How To Stay Motivated During Your Job Search?
Some UK Visa Jobs members have been fortunate enough to find a visa-sponsored job swiftly within a few weeks or have moved between jobs without much effort. For most of the members, though, it has been a long process. Indeed, job searching is a long process, no matter where you come from and what your background is.
If you have significant work experience and are applying for a job in the same sector, you may see a result quicker than someone else. If you have not studied or worked in the UK before and are only looking for low-skill jobs, securing something may take a while. It is also important to bear in mind that the competition for a job is global, as UK Visa Jobs is a global platform, and employers will take time to review applications from all over the world.
Many UK Visa Jobs members are active job seekers, pursuing a progression, responding to redundancy, or simply seeking a change of scenery. If you have been looking for jobs with visa sponsorship for weeks or months, you should keep going. Because you will learn something new every time and continuously improve yourself. It will make you a better candidate for the next job and increase your chance of success. However, if you give up, you fail and will not see any results.
During the job search, you should remain resilient after setbacks, as well as protect your precious mental wellbeing. There are multiple things you can try while looking for a job to keep yourself motivated.
1. Be realistic
When searching for jobs, you need to manage your expectations by setting sensible and realistic objectives from the outset. This doesn’t mean dumbing down your prospects. You can start by listing soft skills, such as communication and people management, and technical skills, such as financial analysis or data processing. You should then consider where you can apply these skills.
Then, move on to setting a minimum threshold, i.e., what you would not go below in terms of salary and the minimum you would find acceptable on stretch and job conditions. This will give you a framework to manage your expectations, and as you progress with your job search, you will be testing the efficacy of your ideal vision. You can move it up or down depending on your experiential evidence of getting (or not getting) those coveted interviews/offers.
2. Understand the time scale
Once you have decided what jobs to apply for in the UK, it’s human nature to want that decision to come to fruition sooner rather than later. However, in reality, it can be a long process.
Based on the information the members who secured job offers provided, on average, it took members from 3 months to 9 months to get a job offer. Given the structured nature of student and graduate recruitment, it has been relatively shorter for students and graduates. In terms of experienced professionals, it has also been shorter for people applying for managerial or above-level positions or for people with strong technical skills like coding. But some members tried for a year or so to see a result, and they eventually succeeded. That’s why it is crucial to set the right expectations for the time scale.
3. Be flexible
What if, after you have tried for a long time, you are hardly getting any interviews or not passing interviews? It is hard to deal with rejections and face harsh realities. But you need to bounce back and stay motivated.
Is your CV leveraging your strengths and achievements and aligning these with the jobs you are applying for? How are your interview skills? Do you maybe need to brush up on how you present yourself and/or articulate your responses? Start by getting some help – a friend, colleague, mentor, or external coach – to look at your job-seeking approach and performance. They may even be able to help you pinpoint crucial skills or experiences that are missing from your current CV – once you know what they are, you can make a plan to actively close the gap. You should be able to flexibly change your approach or make amendments based on their feedback.
Our Biannual Subscription Members benefit from personalised advice, and Biannual and Quarterly Subscription members can join our live webinars to improve their interview skills and CVs.
4. Take a pause & start again
Sometimes things can get overwhelming, and you get tired. In this case, you should give yourself a few days of break. Being away from job searching allows you to reflect on your performance and refresh your mind. You can use our application tracker to really understand your performance - what you are doing well and what you are not, and which stage of your job application you are failing the most. Based on it, you can make a plan and have a fresh start.
5. Have a growth mindset and be ready to learn
If your mindset is closed, you will likely believe that your strengths and weaknesses are fixed and beyond your control. Your self-confidence may be delicate and rapidly decimated by rejections, which will spiral you into taking less stretch and writing off your abilities.
A growth mindset helps you reframe setbacks by focusing on the experience and practice in pursuing new knowledge and understanding yourself and the marketplace. It keeps you motivated and driving forward, albeit at a more realistic pace, and it will support your mental well-being by fostering a balanced view of your abilities and the world around you.
In summary, job hunting is not easy, and it is the same for everyone. Even people who do not require visa sponsorship to work in the UK may struggle to find a job. That’s why it’s important to remember that you are not alone on this journey. Keep grounded, be realistic, take a break if needed, foster a growth mindset and be patient – in other words, look after yourself, mind and body. Job seeking is not for the faint-hearted!
