The Dark Parts of Job Hunting

It’s difficult finding a job in a small town or even in a big city especially with the way our economy is. So many people complain about having to go to work to make enough money to get by. Well, at least you made it.

Imagine this: you are sitting in your apartment dreaming about owning a home, but you can’t until you get a job. Your husband or partner is providing for you and just waiting till it happens so you can get approved for a mortgage. So you open your laptop and you start scrolling through jobs. You find something right in your expertise except they need someone to have five years experience using a certain software. That’s not a good opportunity for you, so you move on and you find something with exactly what they need. You apply. Days later you get the email congratulations we want to interview you. You excitedly email back right away with a date and time. Interview is set! Yay what a win. You spend time preparing and rehearsing your answers to common questions. You got this! You tell yourself the day of the interview. You go and you think you got it. However an email comes through days later than they said. The word unfortunately appears on the screen and you shut the laptop. Then the negative thoughts start to swirl in your mind: am I a failure? Did I get lucky with my last job? What did I do wrong? Maybe I’m not meant to have a job and I’ll end up crashing at a friends… Was my entire education, training a waste of time? Was it not enough? I was perfect for the role…should I give up? Maybe I’ll never buy a house…

With enough rejection the thoughts keep surfacing, it is what keeps you up at night, it’s the reason your nightmares involve feet pics and comments calling you “a whore”. The thoughts don’t go away until you land that job. You can have all the right qualifications but say the wrong thing at an interview and it costs your job, your future and it straight up sucks. Then, guess what? You get to do the same thing tomorrow. Scroll. Apply. Interview. Rejection. It’s the vicious cycle of finding work. You start to feel hopeless and you try desperately trying to google “How to make money” you consider going back to school even if it took you seven years just to figure it out the first time. However, you would need to get a loan and be stuck at square one. Rejection can sting badly and it can knock you down. Especially because what you do for work in North America tends to define you. You say things such as “I am a teacher” or “I am an engineer” or (in my case) “I’m an administrative assistant” without that my life feels like I have no definition, I am just floating try to figure it out and it’s so hard to face that.

This story had a lot of negatives so I will leave you with a positive note: it means that the job you applied for was not meant to be, everything happens for a reason and maybe that reason is because there is an even better job for you out there. When door close sometimes a window opens and it takes you to where you are supposed to be. Currently, I am trying to make reels to advertise Amazon products and see if I can make that work in the meantime. I do have another interview lined up, which means that at one point I will get hired and I will buy that house. Anything is possible, it’s just how you see it and how you frame it. Stay positive keep applying and keep going! You got this!