they are so focused on the outcome instead

(13:34):
of falling in love with the process and while I'm not telling you you need to love a job search if
you are in it it behooves you to gain the benefits of the experience think about all the skills
you're learning the networking that should be an ongoing thing that you are now getting a chance to
actually practice the ability to actually write crafty effective networking messages to people

(13:58):
you should be maintaining relationships on an ongoing basis with the the your ability to
actually continue to nurture and grow your network reaching out to new people each week just because
and all of the other things that you should be doing the selling skills that you should have
knowing how to be deliberate and intentional with your career these are things that you should be

(14:19):
doing on an ongoing basis so when it comes to your job search the reason mo most people become burnt
out is because because as it drags on it drags on for so many reasons typically you start in a spot
where you are screwing things up because you are unconsciously incompetent about what you actually
need to be doing the right kind of activities that will lead to results where you're spending a lot

(14:41):
of time drafting a resume that is ineffective putting it in an applicant trashing system that
is one of the least effective ways to actually attain a job interview let alone a job and you're
focusing on a lot of things because you do not know and that's okay that you do not know but
when you understand and get into a situation where you can identify what those high yield

(15:03):
activities are and you start focusing on them that's a great start when you start doing them
and doing them in a disciplined fashion that's another great step and when you are focusing
on all the things that you can control and and and and the outputs that you can generate that
nobody can ever prevent you from generating like contacting organizations and contacting bosses or

(15:24):
just or networking effectively or all the things that you can do that no one can prevent you from
doing when you start taking control of that you will feel more in control and typically when we
address a problem or we tackle a problem our nerves our emotions will we'll relax more we
will feel better about it even if we're not getting the results that we're getting but

(15:45):
when your your focus is on well life life isn't fair or I'm too young or I'm too old or why I was
perfect for that job why didn't I get it there are so many things that you're doing incorrectly
but if you can get focused on what you can control and start learning the mechanics of what a good
job search looks like and then doing it and then if you're doing a good job search if you are not

(16:08):
getting the results that you are are hopeful uh that you would get then looking and analyzing the
data effectively that becomes another exercise that you need to do so when you're going through
all of this a big reason why you're burned out is because of your ex faulty expectations and also
where you're placing your attention so I want to get you focused on the fact that I want you to do

(16:30):
what you can control i I want you to remember that it only takes it only takes one when you are going
through a disciplined approach and I recommend my job search challenge you can find out more about
that on my YouTube channel but as you are going through and consistently identifying organizations
reaching out to them in a proactive manner with some very very thoughtful messages that you can

(16:51):
craft to people who either can potentially hire you or get you to somebody that can hire you and
you are doing that on a day in and dayout basis as you evaluate as you can do that consistently
and evaluate the results and then make the adjustments based on what is happening and
what isn't happening you could be job searching and completely qualified for companies and roles

(17:12):
that perhaps just aren't hiring right now so what's your secondary skill what's your
secondary option do you need to make adjustments and so just because that's your that's your ace a
a skill doesn't necessarily mean that's the job you're going to take so it's it's triangulating
all this stuff but but much of the burnout comes from like I said faulty expectations focusing your

(17:35):
attention in the wrong place and I need to bring you back to getting in in into control and and
much like Jennifer focus on the day in and day out and knowing that it only takes one for her it was
it was really only two two a month give or take anything else was gravy anything less was just
a just a month that was was poor performance or or poor luck but I know a lot of you a lot

(18:00):
of you what you do is you you have halfhazardly look then maybe you get an interview on the line
just like she had a client on the line where she should have had a payday and then what you do is
you throw all your emotional eggs not to mention physical eggs in one basket and then when that
doesn't work out or they don't move fast enough or they ghost you right your emotions go down in

(18:21):
the tank and then what then you need to prospect again instead of prospecting on a daily basis and
never worrying about what happens what happens that is not in your control because you have
so many balls in the air that it won't matter if one of them falls who understands what I'm saying
who's guilty of the emotional roller coaster it's okay to I understand that right there are ups and

(18:44):
downs to this but who's guilty of the emotional roller coaster because of what somebody else is
doing what somebody else is not doing calling me back getting back to me making that referral
getting me you know my my my date and time for my next interview right who's guilty of that and so
my my big message here is recognize that you are in a process that you are generally inexperienced

(19:10):
with and even if you've job searched before you do it infrequently and even if you job search before
things might be different now I spoke with a woman we did a we did a case study uh the other night on
on on uh on Tuesday she hadn't job searched in 36 years talk about different so I know I know

(19:30):
it's tough i know it's hard i know you feel like you're working hard and maybe you are but you got
to be working on the right activities you got to be making sure you're gaining the benefits of the
experience you got to be making sure that your attention is in the right place because where
you place that attention is going to have a lot to do with how you feel so I hope Jen's story gave

(19:53):
you another illustration of the importance of the discipline and the focus on the process as opposed
to the outcome when you put a resume together the only goal is to get an interview when you get in
the interview the only goal is to get the next interview if you're worried about why am I not
getting the job fast enough your focus isn't in the right place and what that h what that does is

(20:17):
it forces you to not operate in the most effective manner in in the most um with and and it hampers
your ability to be your best at any moment in time and so this is a multi-step process that you need
to go through but I need your focus to be in the right place all right so I hope I hope that helped
if you enjoyed that click the like button share it because there are a lot of people that are burned

(20:40):
out on job searching and it only takes a few weeks or a few months to get you really really burnt
out and I know some of you you come here week in and week out for months on end so I'm I'm sending
you good juju i'm always looking for ways to get you to look at things a little bit differently to
lift your spirits and get your performance better so I hope that helped i really do
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