Applying for function is tense, no matter the conditions. Even if you are already working, and merely searching to see what else is out there, you still want to be provided the position. If you realize, fifty percent way through an interview, that you would be miserable working for this business and you wouldn’t allow your dog take the career, you still want it to be provided. If the hours are unsuitable, the career duties demeaning, and the wage a joke, you still want to be made an offer.

Why is it so important to us to have an offer made which we already know we will reject?

It is important simply because we are conscious that we are being judged. We talk about skills and experience and prior accomplishments but that has already been outlined in a resume. A encounter-to-encounter interview is for the objective of judging you as a individual: Will you fit in? How do you express yourself? How do you look? Are you nice to have around? Are you likable?

If a career offer is made, we feel validated and worthwhile -they liked us. We by no means think “He really did not like me but my skills are so great.” We want to be liked, we want to be needed, we want to be appreciated for what we are.

If no career offer is forthcoming, we take it personally: “I guess they did not like me.” Regardless of our whether or not our skills were a fit, our wage in the ballpark, or our experience applicable, we feel a personal failure. The negative messages of a lifetime, stored in our brain, start enjoying: “I am just not good enough. I am worthless. People don’t like me. Why do I usually mess up? I am such a failure. Why cannot I be more like . . . “

We mentally beat ourselves down by listening to these continuously recycling tapes. Our spirits sink, our power evaporates, and our self-esteem plummets. This negativity, and its destructive effect on our psyche, can be contained by 3 techniques:

1. Awareness of what our thoughts is performing and consciously interrupting its tirade.

2. A refocus of our psychological attention to prior successes and accomplishments, no matter how little, to counter the idea that we are lifelong screw-ups.

3. Reframing our worth as a individual from the specific worker/employee role into the complete personality that we are: in our intimate and social relationships, in our family, in our community.

Applying for function sets us up to judged but we need to remind ourselves that only a little discrete portion of who we are is being examined. As a entire individual, we are significantly more than a employee and no employer can judge us on our totality.

Virginia Bola operated a rehabilitation business for twenty many years, creating innovative career search techniques for disabled employees, whilst serving as a respected Vocational Expert in Administrative, Civil and Workers’ Compensation Courts. Author of an interactive and emotionally supportive workbook, The Wolf at the Doorway: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a month-to-month ezine, The Worker’s Edge, she can be reached at http://www.virginiabola.com