How to reframe your job search during COVID-19

By Veronica Saron, Will Rice College ’14 (Economics)

If you’re reading this in mid-2020, you’re likely social distancing and are spending time at home with your parents or elsewhere. Whether you’re fresh out of college, early on in your career, or waiting for next semester to start, chances are that you have some kind of lull time right now. Maybe you’re in a position where you need to make money. No matter where you are, if you’re looking to start or change your career (either by choice or by timing), you have an opportunity to reflect and build yourself in this lull period.

• You are learning resilience — Because you’re not necessarily being dealt the easiest card, going through this experience is going to make you wiser. It won’t always feel fun, but having more grit and resilience will only benefit you in the future.

Recommended Reading: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

• Remember your mental and emotional health — Gen Z is lucky to have come of age during a time where mental and emotional health has taken the spotlight in terms of awareness. Now, you’re entering the “real world”; it’s time to take that awareness and put it into action. Taking care of your emotional and mental wellbeing can be an entirely separate how-to for you, but my overall advice would be to (a) do what it takes to get in touch with how you feel and (b) actively look for and do things that make you feel better that do not have to do with “being productive” (this is tricky for type A’s). Those two (a and b) are different for every person, but for me, (a) is journaling, meditating, and talking about how I feel with friends, and (b) is working out, meditating, cooking, playing video games, spending time with loved ones, and watching comedy.

Recommended Reading: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson

• Start with Why — Whether during this time of “hibernation” or otherwise, as you work on your physical/emotional/mental self, always do the things you do with purpose. It will make everything more genuine and meaningful, and the things you do will have more power behind them.

Recommended Reading: The Power of Why by Simon Sinek

• Don’t tell me you’re funny; tell me a joke! — Remember: Show your skills as you build them and get deep into subjects. Have some sort of tangible outcome to show that you’ve been learning during this time that you can share in the future. That might be showing and sharing your data visualizations, creating websites, building out a graphic design portfolio, or blogging about what you’re doing and your experiences. Find books that mean something to you, and then write about them and talk to people about them. I can’t tell you how many people I know for whom this has worked brilliantly for their careers.
• Cut yourself some slack — Employers will understand what happened during this time globally given the COVID Crisis. They will understand that you may not be getting a “traditional” start to a career. Don’t take that as an excuse to blame the world, but just remember that objectively, this situation isn’t the best, and that’s OK. Therefore, it’s up to you to take this opportunity to build skills and have experiences so that you can tell an amazing story that no one else can tell, both in interviews and on your resume.

Recommended Reading: Rising Strong by Brene Brown

Recommended Listening: Dear HBR (Harvard Business Review) Podcast on COVID Career Limbo

The author of this post is not affiliated with Rice University Center for Career Development. To speak with a CCD team member, email us ccd@rice.edu.