Doing What Needs to be Done: Finding Willpower for the Job Search

Looking for work is, to put it lightly, not pleasant.

The inherent rejection (you’ll hear “no” more often than “yes”). The constant applying for positions. The resume and cover letter writing. The networking. The skils testing. The interviewing. The writing thank you letters.

Looking for work is work and it’s easy to get started but hard to sustain.

Yet searching for work in dribs and drabs isn’t the way to find work quickly. Job hunting an hour a day won’t cut it. If you want to find work relatively quickly (especially in a tough job market), you must look for work six to eight hours a day, five days a week.

But there’s so much distracting you. The Internet. Watching television. Visiting with friends. Working out. Helping the kids with homework. Hiding under the covers in a funk.

Looking for work day in and day out takes willpower. Follow the tips below for help on keeping that willpower muscle strong.

  1.  Willpower actually is something like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it grows. It also grows weaker from disuse.
  2.   Increasing your willpower in just one small area increases it in others (seemingly magically). Try exercising willpower in just one area, such as getting up a half hour earlier each day or making yourself contact five people about your job hunt each day, every day.
  3.  Don’t give yourself a “choice.” Make the thing you must do, the thing you must do.
  4. Understand that every time you skip doing what you said you would, you make it easier to not do it again. And again. And so on. Again, don’t give yourself an out. Get ‘er done!
  5. At the same time, don’t berate yourself constantly for not doing it. Just tell yourself it must be done. Just this one, small thing (remember tip 2, above).
  6.  Create a routine: Call those five people at the same time every day, for example.
  7. Pat yourself on the back when you do the thing you said you’d do. Reward yourself after doing it X number of times in a row. For example, if you call five people in a day, tell yourself you’ll surf the Web for an hour, no guilt allowed.

Here’s an easy and quick “one small thing” to do for your job search: Contact a recruiter at Arrow Staffing! We can help you find temporary (both short- and long-term) as well as direct-hire assignments with some of the Inland Empire’s best firms. Contact us today!

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