By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

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There are times when you may get down on yourself while job hunting. On today’s daily episode, I discuss a simple tactic for managing that critical voice in your head.

Grading Yourself

I’m here to talk with you about managing that inner voice within you.  You know, the one that says, “You are not as good as you think you are.  This is going to be hard.  You suck.”You know, that critical voice that lives inside most of us, almost all of us… Maybe all of us that sends messages to us that say were not as good as we think we are.

It may show up earlier in your job search; they may show ablative or job search.  I just know that shows up. The voices the part of you that doesn’t believe in yourself and it needs to be silenced.

You can have a friend to talk with; you have a wife/husband/partner/clergyman… Any number of people who you can talk with about it, but ultimately the most effective person to talk with you about it is you to calm the voice down.  The voice is really the voice of your fear.  It’s the fear that this isn’t going to work out.  It’s harder than you thought it might be; it’s taking longer, etc. etc.

Let’s say you’re feeling stuck in your job search and someone was who you speaking with yesterday.  You have the choice of going to a networking event or not.  He talked to the boys whose basically telling you, “Well, you know, I’m not going to meet anyone there; it’s going to be a big waste of time.”  You know, that voice?  You very calmly say to you, “But I may need someone there.  I may want of meeting someone who is going to be helpful.  It’s also good to get out the house and do something a little bit different AND, as I’m traveling to that networking event, I can reach out to someone else and parlay the trip into 2 or 3 different things.  I appreciate your input, Voice, but, at the end of the day, I would like to make this trip with your okay and give it a shot. Maybe I’ll do other trips like this and give them a shot because you never know what is going to happen.”

That’s one example of negotiating with The Voice.  You can do it with, “My resume isn’t getting results. ” Maybe need to work on your resume or hire someone to work on your resume or get a resume critique to have it done.  Same with your LinkedIn profile.  If people are reaching out to you through LinkedIn, it is likely that there is something very wrong with your profile because it is not attracting recruiters who are out there relentlessly trying to find folks.

The Voice is not really useful in a job search.  You need to contain it little bit because, at times, it has worked well for you and help you.  In job hunting, however, most of the time, almost all of the time, it is the voice of fear and In a job search isn’t going to help.

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