Are you feeling stuck in a job search time loop?
Despite your best efforts, do you feel like you’re spinning your wheels with no end or job offer in sight?
Today is Groundhog’s Day, but aside from this day's titular movie, the time loop stories that resonate with my sci-fi-nerd brain are those from the Star Trek Universe.
One of my favorites is Star Trek: The Next’s Generation’s “Cause and Effect.” In the episode's cold open (no spoilers), the Enterprise is shockingly destroyed following an unknown catastrophe. We’re then led through a series of unique perspectives of the crew experiencing déjà vu, until they realize they’re in a causality loop that ends with their ship blowing up (or does it start with that? Ugh. Time paradoxes!).
What I love about these stories is that the recurring theme among them is that escape from the loop requires some strategy and the support of your community. How did the fictional future Enterprise crew escape their time loop? You’ll just have to watch to find out.
But if, in your present, you feel stuck in a job search time loop, let’s discuss some possible “causes and effects,” and some strategic- and community-focused solutions to escape.
A Job Application Time Loop: Eat. Sleep. Apply. Repeat.
If you’re waking up, applying for jobs, breaking only for meals or your current job, then doing it all over again the next day, you might be in a job search time loop.
Possible Cause: Your process is high-throughput, focused on sending as many applications per day as possible with the hopes that something will stick.
The Effect: You'll likely burn out from the monotonous and intensive work, with few or no interview invitations.
Strategic Escape: Focus on quality, not quantity. A high throughput process leaves little time for tailoring your application to what a recruiter or hiring manager is looking for. And generic documents will likely garner you little, if any, attention from them. Job descriptions are a statement of needs, or a call for help to solve a problem. Take the time to convince the hiring manager how you'll meet those needs, or solve that problem.
Community Support: Don't spend every day applying for jobs. Change up your process to include networking. Seek help from your existing network to connect with people who work at your target companies, or companies who employ professionals like you. There exists a whole network of hidden jobs that will never be advertised, but are filled by referrals, through which only networking can gain you access.
A Resume Writing Time Loop: The Reinvented Wheel
Sending tailored application documents is key to attracting the attention of recruiters and hiring managers. But, similar to above, if you're spending a majority of your time in application mode, and you feel like you're constantly creating new resumes and cover letters, you might be in a job search time loop.
Possible Cause: You synthesize new application documents for every job application you send, either in content, format, or both.
The Effect: Your process is time consuming and mentally taxing. You spend more time than you intend to create applications, leading you to burnout, or even talking yourself out of applying at all.
Strategic Escape: Create a primary resume document that details all your professional accomplishments tailored to the type of jobs you're applying to. Organize your accomplishments by skill theme, like project management, communication, and leadership. Don't worry about length, but format it perfectly. This primary document serves as the template to create the working resume you'll send as part of your application. By synthesizing a primary resume in advance, your effort to create a working resume is mostly editing, allowing you to focus synthesis efforts on a cover letter, if required, and on networking efforts to get your application in front of human eyes.
Community Support: In this competitive market, one tactic to getting an interview is sending your application directly to the hiring manager. Use your internet sleuthing skills to discover who that may be. If that method proves a dead end, employ your network to find direct or secondary connections at the company you're applying to. If you're able to have a conversation with the first or second degree connection, they might be willing to send your application materials directly to the hiring manager, or refer you to the roll through the company's internal job portal.
A Job Interview Time Loop: Wide net. No fish
As a scientist or STEM professional, you have a lot of technical and transferable skills that make you capable of performing many different jobs. Since many seem interesting to you, you apply to a wide variety of roles. If you're skilled at tailoring your applications, you likely receive frequent interview invitations. But if your interviews don't translate into offers, you might be in a job search time loop.
Possible Cause: Your job search is unfocused. You apply to many types of roles that employ the skills you have, but your motivation to pursue these roles is unclear.
The Effect: The lack of focus for the work you want to do translates into you being unable to convince a hiring manager of your motivation for that role. Hiring managers are assessing candidates' experience AND motivation, and will offer the role to someone who can convincingly do both.
Strategic Escape: To narrow your job search parameters, take a step back from your job search entirely to focus on self-reflection and exploration. Define the skills you're good at and enjoy using, the values that give your work meaning, and what your ideal workplace looks like. From there, you can explore and narrow your career options that best align with your skills, interests, and values so that you'll be able to explain to recruiters and hiring manager both how and why you want to work with them.
Community Support: Often, our friends and colleagues can see us more clearly than we can see ourselves. Ask your friends and trusted colleagues about what they view as your greatest skills and abilities, and discuss examples of those traits. Those are likely ones you enjoy and motivate you the most.
Break the loop to pursue your STEM career future.
Like the Enterprise crew who eventually discovered the key to escaping their causality loop, you too can guide yourself out a job search time loop.
- Identify the pattern leading to your loop.
- Apply a tactical fix to break it.
- Lean on your community, whether through networking, mentor guidance, or engagement with trusted peers.
When you combine a purposeful plan with the support of the community that believes in you, the loop collapses, allowing you to make progress toward your career goals with momentum and motivation.
If you're feeling the déjà vu of your job search, a coach can help you turn your frustration into a concrete action plan to pivot your career forward.
Book a 30-minute discovery call with me. We'll identify where your loop beings and outline a personalized escape route.
