By Andrew Seaman
Senior Managing Editor for Jobs & Career Development at LinkedIn
The job search process is full of ups and downs. One moment you can be riding the high of a successful interview. A low can easily follow a day or two later due to a rejection email landing in your inbox. A roller coaster of emotions is not uncommon for job seekers.
At some points — especially after a particularly big loss — you may even feel grief. The job you really wanted may have evaporated. Or an employer ghosted you after a final-round interview. Those experiences and others can really sting and hit people hard.
Some people may tell you not to take it personally or to just "shake it off," but that's easier said than done. A serious emotion, like grief, deserves proper attention. It's crucial to recognize this emotion, acknowledge it and manage it without trying to suppress or rush through it.
Brittany Cole, who is the CEO of the career-development company Career Thrivers, spoke with me on my #GetHired podcast about overcoming grief in our careers.
The discussion is especially relevant for job seekers navigating a tough labor market. I want to highlight some of her key points in this edition of the newsletter.
1. Career Grief is Valid
People grieve when they experience the loss of a loved one, but the emotion applies to many other circumstances. While you may feel foolish at some points for experiencing grief — to any degree — it is a completely valid emotion when you feel a loss, including in your career.
"We have these expectations of who we might be and become and what we might experience, and when those things don't happen, oftentimes, we have this same experience of grief," said Brittany.
Just acknowledging your emotions is a big step, she adds.
"What I find happens so often is that we want to project sometimes an image that isn't true about how we're actually experiencing the job search process. I think that does us a disservice first, and it definitely does the people that we work with or want to work with a disservice."
2. Separate Your Self-worth from Your Work
One way to lessen the grief you'll feel from loss in your job search is to make sure your self worth is not tied to your work. Realize that you exist outside of your workplace and that you mean more to the world than what you do 9-5. There will always be some emotional overlap, but recognizing your value as a human will help a lot.
"I think the internal work, as a growing professional, as a growing leader is to think, 'Hey, I am who I am. I'm worthy by the mere nature of my existence, and my work is what I choose to do, and so this value of ownership is really important to me,'" said Brittany.
I fell into this trap early in my career. My identity was wrapped up in my employer and job. When I switched jobs, I felt a wave of negative emotions despite being genuinely excited about the moves I was making in my career. I'm much more deliberate these days about owning my identity outside of my work.
"When we think about what we believe, one belief that I think is important is that my worth, my W-O-R-T-H, isn't connected to my work," said Brittany.
3. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable
Many people feel trapped by shame when they're looking for work or have trouble landing a job. The key is to fight against that shame and ask for help. While it may seem like a simple solution, it's also incredibly powerful.
Brittany told me about navigating a difficult time in her career when she was trying to continue on like nothing happened. Her willingness to be vulnerable served as a powerful pathway to realizing she had support if needed.
"You can show up as you are," she said. "No one's going to think anything less of you, and you can let people into your space to get the support that you need to thrive."
"I think that getting real, first with ourselves, and then, taking that boldness and that vulnerability into how we communicate with other people, is how we navigate and shift from barely surviving to boldly thriving."