6 Ways To Make Job Hunting Fun

Let’s face it; graduating is fun. The prospect of using your skills in the marketplace is exciting. Your whole life is ahead of you and you plan to make the most of it, whether you left uni with top marks or not.

You may dream about being head-hunted, but you also know that prospective employers aren’t likely to come knocking at your door. You understand that you’ll probably be competing with scores of other hopefuls. Still, optimism reigns supreme.

So how do you hold onto it, as the flush of graduation gives way to the reality of applying for work, sending off your CV, going to interviews – even being rejected? Can job hunting really be as much fun as graduating?

Yes, with a few simple tricks.

Identify the spoiler and slay that dragon!

What spoils fun in anything? Fear and anxiety definitely feature, but right at the top of the list is being alone. If we’re anxious about something and we tell somebody about it, the worry dissipates.

Share what it’s like to write your CV, to send it off, to wait for that phone to ring. Talk about what you’re going to wear for the interview, what you’re going to say. Get a friend to role-play good- and bad-case scenarios with you. It’s the best way to free up your sense of humour.

Remember what you have to offer

Nobody in their right mind would advise you to respond to a job ad or swagger into an interview, arrogantly demanding to know what a prospective employer can do for you. It happens in movies, and the idea of it is great fun, but in real life the chances that you would be shown the door are pretty high.

That doesn’t mean that you must see yourself as the beggar who can’t be a chooser. You have a lot to offer. Be honest with yourself about that. Make a list. Take pride in it. Life looks a lot rosier when you believe in yourself.

Redefine ‘failure’

Usually people who have reached a certain level of achievement are where they are because they met plenty of obstacles. They may even have stumbled, and sometimes felt disheartened.

But they didn’t give up, because they didn’t see themselves as failures. They acknowledged the difficulties, and set about overcoming them.

‘Failure’ is a dirty word, loaded with self-criticism. Redefine it! It’s easy to look at successful people and think they had no challenges, but if you dig a little deeper into their lives, you’ll probably find that they had plenty. J.K. Rowling is a wonderful example. Her TED talk on the fringe benefits of failure is uplifting, funny and inspiring.

Adjust your idea of success

Success isn’t about outcome. It’s about getting yourself to take action. You’re succeeding when you decide to write your CV, when you actually do it and then look for work, when you talk to a friend or ask for advice.

Sounds kind of pedestrian and ordinary, right?? That’s because it is! When you realise that success is simply doing what you can from moment to moment, it feels—and is—achievable. There’s nothing like achievement to restore a sense of optimism.

Think of yourself as a mountaineer

What separates mountain climbers like Cecilie Skog from the person in the street? A lust for adventure, sure. But they also relish a challenge. The experience is taxing, sometimes to the extreme, but they love every moment of it.

So be a mountain climber in your own way.

Reward yourself

Our brains are wired to respond to reward. If we get a prize for something, we instinctively want to do more of it. So get into the habit of setting small, achievable goals and rewarding yourself when you’ve accomplished the task.

When we experience a lot of reward, even if we give it to ourselves, we create happy memories and hardwire our brains to expect positive outcomes. That gives us more confidence, more resilience, and even more physical energy.

And our optimism bucket fills up.

Inspiring Interns is a graduate recruitment agency which specialises in sourcing candidates for marketing internship roles and giving out graduate careers advice. To browse graduate jobs and graduate jobs Manchester, visit their website.