Job Advice

Is Your Family Slowing Down Your Job Search?

Being in between jobs can be a stressful time for you and your whole family. How you and your family react to this stress and the stress of your job search is critical to whether or not you will quickly and successfully land your next great job. If you feel your family may actually be slowing down your job search, try these helpful tips to get back on track and speed your job search along.

Make Definite Boundaries

If you have been in the work force a while, then your family may interpret your new “down time” as time you owe to them. However, this can be detrimental to your job search. You must consider your days as work days, the difference being now instead of going to work you are looking for work. If you do not consider your days’ work days, you will quickly fall into a pattern of laziness that will never benefit your job search.

Make sure your family understands that you are not on vacation, you simply have the job right now of looking for new work. Even if some of this job search is conducted at home, your family must respect your space and time so that you can find a new job.

Take Yourself Seriously

If you are not taking yourself and your job search seriously, it is unlikely that your family will take it seriously either. Do not talk down about yourself in front of your family, or be sloppy or haphazard about your job search. Your family will quickly interpret this to mean that your job search is actually not that important and they do not need to respect your boundaries.

Ask For Help

One of the best ways to make sure your family does not slow down your job search is to involve them. Ask for help looking for contacts, proofreading resumes and other tasks that make them feel involved while also showing them how important your job search is.