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Now, onto this week's edition...
Overthinkers, Underdoers, and Executors
I’ve had clients that I’m working with who have literally applied to over 100 positions and haven’t heard back. Many of these are men in their early twenties. Apparently, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I shouldn’t be too shocked by this figure.
We’re seeing about 8% to almost 10% unemployment rates for 20-24 year olds last year. Interestingly, once you turn 25, that rate plummets dramatically as you can see by this chart from BLS below:
Given this current climate of youth unemployment struggles, and my anecdotal experiences of this holding true, you can imagine how shocked I was to hear about a client who was hired in a week!
I was in awe. “How in the world does that happen? I have guys who have been applying to positions since last November and still haven’t had an interview! How’d you do it?” I asked him.
What he told me is the subject of this week’s OPB – my take on the underlying psychology that impacts such low unemployment numbers, and the 5 performance based strategies that my client walked me through to overcome the unemployment hurdle.
State of Play
Despite the tipping point that occurs at 25 years of age, wherein youth seem to find employment, there’s an interesting psychological trend that I notice that disproportionately impacts the unemployed emerging adults I work with.
They seem to fall into one of three camps:
Camp 1: The Overthinkers: care deeply, but can’t get any traction
Camp 2: The Underdoers: scattered and don’t seem to care
Camp 3: The Executors : care deeply and get traction
For my overthinkers, they seem consumed by making good impressions, are overwhelmed by a desire to make a certain amount of money, to keep up with their peers, or are too one-track-minded in their attempt to work in a specific industry they enjoy. They struggle to think flexibly. They worry that if they aim too low, it will take too long to build a career they enjoy. They want the prestige and the fast pace now, and aren’t willing – or perhaps are just too distrusting – of the notion that it may take incremental steps to get their dream career underway.
For the underdoers, they are typically struggling with ADHD and attention related challenges, are too caught up in enjoying their day-to-day to make meaningful behavioral change towards a long term goal, and don’t have the kind of energy to create the kind of output that is required to get a job. They see 4 to 5 applications per day as being enough, are the kinds of people that focus way too much on the details, and not enough on the volume. They seem to under appreciate the challenges that lay ahead.
Then there's the executors – they’re ready to move forward with a purpose and care deeply about how they go about their business.
In the following sections, I’ll outline the strategies that seem to have worked best for this particular client and will provide a briefing on how they can be deployed if you or someone you know is finding themselves either being an overthinker or an underdoer.
RULE 1:
LET GO OF PERFORMANCE ANXIETY, CREATE VOLUME
“I didn’t even feel like myself. It just snapped. I was like, I’m f*ing back. I’m back in the driver’s seat.”
“I wasn’t thinking. I was just doing.”
These are direct quotes from a debrief I had with my client – now employed – as he reflected on what got him where he wanted to go.
Overthinkers Pro Tip: confidence comes from the ability to be detached from outcomes and focused solely on process. Outcomes can destroy confidence, and so they’re not worth obsessing over, they’re just worth having as a goal or destination to aim for. On the contrary, what you see in this approach is an obsession on just doing what needs to be done. In the job application phase, this client leaned into doing the work, not performing for others. It led to results.
Underdoers Pro Tip: you’re probably not doing enough of what it takes to get results. This client reported:
“I sent like probably close to a hundred [applications] within my first three or four days.”
Getting a job is as much a volume game as it is a precision game. At early stages, there’s a requirement for action. At some points, my client stated:
“I was sending like… 30 [applications] an hour. You have to start by sending in hundreds of resumes, because if you don’t, you don’t actually know what’s wrong.”
RULE 2:
MOVE BACKWARD TO MOVE FORWARD, YOU CAN’T SKIP STEPS
“A lot of people’s resumes suck because they have no experience. I went from a global executive to sitting behind a desk making half my old salary. I had to eat that to restart.”
To get hired, and especially to end up in a career that you eventually enjoy, you need to have the foresight to know that you’ll need to start where you can actually get hired, not just where you think you should be hired.
“You can’t just skip steps. You have to start somewhere.”
“People want to jump straight to being an entrepreneur.
You’re 24. No one wants to buy anything from you.”
Overthinkers Pro Tip: have the humility to start further back than you’d like to have the chance to go where you want to go.
Underdoers Pro Tip: you’ll need to just start somewhere, so start at the beginning, but realize you’re still competing at that level. If you wait too long or don’t apply the energy that it takes to enter entry level positions, you’ll be squeezed out by others that are resetting their career.
RULE 3:
NETWORK LIKE A MANIAC
“I was calling people like a maniac. Past customers. Old mentors. Anyone.”
“Every conversation I had, I was spinning toward jobs.”
I’ve written about how much I hated the idea of networking because I always associated it with shallow, surface level sales meetings that led nowhere. Throughout my career, I’ve shifted my perspective and changed the language I now use as well. I now think about networking as connecting, and have shifted away from being performative to being relational.
For many of my clients, introducing themselves to new people feels strange, and just like I experienced, they report feeling underqualified to even have these kinds of conversations. What we see from my client who is now gainfully employed is a degree of shameless connection. With nothing to lose, he opened up all networks he had developed prior and leveraged conversations to help build confidence, and explore opportunities.
“You can’t just be broke and miserable and expect to crush a panel interview.”
“Talking to people, being social again, feeling like myself—that changed everything.”
Overthinkers Pro Tip: be shameless – you’re too concerned about how people will view you and so you’re not reaching out and building connections. Stop worrying about getting hired quickly, or making the right connections and just start building connections with people. These turn into your networks. There’s no such thing as a bad conversation – worst case scenario you just get more practice and communicating.
Underdoers Pro Tip: don’t over think who falls in the bucket of “network”. Start with family and then zoom out. Did your Uncle say he knew someone who he worked with who might be worth chatting with? What about your professors? How about your neighbors down the street? Any conversation with someone close to you can turn into a great connection later down the line.
RULE 4:
SHORT TERM PAIN / LONG TERM GAIN
“I buried my face in the computer for two weeks like an animal.”
“Short-term pain beats death by a thousand gentle applications.”
This one seems straightforward, but should be repeated for good measure – so many of my clients seem to struggle to work with intensity. They seem to take a long, drawn out approach to lessen the pain, than do what my employed client was able to do. This also tightens the feedback loop so that candidates get more feedback more quickly due to the volume and speed at which they are applying. Of course, many applications do require some initial thought, but taking time to focus one’s energy on applying with intensity rather than dragging it out can yield some good results.
Overthinkers Pro Tip: you’re not being as aggressive as you need to be. Whatever pace you’ve decided to take in your application process is probably built around some self- limiting beliefs and could use some objective reorientation. Here’s a few questions to ask yourself:
- Is my approach to finding a job the very best I can do?
- If I moved to America for the first time and absolutely needed to find work, what would I do differently that I’m not doing now?
- What are the top 10% of candidates probably doing to find work right now? How can I be more like them?
Underdoers Pro Tip: you’ll need a system in place to get going. An application here or there lacks continuity and prevents you from getting any momentum. Yes, you need to be just as aggressive as your competitors, but what will help you the most is making sure you have a plan each day around what needs to be done, and that you follow through with that plan. Setting weekly goals that don’t have measurable checkpoints associated to them will leave you feeling like you’re not making any progress
RULE 5:
“It became my identity. Everything I did revolved around finding a job.”
“Once I stopped being desperate and started being me again, things clicked.”
James Clear famously describes how to really change habits in Atomic Habits, and he speaks directly to the idea of making your desired behavior part of your identity. In this instance, rather than state that you’re “trying” to get a job, state that “you are working on getting a job”. Rather than seeing it as a side project, it becomes the project. Now, of course, not everyone is in a place where they can dedicate themselves to a full-time application process, but for many of my clients in their 20’s they actually do have the time. Once you embrace this as your identity, you’ll find it very difficult to be stopped.
Overthinkers Pro Tip: ask yourself what total commitment to this would look like and chase that – don’t just think about volume of applications, think about soft skill development, hiring a coach, stepping beyond the usual procedural elements of what an application process may be like and more into becoming well rounded.
Underdoers Pro Tip: this will be challenging for you, but try and embrace a different persona when you enter into working on your applications. If most of your day is filled with distraction and enjoying time away from hard tasks, make this part of your day, even if it’s just 20mins, super focused and dedicated. Reward yourself with your tendency to be distractible and put together a few moments of intense workload, in effect “faking it” until you eventually become it.
I remember thinking while I spoke to my newly employed client – “man, this is pretty aggressive” – and you might be thinking something similarly reading his quotes. But in reality, that edge might just be what’s needed. Don’t play so scared or conservatively – be courageous, challenge yourself to do things you’re not used to and you’ll grow along the way.
If you or someone you know could use a hand in becoming more of an executor our team specializes in supporting emerging adults through this challenging but necessary part of adulthood. Email contact@valiancecounseling.com and reply OPB to get started.
Thanks for reading as always and if this resonates with you, forward this edition to a friend!
Time to win the week 🏆
See you soon :)
– J
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