Keep Upbeat On The Job Search When You're Down In The Dumps

Keep Upbeat On The Job Search When You're Down In The Dumps A good friend of mine–I’ll call her Sharon–had been looking for a job for more than a year. Lively, capable and socially skilled, she’s a master networker and performs beautifully in job interviews. But like all of us, she has her bad days. One morning she called me practically in tears. “I don’t feel like I can do anything today,” she moaned. “My husband and I had a huge fight yesterday. I am just so depressed.” I tried my usual pep talk, but she wound up saying, “I’m not capable of writing that e-mail right now. I’m going to go for a bike ride and clear my head.”Sharon’s bad day got me thinking about a core piece of advice from every career coach I’ve interviewed: Job seekers must constantly keep their game faces on. They must approach every e-mail, phone call and interview with energy, enthusiasm and a can-do spirit. Their primary mission: to convince hiring managers that they are turbocharged engines of productivity.But what if you feel the opposite? So much in real life pulls us down, whether it’s relationship stress, family illness or money problems, not to mention the myriad depressing strains of a long-term job search.