COVID-19

How to Find a Job During COVID-19

Lynn Juve is a job search strategist and the founder of Bespoke Professional, a career search consultancy geared toward helping job seekers nail their resumes, rock the interview, and get the job they want. As a one-time high school teacher who pivoted into the tech world in 2014 with great success, Lynn has a wealth of experience that has enabled her to land many clients great jobs with Microsoft, Amazon, Payscale, and many other brands. She recently gave a talk in our new online community, How to Move Forward in Your Job Search During COVID-19, in which she shared invaluable wisdom with 80-plus attendees. Herewith, some excerpts:

On working with a pro to help with your job search:

“I call myself a job search strategist. I help people who are in the thick of their job searches. The top three packages you’ll find on my site are about improving your LinkedIn profile and resume; interview coaching; and helping people develop their networking messaging. I take a holistic but very tangible approach to the job search.”

On job-hunting during COVID-19:

“We already have a lot of fear [when job-hunting] and the job search puts us into a very vulnerable spot already. But now because of everything that’s happening, our anxieties are heightened. My message to a lot of people is that when you’re job searching, you feel like you’re the only one who feels like there’s a cheese grater grating on your soul. You feel like you’re the only one who feels like you can’t do it or that you’re not qualified. And we convince ourselves of that because that’s giving in to the voice in our head space.”

On three tangible things you can to keep your mindset healthy: 

The first thing is … What you’re hearing about layoffs and what you’re hearing about unemployment sounds really scary, but the more details about it you know, the less scary you realize it is. And here’s what I mean by that: I went through, in Seattle, the most comprehensive lists I could find of all the layoffs that had happened and which organizations they happened at. And I realized how centered they were around certain fields. If we only hear about the amount of layoffs and we only hear about the amount of people that are filing for unemployment … it might not even apply to you. There’s still a lot that is open.”

“What you’re hearing about layoffs and what you’re hearing about unemployment sounds really scary, but the more details about it you know, the less scary you realize it is.”

— Lynn Juve

The second thing is really about [managing] fear. The anxiety that’s happening right now can really feed into this fear that we already have. And knowing that a lot of that is, it’s a real thing, but it’s something that we can battle. We’re all just terrified of being told, You’re not good enough. If you’ve never read it, it’s a perfect time to read ‘I Thought It Was Just Me, But It Isn’t,’ by Brene Brown.

“The mental game is to not be hard on yourself. The harder you are on yourself, the worse it actually gets.” 

– Lynn Juve

“The mental game is not to be hard on yourself. The harder you are on yourself, the worse it actually gets.

The third thing is to focus on what you can control. When it comes to the job search, you can’t control when people don’t respond to you. You can’t necessarily control when your network doesn’t get back to you. But there are things you can control. I had one client who was not working in a full-time pay capacity for 15 years, largely raising children, doing a lot of nonprofit work and volunteer work and things like that. And then she was looking for a job for two years before we came together. And there was a moment where she started to get very nervous. And I said, look, here’s how we’re going to measure this, we’re going to measure this by the number of people you reach out to and the number of interviews you get.

“And she told me that she made a thermometer to track that and she put it on her wall, and that’s what helped her. The mental game is to not be hard on yourself. The harder you are on yourself, the worse it actually gets.” 

The rest of Lynn’s talk covers: How to tackle your search during COVID-19; how to leverage your network; tips for networking online; and the best ways to optimize your LinkedIn profile.

Want to hear Lynn Juve’s Top 3 Techniques for Finding a Job Now?

Join our online community (and then type “Juve” in the search bar) for access to her entire presentation, as well as so many other invaluable job-seeking resources!