Frustrations of Job Seeking: Brutal Imposter Syndrome & Stress

Job seeking will make you look at your imposter syndrome, and still feel like that is not you.

As this year began, I made a pact with myself that this was the year I was going to do the one thing I had been hoping for, GET A NEW JOB. I love my job and the people I work with, but I felt that my career was/was not going anywhere. There are no new challenges that would make me sweat but make me excited to figure out how to accomplish them. I felt stuck, having to do the same thing every day.

Since January, I have been job seeking, hoping to find a new job that could foster my career progression. I would check job posting boards daily, ensuring I saw all the available opportunities. I would receive various vacancies from my friends and immediately worked on applications.

It is now July, and the motivation is slowly slipping through my veins. Hundreds of applications were sent and hundreds of regret emails were received. I am getting to the point of thinking that maybe it is time to take a break and breathe.

frustrations of job seeking

Job seeking can take a lot from us mentally, physically, and emotionally. With each job that we apply to, we invest ourselves in it. That is why we continuously get heartbroken and disappointed with ourselves when things do not go our way. The following is a bit of the frustration that I have encountered in the past few months.

no feedback

Most of you will agree that there is nothing as brutal as not receiving any feedback from the companies you have applied to, especially when the job description seemed it was pointing at you from every angle.

To make it worse, it is more brutal because it almost feels like you are playing a mind game with the company. A rejection email will ease your mind because you get a bit of closure and move on from it.

Not receiving any feedback always has us hanging by the thread with the hope that one day you might get that email but it never comes through.

interviews, no response

Then there’s the issue of actually being invited to interviews and just never hearing back. Just like the point above, this needs more involvement from you to prepare for interviews and make sure all is in order.

Sometimes, you go into an interview and come back knowing you are just not fit for the organization. The one that shocks the most are the ones where you come back thinking you did amazing. The ones that make you daydream of your first day at the job, on your desk, and how you would mesh well with the other employees.

Those are the ones that hurt the most when you do not hear back.

feeling beat-down

The biggest frustration with job seeking is that it will beat you down like a pup. It is not kind at all, and more than once, it will play on your self-confidence.

Job seeking will have you feeling disappointed and sad, and sometimes, that hinders you from thinking of things critically and learning what changes to make. As a matter of fact, because of the many rejections that you get, such feelings affect how you make other applications.

That is why you ought to have a good support system that can push you to get up and keep trying even when the world seems to be denying you the opportunity to do and be better.

the confusion

This particular situation might not be common, but it is something that has happened to me. Last year, I applied for a job and never got any feedback from the company. Two months later, my personal email address started blowing up from the company’s internal emails.

I would be copied from emails sent from the department’s manager, and even from junior employees to the said manager. This went on from August 2022.

In April this year, I made an official inquiry as to why my email kept receiving their internal emails. I sent the email directly to their manager, and have never gotten any response.

However, since then, I was removed from their mailing list. I kind of miss them, I learned so much about the company during that time.

imposter syndrome during the job seeking phase

One thing I have learned is that the job seeking process could result in you having imposter syndrome. If you look at the frustrations that you are bound to feel during this process, you will notice that it evokes sadness, disappointment, and doubt over and over again.

It is the doubt that causes one to gain imposter syndrome. For those who have no idea what it is, it is when your achievements do not register in your mind regardless of you working hard to obtain them. For example, you could solve the world’s greatest problem but still feel like it was not you who did it.

Other people confuse it with being humble, but in actual sense, people feel like they are scammers when they hear about their own achievements because their mind has not registered yet.

This will especially reflect during interviews, every word you say about your accomplishments will mostly sound like you are doubtful of yourself. It ends up not convincing the person that is trying to hire you.

Sometimes, you forget to mention crucial achievements because your subconscious will tell you that it is irrelevant to what you are applying for.

By the way, considering these are issues that I am currently facing, I am taking my own words with a grain of salt.

how am I dealing with the stress?

While I still get sad and disappointed at every lost opportunity, I am still pushing with the hope that the next one I apply for might just be the one.

Other than that, I have been burying myself in certifications. I have completed a certification in Project Management and Data Analytics. Currently, I am learning the fundamentals of Business Analysis, and hope to hop on Advanced Data Analytics to learn how to code in Python.

I am also learning more about R programming and how to use Tableau. Doing this makes me feel a bit more useful.

What are your current struggles with job seeking? Make sure to leave a comment below and release the stress.