7 Things To Live By In Your Job Search

How to readjust your standards and avoid self-shaming in the job application process

Over the past six months I’ve applied to over 30 jobs. This article won’t tell you how to get a job (I’d argue that nobody really holds the key to that door). Clearly, I am not the authority on that. It will tell you, however, how to stay focused and keep trying.

Today, many sources tell us job applicants that the job market is ours for the taking. That employers are at a disadvantage. That we hold all the power. But this couldn’t be further from the truth depending on what industry you’re in, and what your standards are. If you are in a cutthroat, competitive industry, employers still hold all the cards.

For example, I am a law student. The legal profession is not an overripe field filled with juicy jobs ripe for the picking. It is a wasteland with small fields of expired fruit that 70 hungry law students are willing to fight you to the death for. Not to mention the fields where gender disparity, race disparity, and class disparity all hinder some of our country’s most desperate employees. *cough cough, all of them*

So. In this climate of competition, hostility, and general garbage-ness, what is one to do? Is the endless misery of job applications endless and…