Some are thrilled, some are excited, some are honored... but they are all the same. You're scrolling your LinkedIn feed when a post from a connection announcing their fabulous new job opportunity pops up. Depending on where you are in your career journey, seeing these posts can stir up a variety of emotions both positive and negative.
During the period where I was un/underemployed and trying to make a career pivot after graduate school during a global pandemic (yes, it was a lot), seeing these posts made me bristle. The pat language that made it look easy, when I’d been trying for years to find a new job. The tagging of a recruiter who went above and beyond to help them, when I couldn’t even get an email back. The photo of a company swag package, when I'd rather have a job than free stuff.
What helped me reframe my reaction to such posts was reminding myself that:
1) I’m genuinely happy someone is excited about a new career opportunity,
2) their success didn’t take away from my feelings of frustration and disappointment,
and 3) if they found an exciting new career opportunity, so could I.
Inspired by a public LinkedIn post by Eugene Hayden, I looked through my job search notebook. (If you'd like to contribute data to Eugene's database, click here!) This dog-eared spiral bound is where I logged all job activity, partly for my own tracking and partly in case I got audited by unemployment. After compiling some very official tally mark data, I created a Sankey chart of my job search process. The following chart reflects data from September 2019 through June of 2021. I was focusing on quality over quantity and applying only for jobs I had reason to believe would be a good longer-term fit, but is still a lot of data! And a lot of no's!
Sankey charts represent flow, and the above shows my flow through the job application process for many roles, at many companies, through many channels. There are two major conclusions to be drawn from this data visualization.
Most disappointing? The volume of applications that ghosted me, even after I had made significant progress through the application process and connected with a real person. At least give applicants the closure of a form declination email in a timely manner!
Most exciting? This clearly illustrates that not every opportunity is meant for you. All it takes is the ONE right opportunity at the right time! So keep going!
So if you’re annoyed with the “thrilled to announce” LinkedIn posts... I get it, I’ve been there. Which is why I wanted to share a realistic post uncovering the behind-the-scenes job search and acceptance grind. Me? I’m "thrilled to announce" that I worked hard, weathered the ups and downs, and landed an awesome opportunity. You can, too. Your day will come!
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