Managing Career Setbacks

We’ve all been there.

The promotion you’ve been waiting for doesn’t come through.

The job you thought you were a shoe-in for decides not to move forward with you.

Or maybe you’ve just applied and applied and applied and you’re just not getting through.

It’s easy to get frustrated when your career isn’t going where you think it should be going, or at the pace you want. Today’s job market is challenging! Roles are shifting. Companies are either opening up their candidate pools by shifting to remote work, or calling folks back into the office when maybe that’s not what they signed up for. Technology is developing, lowering the bar for entry while also expecting unrealistic levels of experience and at the same time dismissing highly competent folks for being overqualified.

It’s actually okay and warranted to be frustrated, even angry that you’re not where you want to be. Who wouldn’t be?

My question is this: what are you doing with that energy?

Are you anchoring deep in the feeling that you can’t get ahead so why even try?

Are you continuing to do what you’ve been doing, hoping that maybe this time it’ll work?

Are you raging at the world because it’s everyone else’s fault you aren’t where you think you should be?

Or are you transmuting that frustration- even that anger- into something productive?

Hint: letting frustration get the best of you, raging at the world, or giving up are probably not going to get you where you want to go.

It’s okay to give yourself space to “feel the feels” - to experience the emotions you’re having about not being able to get where you want to be- but don’t let them drag you down. Let them fuel your fire to propel you forward.

Ask yourself:

• Is there something I could be doing differently?

  • Do some research. Ask your friends or folks who have achieved what you’re looking to do what they did. Check out the advice of experts — do you need to rework your resume? Pitch yourself from a different angle? When we only depend on our own counsel, we are self-limiting. Expand your circle to examine others’ approaches and give them a shot. Be open to trying something new.

• How much effort have I put into this?

  • Of course we want our promotions, that perfect job, that level of recognition and success when we want it. We want it easy and quick and we want it the first time- we want others to see and recognize our value intrinsically— but often it takes many, many tries to get there. Setbacks are part of the process. Is there something else you could be doing, or do you just need to try more? We often don’t make it on the first try. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be learning.

  • If you find yourself at the opposite end of the spectrum, and you’re putting in a lot of effort without a lot of return—consider how you might be able to work more efficiently. Perhaps instead of spending hours perfectly tailoring a resume to a specific job, or looking for that perfect role, consider creating a base resume that’s ’good enough’ and use that for jobs that mostly hit the mark— remember that your own sustainability is also important.

• What am I not seeing?

  • Remember that we only ever see a sliver of anyone else’s journey, and not all the personal and professional challenges they faced to get there. Ask others about their journeys. What blocks did they face? How did they get past them? That person with the perfect job might have applied to hundreds of jobs before landing that one that looks perfect from the outside (I know many people in this situation!). They might have had to fight through their own challenges and failures to get to where you seen them now. Illuminating the unseen here can often normalize your own struggles, let you know it’s not just you, and give you resources for overcoming your own obstacles.

Remember that everything is a season- we have good, fruitful seasons, and we have hard seasons of want. Often those latter seasons are longer than we want them to be, but seasons change- there is always opportunity, as long as we’re moving. Allow yourself the grace to be on the journey.