I started applying for jobs at a terrible time. I started about a year ago, as we were, unknowingly, heading into a pandemic. I was also in the middle of my first year as a master’s student. It was a terrible time. I was not the most attractive candidate with my limited language skills, inflexible schedule, and lack of a master’s degree—which nearly all university graduates seem to have in Brussels.
Over this past year, I have struggled with the lack of responses and the polite rejections. This is the way the job process goes. This is also the way writing goes: you get rejected a lot, and then someday you get a yes.
Someday, you get a chance.
But here we are, a year later—
still applying,
still being rejected.
It is difficult. It is part of life. It is something I will need to be used to in my career both professionally and as a writer. I cannot always get people to say yes.
These past couple of days, it has hit me. Hard.
I need a job.
But more than that, I sometimes find ones I am really excited about.
Then the anxiety creeps in:
They will never take you.
I look back over the past year:
No one else wanted you.
Why would they?
I doubt myself.
What do you really bring to the table?
You aren’t as good as you think you are.
These thoughts haunt me. The echo through my head every time I sit down to apply for jobs. Looking—at least for me—is the easy part. Putting myself on paper and talking about what I can bring to a team makes me uncomfortable. I do not know how to sell myself.
I wonder if there is a psychological lesson here. I know how to talk about and market products and projects I believe in.
Maybe I do not believe in myself as much as I thought.
Or maybe the pandemic is just getting to me. I have only ever worked post-recession.
What do I know about difficult economic times?
I could blame that.
This ties back into my fear of email writing and writing in general. As soon as I put something out into the world, I no longer have control over it. I have no control over how you interact with it. I have no control over the outcome of applying for a job or requesting something from someone.
I have gone most of my life not asking for things from others because I was afraid they would say no.
It makes living with Jesse interesting. He is the complete opposite. He is comfortable asking people for anything.
What is the worst thing they could do?
Say no?
To me, for some reason that no,
that rejection
is terrifying.
To the point where I procrastinate the unknown
—the potential rejection—
until the last minute, and I have to get something done; otherwise, it will never happen.
Not a recipe for quality or success.
Or I could learn to believe more in myself. What would help me believe more in myself? I could increase my skills. I could apply for a different subset of jobs—jobs I felt more qualified for.
The most important thing I can do is learn how to talk about myself.
Considering I have a blog on the internet where I write about myself and my challenges, it may be difficult to believe I have a hard time talking about myself. That was the reason I created this in the first place. Although, I am talking about deeper, personal struggles rather than how my background in writing and developing outreach campaigns in past roles would transfer to a new job.
Being comfortable talking, or writing, about ourselves, is an essential skill. We can use it for applying for jobs, dating, meeting new people in general, and even pitching ourselves as freelancers.
It is something I will be working on over the next few weeks.