Job Search and Emotions

Job searching is not only a practical process but also an emotional one. The feelings it brings — from excitement to uncertainty — can influence your wellbeing and motivation. Drawing on both research and practical experience, this section offers perspectives to help you approach job searching and its emotions with greater awareness, acceptance, and resilience.
Popular content
Dreaming Big and Setting Goals
Resilience and Coping with Disappointment in Job Searching
Imposter Syndrome in Job Search
Resources During Job Hunting

Dreaming Big and Setting Goals

Your dreams create positive images of the future and inspiring goals. Goals, in turn, help you to focus your actions and energy in the direction you want to go. Career dreams often include the hope of doing things you are good at, interested in, and motivated by. Sometimes, your dream is also about living a life according to your own values. 

"Dreams show us a world of possibilities that can become reality—if we first imagine it. The aim of dreaming is to find a place where our unique qualities, interests, ways of being, abilities, and attitudes meet something not yet in existence, but worth pursuing." (Professor Arto O. Salonen, Mieliteko podcast) 

Dreaming helps you create positive future visions and goals for your life. Every achievement or innovation first began as a thought or a dream in someone’s mind. However, sometimes dreaming is not easy. A constant flow of negative news and threats can make it hard to see possibilities. At times, finding it difficult to dream may also be a sign of exhaustion or depression. 

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Dreaming helps you to understand which direction you want your career to move. When you know what you want, you can concentrate on the essentials and make decisions that support your goals. 

When you dream, you create images and visions of what you want to reach in your career and life. These dreams can serve as strong sources of motivation, helping you overcome challenges and achieve your goals. 

Dreaming encourages creative and innovative thinking. When you allow yourself to freely imagine the kind of future you want, you may discover new solutions and ideas you never thought of before.

Chasing your dream can help you stay committed to your long-term career goals. Dreams are often long-term targets, and reaching them requires perseverance and determination.

Daydreaming as a Skill 

Recognising and naming your skills will take you far, but you also need to find what truly excites you—and what you want to use in the future. Being good at something does not always mean you want to do it. Sometimes, we move towards goals and dreams set by someone else, or by what is valued by society in general. 

Dreaming is a skill—the ability to pause, reflect on your true wishes and values, and allow yourself to hope without too many restrictions or pressure from others’ expectations. Being brave enough to dream about your own unique future can open up new career opportunities, increase your inner motivation, and bring positive energy into your job search. When you dare to imagine different directions for your career, it becomes easier to see which workplaces, roles, and activities bring you joy and meaning. 

Being enthusiastic and a dreamer does not mean ignoring reality. Instead, it helps you focus your job search on the possibilities that support both your professional growth and your overall wellbeing. 

You can practise daydreaming. By doing positive visualisation exercises and writing down what you truly hope for in life and work, you will strengthen your connection to your values and build goals that are more lasting and meaningful. 

Turning Dreams into Reality 

For a dream to come true, you first need to say it out loud. Many people keep their dreams to themselves for years; some never share them. Dreams can also bring up fears: What if I fail? What if my life changes in ways I can’t predict? What if I make a mistake? Everyone who has followed their dreams has also faced fears and uncertainty—but many have still moved forward despite these feelings. 

Resilience and Coping with Disappointment in Job Searching 

In your job search, you may often face uncertainty, competition, and sometimes rejection. This is why psychological flexibility—resilience—is so important. Resilience means the ability to cope with setbacks, to find balance again after a difficult experience, and to recover even stronger. In a job search, resilience shows when you can respond constructively to rejection messages or silence and still maintain your belief in your ability to learn and improve. It is useful to take a moment to think about what you can learn from disappointment, and how you could use that knowledge next time. You can build resilience by recognising and valuing your own strengths and achievements, reminding yourself of past successes, and treating mistakes constructively and with self-compassion. 

Many people experience anxiety, lack of motivation, or find the process especially tough. Feelings of anxiety may arise from uncertainty or repeated rejections. Dealing with disappointment in your job search requires the ability to identify and accept difficult emotions. It is important to give yourself permission to feel angry, sad, or frustrated—without guilt.

Reflection can help: think for a moment about why a rejection hurts and what you could possibly learn from it. To ease anxiety, you can try calming your mind with breathing or relaxation exercises. Checking whether your goals are realistic and breaking big tasks into smaller steps and rewarding yourself for every small progress you make will help you keep your motivation and wellbeing. Reviewing your goals and getting peer support can also help you find fresh perspectives and the strength to keep going. If you notice your anxiety continuing or getting worse, it’s a good idea to seek professional help or talk to someone you trust. 

It’s important to look after your mental health and stamina, as job searching can be a long process that calls for perseverance. 

How to Deal with Disappointment During Your Job Search

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Mindsets to Avoid in Job Hunting

Imposter Syndrome in Job Search

Imposter syndrome refers to a feeling where even qualified people doubt their abilities, attribute their success to luck, and fear being "exposed." This phenomenon is common, especially in the early stages of a career, and it easily arises in evaluation situations and when a lot is expected of oneself.

In new environments and tasks, one's own history of success and feedback are still limited. The pursuit of perfection, familiar from student life, may also carry over unnoticed into job hunting. Job hunting processes—tests, interviews, and comparisons—emphasize performance and can reinforce insecurity. Social comparison adds to the pressure: we see the "best bits" of others, but not their insecurities, drafts, or failures. Environmental factors also matter: for example, in underrepresented groups or among the first in their families to apply to college, feelings of not belonging and the pressure of stereotypes can reinforce feelings of being a fraud.

It is important to recognize this phenomenon, as emotions affect behavior: they can lead to avoidance ("I won't apply until I'm perfect"), impair interview performance, or lead to underpricing one's skills in salary negotiations.

Tips for managing imposter syndrome:

  • Name the phenomenon: "This is the voice of imposter syndrome, not fact." Distancing yourself from it reduces its impact.
  • Avoid comparing yourself to more experienced professionals: Visibility bias distorts reality. Compare yourself to your previous skills and focus on progress, not perfection.
  • Build a “proof bank”: Record coursework, project work, analyses, code, and feedback received. Recall these before applications and interviews.
  • Practice impact stories: Describe your skills in four steps—situation, task, action, result. When you practice telling impact stories, your sense of competence will grow stronger.
  • Focus on learning goals: Instead of performance goals, set learning goals. "I will learn to present my project clearly" is more constructive than "I will succeed perfectly."
  • Ask for feedback: Concrete feedback from teachers or mentors will calibrate your perception of your skills.
  • Be bold: Apply for jobs where you meet most of the criteria, even if you don't have everything down yet. Gaps in your skills are learning opportunities, not automatic reasons for rejection.

Resources During Job Hunting

Working toward your career goals is a long-term endeavor. Life doesn't usually go as planned - there will be surprises, changes, and setbacks. It can be difficult to stay motivated in challenging situations. Uncertainty about your employment, future, and financial situation can be frustrating and drain your resources.

Job hunting takes both time and energy, so it's a good idea to prepare yourself mentally and take care of your well-being in advance. You can prepare for future challenges to some extent by thinking through various possible challenges. However, more important than thinking about various threats is being aware of the factors that help you move forward when things do not go according to plan. It is therefore important to recognize your own resources and take care of them.

Resources can mean many things: physical well-being, such as adequate sleep, regular exercise, and a healthy diet; mental resources, such as a positive mindset, perseverance, and self-confidence; and things related to everyday structures, such as clear scheduling and planning. Hobbies, various relaxation techniques, and support from loved ones can also be important sources of resources during the job search. Supporting your own well-being during your job search can mean, for example, sticking to your daily routine, taking breaks in the middle of your job search, and cherishing the positive things in your life. It is important to accept that many factors affecting employment are beyond your control, so it is important to be kind to yourself and practice self-compassion.

Below are some examples of resources that can help when you feel stuck.

Exercises Related to Emotions in Job Search

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Sources and Further Reading

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