How to manage and overcome job search anxiety

This story is part of our mental health series. Find out more here.

If you have a job you want to leave or are out of work looking for a job, it’s getting tougher to find that new gig.

The cooling labor market is offering fewer jobs, and a recent survey from the New York Federal Reserve shows a spike in the number of job seekers. More than 28% of Americans are looking for a new job, the highest rate in a decade.

This whole process of looking for a job can be overwhelming and stressful, so how can you stay motivated to keep going?

Cynthia Pong is here to help. She’s founder and CEO of Embrace Change, a career coaching firm that focuses on working with women of color.

“We are all living in an age of overwhelm, so at baseline, absolutely, these are normal feelings that everyone is going to have. So I think finding a way to accept those is key,” she says. “Therapy helps a lot with those kinds of coping mechanisms and therapeutic strategies, and also on a more tactical side for the job search piece of it, it’s always good to have a plan and you can always focus on actioning on the plan, which is within your control at all times.”

6 questions with Cynthia Pong

How do you start to make a plan for finding a job? 

“I like to start at the end, which is what is your end goal? And that might sound like a really basic, ‘well, duh’ question for a lot of folks, but you got to break that goal down a little bit to be a bit more specific with your priorities.

“So let’s say you want a certain type of role in a certain type of company or industry. Well, is it that you want to work in that type of company more or do you care more about the role and the type of work that you’re doing? Do you care more about the company culture? Is geography more important to you? Actually getting clear on what your priorities are and what the top most priority goal is within your job search is actually really important to crafting a strategic plan that works.”

How can you manage your time when looking for a job? 

“As far as scheduling out, block your time, respect your time blocks and make sure you have enough on a weekly basis so that you are putting enough fuel on this fire.

“I think it’s good to have targets only because when we pay attention to things and measure them over time, we can actually see how it’s impacting our results. Now, there will be a lag because these things are not immediate. But if you’re putting in, let’s say, five hours a week and you’re not getting results after four to six to eight weeks, then maybe 10 or even 15 hours is what needs to be done.”

What else should job seekers be doing besides applying to jobs? 

“All too often we hear about folks who are spending, I would say 90% or even 100% of their job search time on applying to jobs, usually it’s cold applying, and they’re spending all of their job search time on the application part. That is not the best use of your time when you are job searching, and here’s why.

“I’ve always been a huge fan of what I call a people first job search strategy. So let’s say, you have a neighbor and you talk to them, they don’t do anything like what you do but you let them know that you’re open to X, Y, Z opportunities. Do they know somebody in that industry? Maybe not, but they might be like, ‘Hey, talk to so and so,’ and then you talk to them and then maybe they do, right?

“That’s a real life example, but you can also do this on things like LinkedIn, digitally virtually, we can exponentially increase our networks. It’s a lot easier than it used to be.”

How do you get past the humiliation of admitting you’re looking for work? 

“It is a long process to kind of either undo or reject or simply embrace the fact that we do live in a culture that is very, very work and career identity obsessed. But it’s important to remember at the end of the day, your value is not tied to your ability to output a certain labor. And we can reject this tendency to attach shame, humiliation, feelings of inadequacy around it.

“I know it’s hard, but if we continually do it as a daily practice, we can start to embrace the fact that this is normal. There is nothing to feel bad about.”

How do you stay motivated when you’re job hunting? 

“I would say it’s like building stamina for any other sort of activity. I’m not a runner, but I will tell you that thinking about if I had to train for any kind of race, even a 5K, not even talking about a marathon, right? Like that to me feels extremely intimidating and overwhelming. So if you think about that, that people do go from not running to running marathons, this is also possible in your job search. You can approach it like a marathon.

“One, we don’t have to take any type of rejection personally. I know that that’s easier said than done, but there are always so many reasons why that offer didn’t come through that have absolutely nothing to do with you. They had maybe an internal candidate lined up, maybe the funding for the position was pulled. None of that has to do with you. Every no gets you closer to your next yes.”

How can you manage the big emotions that come up during the job search?

“I think the first thing is to not run away from that and to acknowledge that it is really emotionally hard. I do think for most folks reaching out and bringing others into it can feel supportive because that’s how you really realize you are not alone. And at the same time, we got to take breaks because it is a marathon. We don’t know how long it will be and so take strategic breaks.

“And then think also do you need at certain points to put your energy and time into actually something that’s a little bit to the side? For example, if you’re really struggling financially and you’re between jobs, are there other ways that you can earn money while you’re job searching to depressurize the job search for you? Do you need to look at a ‘bridge job’ or as I like to call them a rebound job to pay those bills for the time being? It’s not going to stop you and you can still do your job search and networking.

“We have to get more creative than in the past because we have to build and create our own what I think of as career insurance because nobody is coming to like ‘save us’ in this time and we have to make sure we have those backups for ourselves.”