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Looking for a new role in the higher education industry can cue a roller coaster of emotions — it can feel exciting, humbling, stressful, and urgent. Hyper-focusing on the outcome may seem hard to avoid if you are between jobs or if you’re aiming to free yourself from an ill-fitting situation. But a successful search involves more than just solving an immediate problem — it’s an ambition to discover a role and an institution that truly suits you.
Finding peace and clarity in the process stands to aid the project, because how you feel about your job search is one of few factors over which you have control. Like any life change, this journey requires self-awareness, patience, and self-care. Giving yourself permission to engage in this deep work can help you relax into the process, making it more productive and successful.
A job search is an opportunity to take stock of where you’ve been to empower you to decide where you want to go next. Truly embracing the process can help you reframe your experience to make room for the joy that your search invites. Here’s how to get started.
Cultivate Your Back Story
Rehearsing answers to interview questions is a key part of interview preparation. Spend some time exploring and articulating the feelings behind those answers. Don’t think about what anyone wants to hear. Create your own personal narrative about what brought you to this search. These don’t have to be remarks that you share, but shaping your backstory helps you better understand yourself as a person, a professional, and a seeker. This work informs the answers that you give to interviewers.
Ask yourself:
- What prompted my search, and what am I seeking?
- Am I mad or stressed? If so, why?
- Am I excited or energized? If so, why?
- What are some recent professional and/or educational experiences that have taught me about myself and what I want?
- What have I learned about what I love to do?
- What environment best enables me to do this work?
- What aspects of my job have I grown out of?
- What challenges me in positive ways and helps me to grow?
- What leaders have I learned from and why?
- What leaders have disappointed me and why?
- When have I encountered difficult moments in my professional life, and what have those looked like?
Journal. Talk with a mentor, coach, or another trusted contact. Whatever reasons you have for searching — graduating, getting laid off, looking for new challenges, or aiming to leave a culture/role that no longer fits — it’s important to deeply understand these. Discuss the emotions they unearth. Work through these, and make your peace with them.
During the interview process, you will be asked to discuss your professional history, experiences, and goals from a variety of different angles. Understanding your feelings and neutralizing raw emotions positions you to have strategic and comfortable conversations about your past and your future. Plus, coming to your search from an informed and authentic place stands to usher in the joy of self-discovery and the confidence that comes with it.
Detach From the Outcome
There’s much about your job search that you simply can’t control. While you can bolster your candidacy in a host of key ways, you can’t be sure of what the hiring team is seeking, how your credentials match that profile, and what your competition brings to the table. Your job search will take as long as it takes. Rather than white-knuckling it through every screening, interview, and conversation with potential employers, it helps to take a step back and soften some of that intensity. A job search is a comprehensive project. Each interview makes you more natural and comfortable with the process. That’s your valuable takeaway, regardless of any decisions a hiring team makes.
“The importance of the interview doesn’t just lie in the immediate job hunt itself,” Adam Klein, managing director and certified integral coach with New Ventures West, explained. “The interview is a rehearsal for you to practice telling your story and to receive feedback on how you can better do it. Essentially, each interview strengthens your ability to articulate your experiences and abilities so that when the time comes, you are ready for it.”
Of course, outcome is important — you want and need a new job. But throughout the process, you also stand to learn about yourself, the roles you’re seeking, the institutions you admire, and the higher education industry. Klein noted that every interview offers “a peek into the direction your industry is headed. During each interview, you get an idea of what’s new in your industry — new technologies, workplace priorities, or even job roles. You leave with a bit of information that will make you competitive and well-informed. That is a victory in itself.”
Every interview is an opportunity to revisit past lessons while taking a new risk. This is hard work, but it also helps you shape your next chapter.
Tap Into the Power of Your Network
Those in your network can be a tremendous asset when it comes to providing leads and references. They can also assist in other key areas. “One of the most overlooked ways they help is by pointing out your blind spots,” Klein noted. “Whether it’s suggesting roles or companies that might not have crossed your mind or challenging you to rethink what positions align with your strengths, their outside perspective is invaluable. Sometimes their insights lead you down paths that match your skills in ways you hadn’t considered, broadening your job search in a meaningful way.”
Your network is also a source of support. Everyone in your network has been through a job search. Reaching out to them can bring joy to your search, reminding you that you’re not alone in this ambition and, at some point, you will be in a position to pay it forward.
Upskill While You Wait
Waiting is a challenging and humbling part of the process. Take advantage of opportunities that your institution offers to participate in leadership, communication, technology, and other workshops or trainings that strengthen your skills and add new dimensions to your narrative. Pursue free certifications or those offered through professional societies in which you hold memberships.
You’re not just looking for a job. You’re seeking insight into the next phase of your career. Embrace the initiative by pursuing new aims. This will not only bolster your candidacy materials and give you fresh content to cite in interviews, it will also help you develop new skills, insights, and goals. Plus, it may present opportunities to make new connections and broaden your network.
Find Your Joy
You decide how to emotionally approach your job search. Embracing it as an opportunity for reinvention makes the endeavor about more than the outcome, which can help you to stay calm, focused, and joyful in your pursuit.
“One of the most exciting aspects of a job search that often gets overlooked is how it pushes you to redefine what success means for yourself. It’s a moment to pause and really evaluate your goals and values,” Klein noted.
Take your moment. Commit to finding more than your next job — find your joy.
