Avoiding Burnout While Job Searching
Why do job rejections hurt? Biology!
During the tech layoffs this year, I hosted a free workshop on LinkIn on how to avoid burnout while job searching, and I wanted to make it available to everyone, which is why I am writing this article. We know most everyone has experienced burnout in their career, but we can also be burnt out while battling unemployment. This article will cover the biology behind burnout and outline some tips and tricks on preventing and managing burnout during your job search.
What is burnout?
From a very general perspective, burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. But why does excessive and prolonged stress cause this exhaustion? Why is the state of burnout so detrimental to our productivity and our well-being? Without going into biological terms, you can think of yourself like a computer. If it is running 24/7 with 30 tabs open constantly, it is eventually going to slow down and crash-unless we turn it off, and give it a chance to update. The same thing happens to us when we do not ever give ourselves a chance to reset. Here is why.
Like all living systems, us humans have biological processes that hardwire us for survival. Thanks to something called the vagus nerve that is part of our autonomic nervous system, we respond to threats, whether we are aware of it or not. When there are no perceived threats, our nervous system is typically in a state of “social engagement”, which is where we are our most effective. When we are in a social engagement state, we are able to experience joy and curiosity and practice mindfulness and being in the present. As soon as a threat is perceived, our nervous system mobilizes immediately, without our thinking, into a “fight or flight” state. In this state, we may experience anxiety, irritation or frustration. If the threat goes away relatively quickly, we are able to come back down into our state of “social engagement” pretty easily. When the threat doesn’t go away, we move into immobilization or a “freeze” state where we may feel shut down, depressed, not in the present or disassociated. The longer we are faced with a threat, the longer it will take us to come back down to “social engagement”. With prolonged exposure to a threat, we can actually get stuck in a “fight or flight” or “freeze” response. This is essentially burnout. Unfortunately, most of us are burned out. Most of us are not in the “social engagement” state. Most of us are anxiously hanging out in some sort of “fight or flight” state, or have moved into a shut down or “freeze” and have simply stopped caring.
The good news, that we will talk about later in this article, is that there are ways to get our nervous system unstuck, and back into social engagement. Though if you decide to not read any further, the one thing I want you to remember is a longer exhale. Start now by taking a deep breath in and slowly let it out. A longer exhale causes the vagus nerve to send a signal to your brain to activate the “social engagement” state!
Why does job searching cause burnout?
We inherited our nervous systems from our ancestors. Before modern times, our ancestor’s nervous systems had to be constantly scanning their environment for threats. If there was a threat, such as a wild animal attack, they mobilized quickly, escaping the animal or killing the animal (or if they didn’t escape, would have entered the freeze state in preparation for death). After escaping or killing the wild animal, they likely went back to their village, telling everyone about it, perhaps celebrating their escape or celebrating a food source for that evening. They were able to come back into social engagement as the threat was gone, and they were safe within their village. Historically, groups of people were safer and increased chances of survival. Being exiled or rejected from the group or village, would mean death due to exposure or wild animal. This is one reason any sort of rejection is so painful, and job rejection is definitely included in this. Not only is our biology telling us “danger” every time we get a rejection email, our jobs are our source of income, which buys food, which is also necessary for survival. Without you even realizing it, every time you get a rejection email, your brain is telling your nervous system “DANGER!!, DANGER!!!”. Our brain doesn’t know the difference between exile and emails, and it knows that food is important to survival as well.
In the example of our ancestor that escaped the wild animal attack, they had short term exposure to the threat, and then their nervous system had a chance to regulate when the threat was gone. In modern times, we are not getting away from the “threat” (emails). We are virtually connected on a level never seen before in human history, and the little red email notification bubble is activating your nervous system the same way as if you saw a wild animal in the distance. The feeling of anxiety, depression or even disassociation you get when you look at your phone doesn’t mean anything is “wrong” with you, it is simply your biology keeping you alive.
Some more bad news on connectivity…
The village our ancestors lived in, had maybe 20-30 people in it. We are equipped to emotionally manage the bad news of a village that size, not the bad news of the world. Our LinkedIn network is full of 100s of people, and if your feed was anything like mine was during the tech downsizing in 2022… it felt overwhelming, and that is because it was. Our nervous system is getting bombarded daily with things it is built to manage on a much smaller scale, which leaves us anxious and exhausted...all. the. time. There is an even a darker side of comparison and competition that is amplified with our social media connectivity. In their village, our ancestors would have been scanning the group to compare themselves to make sure they were “fitting in” and not breaking any rules that might get them exiled (remember their survival depended on this). They also competed for resources, and would have seen that the villagers with more food had bigger families with greater chances of survival, creating further motivation other than just hunger to acquire food. This manifests in modern day as greed and unhealthy jealousy, which are simply our survival instincts, not something to be ashamed about. Again, our nervous system was meant to handle comparison like this on a small scale, not the large scale we are subjected to now. We can acknowledge where these automatic feelings are coming from and use our knowledge of biology to get back into our “social engagement” state and create a more flexible nervous system.
How? Flexibility!
Again, the one thing I want you to remember from this article is a longer exhale. Start now by taking a deep breath in and slowly let it out. Just a few minutes of breathing with a longer exhale causes the vagus nerve to send a signal to your brain to activate the “social engagement” state. The goal is not to NEVER get into fight/flight/freeze but to be able to come back into the regulated state of social engagement quicker and easier. This is called a flexible nervous system.
Other ways to bring us back to “social engagement” during job searching are to remove the threat in order to give your system a chance to regulate. Remember, as long as there is a perceived threat, your nervous system will stay in fight/flight and even go into freeze. Here are the easiest ways to give your nervous system a break:
1. Turn off your notifications on your smart phone. At the very least, turn off your email notifications
2. Create a new email and a google voice to use just for job searching.
3. Limit your time on social media, especially in the evenings
4. Go for a walk without your phone at least a twice a week.
Without time away from the “threat” (ie. Emails), your nervous system will not be able to regulate. Remember you are a computer, and you need to be turned off and back on again sometimes too! Remember, it is ok to feel stressed and anxious, it's your amazing biology at work, we just want flexibility. Taking the time away from notifications and a few minutes of longer exhales, allows to come back MORE efficient. The more you practice this, the quicker and easier it will become to come back to "social engagement".
The last thing I will mention, as an ex-corporate recruiter, is that these rejections are most of the time, not personal. It is humanly impossible for recruiters to personally respond to every application. Many times, my workload was so heavy, I didn’t even look at all the resumes of the people who applied to my open roles, relying on certain screening questions to auto send the rejection email. Sometimes roles are posted even though it is going to be filled by an internal candidate. Some recruiters don’t take job postings down after they are filled, and some create job postings to just find candidates for future roles and don’t even have that specific job open at the present. It is all incredibly frustrating as job seeker and I apologize to everyone on behalf of the recruiting profession. It is also worth noting that the HR industry has one of the highest burnout rates (99% of HR professionals are saying they feel burnt out), meaning most recruiters are not operating at their most efficient. Recruiting also takes a high level of organization that most people just do not have, so even the most talented and qualified candidates can fall through the cracks. So, the job rejections flooding your inbox are most likely not personal, and it is beyond your control. It’s an email, not exile and death, but remember, your nervous system doesn’t know this, so we have to help it out! Focus on your longer exhales, and take some time off of your phone. That is what we can control. Good luck out there, may you find your dream job and a recruiter that can help you through the hiring process.
