How to Stop Damaging Confidence in Your Job Search

How to Stop Damaging Confidence in Your Job Search During your job search, do you ever start thinking, “My resume seems to brag too much!” or “There is no way that company will find me valuable!”If so, you are damaging your confidence in your job search. Worse, you are hurting your chances of getting hired before you started looking!This post explains how you can stop damaging your confidence during a grueling job search.Stop Devaluing Your Career Success on a ResumeStop focusing on the negative times in your job career and letting that spill over into your resume. Eventually, you will start to think of yourself as a fraud who does not deserve success.You will cheapen your resume by not adding your top accomplishments. Additionally, you will start explaining away your success, so no one sees the value in it.For example, we critiqued a resume at Find My Profession with the following sentence. We requested the job seeker remove it immediately. Read if you can understand what makes this resume content harmful to a job candidate' s chances:“Led a team of 50 during a successful $30 million-dollar merger with [this company]. It was never completed due to [this company] filing for bankruptcy.”The person essentially stated, “Look at this great success I am proud of and this is why it does not matter.”Do not devalue your career success by explaining why it was not that great to you.Stop Asking Yourself Random Negative QuestionsThese questions sound a little like these questions below:“Why do I even bother?” “Why am I not passionate about anything?” “Do I even have the relevant skills to perform this job?” “How do I keep up with all the changes?”You have no answer to these questions. The more you take action, the less you think about them.Stop Fearing Possible StrugglesIt seems like everyone else always knows what to do and what they want. They seem to always have it easy. Right?Wrong. Everyone goes through a struggle on the path to job success.Some hide their stress better than others when struggling while others pretend as if they knew what they were doing all along.That’s nonsense. Anyone who has ever bootstrapped a startup into a successful company knows the struggle to succeed is real.Fearing a possible struggle awaits you in a job search may just lead you to take a job you will eventually hate because it was a safe thing to do.Stop Being the Ultimate PerfectionistIf new technology, social media, and today’s job market have proven one thing, it is this:You do not have to be perfect to get ahead in your career.Everything is imperfect because times are always changing. That job which felt like a perfect career choice 5 years ago now lacks opportunity for new challenges.Staying addicted to being perfect hurts your ability to take risks, look into new careers, and communicate with others.Why? When you always fear that something is not a perfect job, you label the job as “imperfect” and stop learning about the job opportunities it provides.Stop Thinking Any So lution to Your Job Search Is ExtremeTrue success in your job search comes through achieving a balance.You want to be honest with yourself, but not to the point of saying no to everything.You want to be open-minded, but not to the point of appearing delusional or ending up in the first job that agrees to hire you.Stop thinking your job search has to be an extreme experience. It is merely the start of finding what you wish to do next.Start Following Your CuriosityContrary to what everyone in entrepreneur, career, or life coaching has said over the last 20 years, it is better to follow your curiosity before following your passion. Your job search will be better this way.Why? Curiosity is the root cause of all passion.No one knows what they want to do, all of the time. No one wakes up instantly passionate about something. They first became curious and next decided to investigate. Upon investigation and taking action, a passion was discovered.Start being curious and you stop beating your self up over what you do not know.Will you always have the relevant skills to perform a job? No. Some job skills may sound similar compared to 10 years ago, but the tools used to perform them have changed.Go be curious and find out how and why.