The White Noise That It’s In Your Interests To Drown Out When You’re Applying For Your First Job

When it comes to writing applications, it is often the specific, practical advice that we turn to first. Uni careers advisors and recruiters are great at offering tips and tricks for your cv, and a quick google search will conjure up tons of advice about everything from interview do’s and don’ts to cover letter buzzwords and transferable skills.

While there is obviously useful information here, these approaches don’t really address one the biggest underlying challenges that job seekers face. And it’s not something that can be corrected by another proof read or a bit of extra research! So watch out for these unhelpful mind traps when the daily slog is just you v the computer screen..

Rejection isn’t personal!

The first reality to accept before you even begin applying for jobs is that you will experience rejection. And given recent figures about job prospects for new graduates, you will probably experience quite a lot of it. But don’t let this get you down, it’s a statistical inevitability not a cause for alarm, and accepting it early on will help you bounce back quickly.

You should also make sure you recognise the difference between personal and professional judgments. In other words, employers are not out to get you as they are not assessing you per-se. To a large degree, they are simply looking through a raft of similar CV’s and working through a checklist to find the candidate who’s the best fit.

It’s a numbers game!

It’s also worth remembering that job searching is a numbers game, and this stage of the process is about using all means necessary to get your foot in the door. Of course, passion and personality are really important, but these attributes are more readily conveyed face to face during interview.

So try to create some distance between the every-day you and the professional you when you’re writing. This will enable you to develop a thicker skin, helping you ultimately to view your cv and cover letter through the eyes of the employer you want to impress.

This job will not determine your entire career!

A lot of the pressure we feel when applying for a graduate job stems from our exaggerated notions about its significance. It is sometimes said that thought is the enemy of action and this is true to a certain extent when you’re applying for jobs. Don’t overthink it, you should look at this stage as a chance to broaden your career options and remember that this may well be a trial and error period whilst you figure out what you want in the long term. Don’t worry about career missteps or making the ‘wrong’ choice because this decision will not have an irreversible impact on your progress. If you enter one industry and decide you hate it, that’s fine! In fact it’s valuable- one more area to check off your list.

And maybe most importantly, don’t compare yourself with others!

One of the biggest obstacles to just getting on with job applications is the tendency to become caught in the comparison game. The self-doubt which often accompanies this will just slow you down and distract you from focusing on the task at hand.

When we compare ourselves to others we make the mistake of assuming that life is supposed to follow a mechanised route, and that if we have not reached this position or earned that salary by a certain point we are somehow failing. But once you look beyond this narrow interpretation of success you’ll see that really things are much more complicated, and you really don’t need to look to others to validate your own choices!

Lorna Wild is a contributor for Inspiring Interns. 

Inspiring Interns is a graduate recruitment agency which specialises in sourcing candidates for internships and giving out graduate careers advice. To hire graduates or browse graduate jobs, visit their website.