Since I work so closely with job seekers, I get a behind-the-scenes look at the real struggles that most of them have.

One difficulty that comes up so frequently are the BIG emotions surrounding the job search – both the process and the outcome.

It’s perfectly reasonable. When you enter your job search, it can be a vulnerable place emotionally. You are basically setting yourself up for a lot of rejection, and it can be hard not to take it personally and let it ultimately sabotage your results.

And the truth is that actually enjoying the process AND feeling like you are making meaningful progress towards finding your dream job doesn’t require just tactical strategy OR a strong mindset.

It requires both.

In today’s podcast, I’m going to take you back in time to 4th grade to remind you about THIS amazing method for helping you approach your job search.

I’m also going to blow your mind a bit by taking this little magic lesson you might recall from nursing school and show you how to apply it to any problem you might be facing… Especially those highly emotional problems. 

In today’s episode, get ready to:

• Travel back in time to 4th grade for a reminder on this amazing method for helping you approach your job search
• Blow your own mind with this forgotten Nursing School Lesson – I’ll show you how to apply it to any problem you might be facing!
• Properly diagnose why you aren’t landing the job you want – based on FACTS and not emotional self sabotage ideas

LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED TODAY: 

• Download The Nurse Practitioner Graduation Survival Guide, completely free at: https://theresumerx.com/npgrad

Listen to more episodes here!

If you are ready to become the NP you always wanted to be, then NP Society membership is the place for you. This is a community that is designed for Nurse Practitioners (and students) to thrive beyond the clinical setting. Head to www.thenpsociety.com to choose your membership level today!

How The Nursing Method Can Help You Get The Job

Allow me to take you back in time to probably fourth grade or so and remind you about the scientific method. I know you learned it, and maybe you forgot, but it goes a little bit like this… Whenever scientists are solving a problem, or conducting an experiment, they take a stepwise approach.

Here are the Five Steps of the Scientific Method:

1. Observation
2. Question
3. Form a Hypothesis
4. Analyze Results
5. Draw a Conclusion 

Now, do you remember the nursing process? We all learned this in school as well. You may know the acronym, ADPIE.

Here are the Five Steps of the Nursing Process:

1. Assess
2. Diagnose
3. Plan
4. Implement
5. Evaluate

Notice that these two processes are very similar in that they both have a period of observation, a time where you make a diagnosis or a hypothesis, a testing and implementation phase, and also an evaluation phase. So, how can we use these methods that are tried and true to inspire us to be more efficient jobseekers, while also avoiding emotional attachment to the outcome? 

How To Use These Methods To Be An Effective Job Seeker

Let’s assume that somebody is having trouble getting a job. And actually, I was just recently chatting with someone earlier this week inside of the NP Society, who was feeling stuck on what to do next. They graduated almost two years ago from NP school, and have not yet found a permanent position. And they said that they were feeling depressed and defeated and didn’t know why they’re not getting hired. 

Let’s use these methods to help solve this problem, or at least figure out what to do next!

Observation / Assessment

First, before we try anything different, or come to any conclusions about why we’re not getting hired, we’re going to conduct an assessment and gather factual, objective information. Your data collection might sound like this…

“In the past three months, I have submitted 10 online job applications, reached out personally to two different practices, gone on five interviews, and received zero job offers.” 

Notice how this information is purely objective, right? There is no interpretation, we’re just stating the objective facts. Next we can move on to…

Question / Hypothesis / Diagnosis

Let’s work with a formal question, which might be, “Why am I not getting any job offers?”  

Based on this specific dataset, which is essentially 12 applications, five interviews and zero offers, we can make a few educated guesses about what is going on. 

First of all, close to a 50% interview rate is actually really fantastic. 12 applications resulted in five interviews. That’s almost A 50% interview rate, and that is very good. So this tells me that this hypothetical person is doing a great job articulating themselves on paper, because your resume’s job isn’t to get you a job, your resume’s job is to get you an interview. So, we can kind of come to the conclusion that their resume is doing well, they’re articulating themselves well on paper in order to land interviews. 

However, zero job offers after five interviews is less than ideal. So that could reflect a hypothesis that this person is simply not interviewing well. 

Next, Change Something…

We want to be able to evaluate the results of our experiment, having really only changed one thing at a time. So in this situation, if we are going to suggest that poor interview skills are to blame, let’s have our intervention or implementation be a focused interview preparation program, or mock interview coaching.

In order to truly evaluate the results, we have to get more interviews. So I would recommend that this person continue to apply the way they have been (since it doesn’t appear to be a problem for them) and get coached on how to be a better interviewer.

After practicing their interview skills, and combining this with their already strong application process, hopefully this will lead to the opportunity to have around five more interviews where they can put their new skills to true implementation. 

Evaluation / Analysis 

Finally, after this next batch of interviews, we have to see how many offers come in. Now, I’m not saying that this will work perfectly every time, and that all the interviews will lead to offers, but there should be enough new information here to use moving forward. Maybe they’re able to get more targeted feedback from their interviews, which leads to another aspect to improve upon! 

Basically, the point here is to do what you can to evaluate where the breakdown is in the process. Understand that it is a process of multiple steps. And if you’re getting good results in certain phases, but not in others, then you need to make a change in order to expect different results. 

Apart from using this method to approach your job search, I also recommend using this for any mental, emotional or life challenge you are facing. Think of applying this method in your life the same way you might approach a patient with high blood pressure… you might try starting them on hyper antihypertensive medication. Would you start them on four different medications at a time? Probably not. You’d probably start them on one medication, evaluate the data and then make small changes to know what’s working and know what’s not working. We are only doing what’s necessary to make slow, steady, safe progress. The same could be true for any challenge we face. 

I think that it’s really important that, whenever possible, we get out of our heads in order to collect objective information, especially in situations that are emotionally charged.  When you’re in the job search – it’s a vulnerable, emotional place, so I understand that you are basically setting yourself up for a lot of rejection. It’s easy to create false meaning out of why you’re not getting hired and then end up taking those meanings personally and let that rejection ultimately sabotage your results. (Psst… we’re actually going to talk about dealing with rejection in a later episode this month, so stay tuned for that!) 

But in reality, this rejection is rarely if ever, personal. Okay, there are so many reasons why some candidates get chosen over others for interviews and positions. And it has nothing to do with your individual value or worth. 👏 I can’t emphasize that enough. If you don’t get a job, or you don’t get an interview, it has NOTHING to do with your value or your worth. 

Final Thoughts

If you find yourself getting down about your job search, remember this: You are always in control of taking different actions. Just remember that you are innately worthy, regardless of the job interviews, and the jobs that you do or don’t get. You can always take different actions in order to lead to different results. 

I’m rooting for you!