199. The struggles of job hunting in our 20s

real for a second. The job market, the job hunt, the economic climate, all of the above have gotten so tough in recent years, and if you're in your twenties, you're probably feeling the pressure and the impact of this more than any other age group. It is so much more difficult than it was for our parents generation even a few decades ago, to find a job that can pay our bills but is also fulfilling, or to even find entry level opportunities in our chrosen industry, much less

a stable career path. And I think this experience of struggling with unemployment and continuous job hunting, the pressure to have it all figured out, the pressure to have some fulfilling, rewarding job lined up. Some fulfilling, rewarding career is really

feeling increasingly impossible in this day and age. So I wanted to talk about it, and I wanted to help you understand the science behind not only why it's so difficult, but why there is so much shame and frustration and at times even anger and resentment when it comes to job hunting in our twenties. I think that this topic definitely doesn't get enough of a spotlight, and I'll admit I've even fallen into I think a bit of complacency myself.

I have taken my own circumstances for granted because I was really lucky to kind of fall into something I loved quite early on. I don't think that is the case for everyone. I really think that a more universal experience is one of struggling to find your professional place in the world early on in your career. And just recently, I have had so many friends going through redundancies and periods of unemployment, constant rejections, and it's emotionally challenging. I

can see them really struggling with it. So much of our self esteem and our self concept is tied to what we do for work. It is tied to how we make money. It is tied to our sense of purpose. So when that is taken away from us or it's unavailable, no matter how hard we try, no matter how many job applications we put out, we feel firstly quite aimless, but secondly like we have somehow failed in a way that so many others have been successful. We think there

must be something wrong with us. We make assumptions about what other people are thinking about us, that we're lazy, that we lack discipline, that we aren't skilled, when there are so many other explanations for unemployment and struggling with job searching, struggling with your career during this decade. So today we are going to talk about the psychological impact of job hunting, unemployment, setbacks, and rejections in our twenties.

How we can manage our emotional well being must also staying focused and keeping optimistic about opportunities that come our way. We're also going to talk about concepts like bridging jobs, why there is no shame in doing something that you don't necessarily love for a paycheck, why it's okay to not have a five year plan, the myth of the dream job, and how to find your purpose during a

very confusing period of life. I strongly believe that when we talk openly about these situations, we reduce a lot of the invisible shame we're feeling that I think forces us to keep things to ourselves when they would become

so much easier and lighter out in the open. Trust me, if you're going through this right now, I really cannot express how many people have reached out to me with similar situations, how many friends of mine are going through this, some of them even in their late twenties, early thirties, and even broader than that. How every single trend is pointing to this being more difficult for this generation, to this being harder. It is not just you, I promise.

So we're going to slow it down. We're going to look at the psychology. We're going to talk all about it and hopefully make you feel a little bit better about your situation. So all of that are more after this shortbreak. We talk about it a lot on the show, but there is definitely this unspoken pressure in our twenties

to know what we are doing with our lives. There is an emphasis on having a five year plan, on having a dream job, financial independence, job security, that can feel really suffocating if that just hasn't been your path so far, or perhaps you just don't.

nineteen years of our lives, we were in school. We are typically doing the same things in the same environment, with the same ultimate goal as everybody around us, which is to graduate before we kind of get stuck into the real world. It is very structured, It is very uniform,

very repetitive for each and all of us. When we walk across the stage, when we graduate, suddenly, after eighteen years of always having somebody tell us what is next, what the requirements of moving forward are, we have agency and choice and freedom to choose where we want to go, who we want to be, and the goalposts kind of disappear. Maybe you do end up going to university in the goalpost to kind of reinstated, but only for another three

for maybe five years. At some point, school is going to kind of spit you out into the world, and you have to kind of figure out a way of operating in this new environment, one that you know, I do think the education system doesn't really get us prepared for. You know, it's not just about grades and assignments anymore. You have to put into practice everything that you've learned, and there will definitely be a learning curve, and it's

only natural to be struggling with that. This whole period in the field of psychology is known as emerging adulthood, and the word emerging there is really important because I think it highlights how transitionary this period is. It is not the final chapter. It is the first chapter in a very long life, in a very long career. Hopefully. I think that there is not one thing about our

career during this decade that is permanent. Those the jobs that you're applying for, for example, they could not exist in like twenty years. The unpaid internships. Eventually you won't have to do them anymore, the terrible bosses. One day you will quit that job and you will find something more meaningful and purposeful, the job interviews, the confusion. Eventually that will go away. Eventually it will become more clear to you what you want to do, where you want

to be, who you want to be. But all of those things that we really struggle with, they are to be expected when we're kind of first starting out. I think the misconception that makes us feel really terrible is that this will be like this forever. Right, we are always going to feel this lost, we are always going to feel this aimless, this purposeless, We're always going to be in this state of striving for an opportunity. But secondly to that that it is an us problem, not

a societal one. So when I was researching this episode, I came across two articles that were super enlightening when it came to this exact point, job hunting and a lack of success that many of us are experiencing is a societal problem rather than an individual one. So the first article was published by the BBC last year, and it essentially said, nearly all young workers, so people between eighteen and thirty are struggling to cope with economic uncertainty

but also the instability of the job market. And what this article said was that about no ninety one percent of us are experiencing or have experienced at least one instant of stress around our future career and our future job insecurity or security. In the last six months, ninety one percent of us in our twenties essentially are feeling very much unstable and unsure of what is next. A lot of this also came down to three large scale stresses. A fewer entry level jobs that has a proven fact.

There are less opportunities for people who are junior or just starting out to get their foot in the door, b increasing competition for a smaller pool of opportunities. It's not just that there are more people who want a smaller amount of jobs, but that those people are more educated, more proficient, have done more internships, have more job experience

than ever before. And see there is this rising cost of life living, which means that even if you do get one of those coveted entry level jobs, even if you do, you know, surpass all those dozens hundreds of others, you still might not be able to pay your bills. That is one component of why this is so increasingly stressful. The second article was from Time magazine and it was titled you're not imagining it. Job hunting is getting worse.

I'm going to leave a link to this article in the description, because if this describes your experience, you need to read this article. And what they explain is that the tightening kind of labor market. Not to make this like an economic podcast rather than a psychological one, but we'll get to the psychology, I promise. Essentially, the tightening

labor market has triggered two changes. Firstly, because a lot of companies are really scared about a recession, they take a lot more time to choose people that they're hiring because they want to make sure that they are choosing the right person. Something that we may not realize is that we obviously know it costs money to employ people, but it actually costs also a significant amount of money to find the people that we want to employ, and so companies like just getting a lot more stingy and

a lot more cautious. I have heard stories of people doing like three or four levels of interviews for entry level jobs. My friend Emily, she is applying for jobs in the public service in Australia at the moment. She went through three interviews for an entry level position and she didn't hear anything for two months, and eventually they'd offered her the job, but she was like, it's been two months. I can't wait for that long. So they're kind of like back to the drawing board. Companies are

just taking longer. They're making you jump through more extravagant and extreme hoops. The second element of this is that because the job market is becoming more limited, more experienced and educated people are now applying for the kind of jobs that used to be reserved for individuals like fresh out of UNI. You know, there has been mass redundancies

across tech, across so many other industries. That has meant that people with master's degrees and multiple bachelor's degrees who have five to ten years of experience, they're getting replaced by AI. They're getting let go of and they have to start again, along with people like you and I, people in their twenties who are starting out for the first time. I know that this has taken a very pessimistic turn. I am sorry this is not being like empowering pump up speech that I wanted for this episode.

But all of this is just to say, I promise it's not just you. It is systematic it is just as hard for so many other people out there. I'm hoping that that is a comforting statement to hear, right that you might be putting a lot of pressure on yourself. You might be feeling terrible that it's you, that you don't have what it takes, that you're being lazy, that no one likes you, that it's a personal thing, when

actually across the board people are struggling with this. It's a really hard time to be new to the job market and unemployed. So there are some really tangible, real and true psychological and emotional consequences that come with being stuck in this limbo jobless period, you know, perhaps taking on bridging rolls to make money, not fully satisfied or sure when one of these countless interviews or resumes is going to hit the desk of the right person. It's

a waiting game. And I'm sure you know this already, But there are a lot of ways that this bleeds into our well being, into our state, our mental state essentially, and I want to talk about four of the main ways that we can see this in our lives and

how to address it before it gets out of hand. Firstly, job hunting, it is a lot of effort, from building your resume to finding jobs whose criteria and requirements you match, to cover letters, to interviews, to references, sometimes most of the time doing this for multiple opportunities at a time with little payout that is bound to get exhausting. There comes a point where we hit a wall, and it's

actually called the law of diminishing return. Essentially, what it means that at some point, no matter how much we put into an activity, say a job hunt, the output getting a job doesn't change. At a certain level. There is only so much effort we can put in before we become disheartened, before we can't give any more, and we're not getting the outcome that we want. And this can lead to two distinct feelings, resentment and pessimism. Resentment

firstly because we feel like the system is unfair. We feel like we just deserves some reward for what we're putting in, how much we want it, how much harder we're working than other people who are getting these opportunities seemingly easily. Like I know, it's not a good feeling, and it's a very shameful feeling, but it is a feeling that we do experience seeing other people get the opportunities that we wanted and feeling kind of upset about it.

When things just keep going the same way, when we are not hearing back, when we're not getting the response that we want, we develop a mental attitude or an expectation that it's going to continue much the same. Getting into that mental rut, it can be really hard to climb out of because your efforts and your hard work that is required to keep going are not being reinforced. And as humans, we do really thrive off of reinforcement.

There does come a point where our expectations are going to be dashed, our hopes are going to be in the dumb star, and it's just going to feel like there is absolutely no.

talking about? And I was like, you know you when you know you want an audition? She was like, Nah, you don't think You're not meant to think about it. Don't think about it unless you get a positive response, because it keeps your expectations low so that you don't keep spiking your expectations when you think that this one's going to work out. You think that this one's going to be the one, and then it's not, and you

fall back into that failure mindset. You continue to be feel like you are being negatively punished for your efforts. You feel like there is no hope. The second reason job hunting is so hard comes down to the constant rejection. Maybe you are lucky enough to get the first job you apply for, but that is the exception, not the rule. Most of us will receive about six to ten rejections

before we get a job offer. According to Forbes, rejection is such a heavy emotion, It is such a primal state because we are hardwired to avoid it at all costs. Rejection on a very basic level signifies a lack of approval from those whose opinion we value, and when that is repeated, we begin to internalize a number of secondary assumptions about ourselves. That we are not good enough, that we are not as intelligent as we thought, we're not capable,

that we are failures, and that hurts our ego. Our

ego is related to our confidence. When our confidence is low, that can really interfere with what jobs we apply for, how secure we come across in interviews, because we begin to believe that these rejections are in some ways defining us, that somehow these other people must know that we're getting desperate, they must know that all these other companies rejected us, and that kind of begins to overwhelm what we do actually bring to the table, our wonderful qualities, our wonderful assets.

I think it's even worse when you just don't get any feedback at all, You don't receive anything. Honestly, the places that just ghost you are awful, especially when you are young, and especially like when they just don't have the empathy to remember what it was like to be in your position when you could really benefit from the feedback, You could benefit from having some closure and not still thinking about that job in two months not still thinking

you had a chance. Two things to counteract the rejection treadmill, that it sometimes feels like we'ron firstly after each disappointment, do something kind for yourself. So there is this brilliant article published by Psychology Today that I'll also link in the description. And this doctor, her name is doctor Genie Schneider. She said something so perfect about this. Looking for a job can feel like a punishing experience. We look at the prize that is getting the job as the only

reward for all the work. Instead, you need to provide ample rewards for all your job hunting efforts. Apply for the job. Then give yourself a break to have fun. Go through like your fourth interview, take a friend to dinner, go and like go for a walk, get out of your head, tell yourself you will you know, reward yourself with like a small after preparing for a lengthy interview,

after finishing that ruling, cover letter or case study. I think rewarding yourself for the effort, not the outcome, helps you maintain that motivation and that momentum that you really need. It's also valuable to remember that it's not always about you. Of course, we are at the center of our own universe. That's how it is. We are the only person who we truly can understand, and even then we don't really

understand ourselves fully. But it's our reality that we are most aware of, and so we tend to think every failure or rejection must relate back to something that was wrong with us, something that we were lacking, that we did incorrectly. Instead, I want you to consider this concept or this kind of like idea I came across called the mustard effect. So the mustard effect came from the story of a really talent an actor who went to meet with the director for a new movie. He was

perfect for the role. He was like the leading man of the day, super attractive, talented, perfect like resume. But right as he got to the restaurant, the director he was meeting spilled mustard on his favorite shirt and he was so frustrated. He was so distracted that he passed on the actor. He didn't offer him the movie. You can be the most amazing candidate, and sometimes the recruiter

is just in a bad mood. There is just someone had a bit more experienced than you and something really niche that they need somebody spills mustard, so try not to take it too personally. Sometimes it's not even like the disappointment and the exhaustion of the constant efforts and the letdowns. It's the simple fact that not having a job means we can't do certain things that truly bring us joy and that fill our cup because we simply

don't have the money for them. When you are watching all of your friends buy new clothes, go out for dinner, book vacations, that can't be a very nice feeling, as much as we try and suppress it, And me is an especially loud emotion, So I don't blame you. It's hard to see everybody else living perhaps a life of ease while you're still struggling. You know, this day and age, it is the age of social comparison. Of course we

are going to compare paychecks. Of course we are going to compare career progression, job titles or lack thereof, because all of those things serve as proxies for what we see as progress. Our jobs also bring a sense of purpose in productivity, like we can say we're doing something that our degrees were worth something. Those internships, those extracurriculars, those you know, stupid jobs that we didn't want to do. It was all worth it because we have something to

do with our day. When we don't have that, there is definitely a level of shame and stigma. I think we implicitly feel we're adults. This is what we should be doing, this is what we were always taught we should be doing. We should have a job. That's how we stay useful in society, especially in a society where it's our output that really counts. So I read this story about how in Japan, businessmen will actually get dressed up in the morning in their suits, in their ties.

They'll take the train to the city, they'll leave their apartments, and they'll just sit in the park all day until they return home because they don't have jobs. And it's not that they're being productive with that time. It's that the shame of not having a job, the shame of being unemployed, causes them to want to keep up the facade for those around them. And I think that's not too dissimilar to what you may be experiencing a sense

that you are lazy or that you're going to be judged. Obviously, you may not be going as far as to put on a business suit and go and sit in the park all day. But there is perhaps a tendency to conceal things, a tendency to perhaps I don't know, not want to reveal to your friends or your family that you are struggling, how hard it has been, how many

rejections you have gotten, how lost you feel. I also heard this from a lot of friends of mine who are currently on the job hunt, looking for a cool thing to do, that there is this tension, this kind of pool between wanting to simply get a job, not wanting to get left behind, wanting to make some money, but also wanting to be happy in what you're doing and not just settle for the first job that comes

your way. It feels like a really significant choice, and that is the confusion that also comes along with this. We spend ages trying to find a job, only to have doubts about what might be right for us. I think job hunting is hard enough, but when you add purpose and mission and ambition into the picture, it gets

even more complicated. So we're going to take a short break, but when we come back, we're going to kind of discuss how we can discover purpose whilst also looking for that paycheck, and also how you can lessen the pressure or the mental load of job hunting and the shame when it isn't going your way. All of that and

more after this short break. One of my favorite like tumbler Instagram, that kind of genre of posts that I've ever seen, which was quite popular back in the day but still feels very noteworthy, is this post that recounts when famous actors and public figures first got their big break. Oprah, for example, got fired from her first reporting job at twenty three. Harrison Ford, he was a carpenter at thirty. Morgan Freeman, he wasn't in like a major movie until

he was fifty two. I'm sure that a lot of us have seen this post, but I think that every time I see it, it is such a simple reminder that the stakes feel really high right now. They feel really significant in our twenties to get it right. But there are so many paths to your dream destination and so many parts of the journey that you just cannot foresee in the moment that you are in right now. I think uncertainty is part of the twenty something package.

It's part of the deal. Not knowing what comes next, feeling like you have these big dreams and not knowing what to do with them, feeling like there are other dreams you have to put on hold out of necessity. That is all kind of part of what this decade promises. So firstly, I want you to take the press sure off a little bit. You don't need to be searching for or working your dream job right now to be happy. In fact, I personally don't think that the dream job

even exists. There is so much hype around this idea that if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. I think that neglects the role of practicality just needing something to give you a paycheck, having those intermission periods where you are in transition, like after graduation, or when you're making a career jump, or after getting fired, It is okay to be working casual jobs in the meantime. It is okay to not necessarily

know what comes next. I think this idea of the dream job makes a lot of us feel like if we're not totally sold and in love with what we are doing as a career, we are bound to be miserable. But it doesn't consider that life is more than work, and that sometimes you don't really know what you want to do until much later in life when you have had experience. And maybe that is what this time is

right now. It is about experience. It is about applying for jobs you never saw yourself doing and maybe doing them for a couple of months, doing them for a year, and just seeing where it takes you. A perspective that I kind of love. As an alternative to the dream job concept is this Japanese idea of ikigai, so that kind of roughly translates to reason for being. I was introduced to this concept through a book that was written about it a couple of years ago by these two authors.

And in the process of writing this book, they went to this small town in the Okinawa district in Japan, and it's what is known as a blue zone, So there are a bunch of blue zones around the world. These are essentially locations where the population in those areas are some of the happiest and some of the healthiest and who live the longest. And what they found was that amongst all these kind of like elderly Japanese people, all of them had a sense of ika guy. They

had a sense of being. Instead of looking for one thing that is going to light your fire, instead of looking for a job that just pays you a lot of money, or trying exorbitantly hard to just find the one thing that you absolutely love doing and nothing else at all, focus on asking yourself for specific questions. What do you actually like doing, what do you actually enjoy, what are you good at doing, What do you receive praise for, What do people tell you that you have

a special knack for. What does the world actually need? And what can you get paid for? So, if we have like the example of being a psychologist, that might be your dream job right now, It's probably going to take like quite a few years of study to get there, probably a lot of probably a lot of setbacks in the interim. You still need to make money. You still want to be doing something, So think about how you

can fulfill your ecer guy in other ways. I'm guessing if you want to be a psychologist, you're probably really good at talking to people. You enjoy talking to people. They connect with you, they open up, it feels fulfilling. I think the world needs more people who can hold empathy and space for others. But right now, you can't get paid for it in the specific way that you

would like. But if you were a grocery store clerk or a disability support worker, if you worked in customer service, you can still utilize your unique abilities and gain those vital skills, even if it's not your dream destination. You know, personally, before I did this full time, you know, a lot of people might assume this is my dream job. I didn't even know this existed three years ago, and before I,

you know, stumbled into podcasting. I've spoken about how I worked in consulting, and especially I did health consulting and big mental health programs for the government was something that I really focused on. It was not my dream job, but besides that, there was so many things that I took from it that have made my current career so much more fruitful. Obviously I spoke a lot about mental health during that time, but it also made me really

proficient in academic research. It made me really proficient in time management, in science communication, in writing applications for grants and things like that, and I'm so grateful for that. Now, I think I firmly believe that our twenties are not our time to be perfect, especially when it comes to our careers and our professional lives, it's a time for experimentation. It's a time for discovery. Your purpose might not be entirely clear to you right now, but that is what

this period is for. It's getting to see what's out there, doing jobs that might not be high on your list of things that you thought you would like doing, applying for those random positions that you've never considered, and just seeing what happens. I know that it's very easy to compare to people who seemingly have it all, who are already looking like they're uber successful, but that is again

the exception, not the rule. Another component of the job hunt of an unemployment in our twenties is taking on roles where you are just going to have to swallow the toad. You are going to have to start from the bottom and maybe do things that you don't necessarily want to do, but it can lead you to something bigger. When you look at those people you might see online who you think, oh my god, they have it all together.

What did they do differently? What do they do that I didn't do, you have to remember that they might just be a few steps ahead of you, or they may have had networks, they may have had shortcuts, or they may have done these tedious, unfulfilling job that you're doing now that are actually really valuable because they give you that work ethic that doesn't disappear the older you get, and they give you those connections, they give you that experience.

You just have to start somewhere, even if it's not where you imagined yourself starting. Some final tips for managing both the stress and the practicality of job hunting in our twenties. Firstly, find someone else who is going through the same thing and meet up with them to job hunt, to write cover letters, to write applications together. Treat the job hunt like a job, like there is structure, like there are things and KPIs and tasks that you need

to tick off. So you don't feel like this is a waste of time, so you don't feel like this is just an endless cycle of not knowing of effort and setbacks. But alongside that, when you do it with somebody else, you have that support, kind of have somebody almost like a colleague or a coworker, a coworker and your job hunt to complain to and to kind of just have a whine too about how rough it is, and to know that they experiencing they are experiencing the

same thing. It also just obviously helps combat loneliness of unemployment as well, which is a big thing. Secondly, don't be afraid to tell people that you are looking for work. Not only does this train us out of the feeling of shame, which is important. There is no shame in just getting started and trying to find what's right for you.

But I think when we are vulnerable about something that we don't like to speak about, people feel a natural inclination to help, and there is a natural like eliciting of empathy. They will, I think, connect you with new people. They will connect you with places that are hiring, with friends that they know in the endie with opportunities that they've heard of. People want to be in your corner.

Those empathy centers in our brain start lighting up when we see somebody else who is not only struggling, but as being open and sensitive about that struggle. Finally, I want you to know that it will happen, even if it is taking time, even if you're going slower than you imagined, even if you are not where you thought you'd be. No one wakes up a success. So many success stories start with shitty jobs, start with being broke, start with not having the perfect job, or any job

at all. There are so many steps in between where you are now and where you want to be in

the future. And I don't know, as someone who went through periods of unemployment and who've worked terrible jobs and who got rejected from so many jobs and so many internships, there will come a point where you do get to look back and be like, you get to tell the story in hindsight, and it feels kind of magical that you got to where you are, and you do feel in some ways grateful for the lessons that you learn and the fact that you didn't just come to you easily,

that you actually had to try and work hard and test yourself. Every small piece, every small thing that you are doing, every small action, is contributing to the process. It's contributing to you getting a job, finding your career path, figuring out what you want to do. But right now it doesn't have to be perfect. You are doing enough, You are doing the best you can, and I'm just

sending a lot of love. I'm sending a lot of encouragement and support your way, because I know it is tough when everyone around you seems to have it together, when you're broke, when you don't have the money for the opportunities that you would like to be pursuing, when it feels like you waste it all your time and uni in college and nobody wants you. It's temporary. Something

will come your way, I am sure of it. So I really hope that this episode has been of some solace to you, or has at least provided you with some new information, something else to consider, some tips, some tricks, some comfort. As always, if there is somebody that you know in your life who is also job hunting, firstly, maybe hit them up and start applying for some jobs together. It's a great idea. Otherwise, share this episode with them. Maybe they'll get something out of it as well. Make

sure that you are following along. I post so many different episodes, so many different concepts, ideas, so many different aspects of our twenties, and I'm always looking for episode suggestions, So feel free to dm me at that psychology podcast with your thoughts, your feelings, your questions, your qualms, whatever it is. I would love to hear from you and as always, until we see you next week, Stay safe, stay kind, be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very soon. One