When looking for a job, the most important thing is not finding one

In the words of the recently deceased Maya Angelou, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This is true not only for how others treat us, but also for how we treat ourselves.

Not many years ago, having a Master’s degree was synonym to finding a well paying job. I belong to a generation that was brought up to believe that if we did everything right; go to school, get good marks, go to university, pursue internships, apply for a job, our professional future would be more or less guaranteed.

Well guess what, many people have followed the magical recipe, only to find themselves at the end of the process unemployed and wondering what went wrong.

I will tell you what went wrong, these people were educated to acquire skills that would help them survive in a market place that no longer exists. Or to put it blandly, the surgery was a success, but the patient died.

In this world, having a Master’s or PhD degree is a good enough reason for a potential employer to turn you down for a less qualified and thus less expensive candidate.

What used to be the key to landing a job, can turn out to be an obstacle in the crisis ridden countries.

Unfortunately, finding oneself in unemployment is a reality that many well educated young people are likely to experience, given the current dire economic situation in many European countries.

When needing to reassign a professional title to yourself, the most important thing is not finding a job. The most important thing is treating yourself with the necessary respect and patience that you deserve.

Once you land the job, because this will happen sooner or later, what you will remember from this period is how you felt. And the way you felt, largely depends on how well you safeguarded your self-respect.

Maintaining a good psychology is as an important goal as finding a job. But it’s not enough. Young unemployed people also need to quickly realise that it is stamina, endurance and willingness to move forward that will help them survive and not their well polished CV. This is the set of skills one needs to face up to the current unemployment challenge.

Once a professor took out a 100 euro bill in class and asked who wanted it. All students raised their hands. Then the professor crinkled the bill and asked again, still everyone raised their hands. Finally the professor stepped on the 100 euro bill and it shrunk significantly. After asking the class who wanted it, there wasn’t one student who didn’t raise their hand. Everyone recognised the value of the crumpled bill.

Unemployment can be hard, but rejection letters simply can’t diminish one’s value. Staying strong and faithful to one’s self, it’s the only recipe that leads to success!