Understanding that no one’s job search is perfect

Perfection in your job search is something that you shouldn’t be expecting from yourself. The idea of being perfect seems to be something that many job seekers strive for. Whether it be your CV, getting an interview just right or the idea of becoming the perfect employee. Not only is perfection different in the eyes of the beholder, but people make mistakes and you are no exception. Your job search is going to be a journey and it is going to be different to other people’s. You are unique and will come across hurdles that others may not have had to face, so comparing yourself to others that reach their goals before you, shouldn’t be something you worry about. As a job seeker, you should start to understand that practice doesn’t make perfect, but practice makes permanent. You will get the hang of it and you will reach your goals.

Start by managing your expectations

You need to make sure that you are doing everything you can to reach your goals, but you don’t need to be too hard on yourself. You should only be doing what you can to ensure that you don’t get burnout. You have other responsibilities in life as well as looking for a new job and they should be equally as important.

Not everything you do is going to be right and sometimes it will be far from perfect. But we can only do so much and if you see yourself starting to slip, take a step back and come back to it when you feel ready. You can’t be on the ball all the time.

You will make mistakes

We all make mistakes, it is inevitable. You should embrace these problems and make the most of them, work with it and see if you can salvage a situation. You will always learn from your mistakes and those mistakes you make can help you become a better job-seeker and a better engineer. There are mistakes that we will all make at least once in our job search. You might have grammar mistakes on your CV, you might forget to attach your cover letter to an email or silly things like forgetting to apply for a role before the end date. These mistakes can be quite annoying in the moment and might even cost you the job, but you’ll know to double check everything the next time you apply for a job! Some mistakes you only have to make once to make sure you never do it again. It’s a learning curve.  

It’s not just you

You’re not the only job seeker that has ever missed a deadline or forgotten to check their CV for mistakes before sending it. You might have even just given up one day because you needed a rest. Days like this happen to everyone. The quicker you can see that everyone around you isn’t perfect either, the better you will end up feeling about yourself.

We see other people’s lives through a looking glass. Most of the time, we only see what they allow us to see. There are things going on in other people’s lives that we miss and therefore think that all of the stupid things that we do or may happen to us, doesn’t happen to others. But they do!

There is always something new to learn

Your job search will be full of ups and downs, no matter how many times you have looked for a job before. But nothing worth getting is easy to achieve, right? You will learn with experience. There is always something new you can be learning in your job search. Whether that be to do with your CV or improving your own engineering skills. The good thing about the engineering sector is that the learning should never stop. So, if you can do something to better yourself, go for it.

The less you strive for perfection, the less disappointed you will be when you don’t hit your goal the first time. Even when you do hit your goals, the road to success wouldn’t have been a simple one. A perfect job search is never going to happen and that is okay. You will learn things along the way and grow as a professional. So even if perfection isn’t the end result, you are likely to come out with something much better. A job you enjoy and the experience of learning how to job search. When the time comes for you to look for a new job again, things would have probably changed again! So, it will be another learning curve, but like the first time, you will get there!

Robert Watson-Watt once stated, "Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes.”