EP 262: Job Search Taking Forever? You're Doing Fake Work

Hey there, I'm Natalie Fisher. I'm a six-figure business builder, a mom of a two-year-old, the recoverer of a ten-year narcissistic relationship, and now in a super healthy one. And most of all, I'm a human who's figuring this out with you. This podcast is about how to use your mind to thrive in your career and create the subconscious breakthroughs that you need to get there. The subconscious blocks that you don't even know you have to achieving your highest levels of earning and your best. zone of genius moments and days in the flow. That is my goal for you. Let's dive into the episode. And before we dive into today's episode, I want to remind you that I'm the coach who is always going to point you back in the direction of your own wisdom. And so before we get started, I want to remind you, listen to your own wisdom first. This means listen to yourself first and me second and anyone else for that matter. Take what resonates and throw away what doesn't unapologetically. I won't be mad, I won't be offended. In fact, I will be proud of you for doing so, because I know from a lot of personal experience that anything is only as effective as the amount of resonance that it has within your uniquely built brain. And something is only going to work if it feels right to you and if you believe in it, or if you want to do the work to believe in it. And that's what And I'm here to help you do. Your inner wisdom is infinitely more valuable than mine when it comes to getting your outcomes and for what you are here to do on this planet. So I'm here to help you steer that wisdom in the most powerful way possible. I'm so happy you're here. I'm so glad you're here, part of this. I'm so glad we're here on the planet at the same time. Let's dive into today's episode. Have you ever felt like you are doing everything right? Like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, and yet it's not getting you the offer in your hand? Like you're tweaking your resume, you're personalizing it, you're applying, you're sending it in, and it just feels like you're running really hard and you're trying to run really fast, but you're not actually getting anywhere? Stay tuned, 'cause in this video, I'm gonna clear that all up for you. My name is Natalie Fisher. I've helped hundreds of professionals land 6-figure-plus roles, and I need to tell you about a pattern that I've seen over and over and over again. And even after, you know, smart people realize this, they can fall back into this pattern anyway, and it is one of the greatest causes for a very slow job hunt. So this is what you need to realize in order to fix it, and by the end of this video, you're going to know exactly what's going on, exactly why you're not progressing, why you don't feel like you're making any progress despite the hard work that you're putting in. And then you can finally stop spinning your wheels and do something different. And the third thing I'm going to talk about is I'm going to share something almost nobody talks about because it might be something that is quietly running in the background that you're not really sure about, that you weren't aware of. And so I'm really good at identifying subconscious blocks, but this is an activity that I see many people doing that is actually keeping them in the search for much longer. In this video, this is part of a series on why you're not getting hired. And I'll link the full playlist below in the end, in the comments on this video, so you can watch the full video series. So let's get into it. Reason 1 is you think you're working hard, but you're not, because it feels like you're working hard. So I had a client named Kathy, and she was searching for over 8 months. Okay. She knew she needed to get out of her job, and she knew she needed to get into a different position that paid her more money, but she had been at this for 8 months. So she came to me and she's like, I've been doing this for 8 months. Why hasn't it worked? I've been doing everything. I feel like I've applied for over 300 jobs and I'm exhausted and I'm feeling burnt out and it's just not working. And here's what I realized after asking her a few questions about what she was actually doing. And this is the problem. We, we think we're working really hard. Like Kathy thought she was working really hard for 8 months. But when we dig into what she was actually doing, the work wasn't actually creating the results. It was more busywork than it was actual results-creating work. So I asked her this one question. I asked her, how many actual humans have you spoken to that have actually been able to use what you can do? She went silent. She couldn't really answer. She's like, maybe like 1 or 2. Like, maybe I've had a couple of conversations. And I was like, There's the problem, because you think that you've been working hard. And if you're watching this video and you can relate, maybe you've been applying and submitting a ton of applications and you think that that is hard work and you feel tired from doing that, right? But that is like literally running on a treadmill. You're not moving and you're getting yourself tired and worn out, but you're not actually going anywhere. You're not going from point A to point B. So when you're doing that kind of activity, send— like sending out those applications, not talking to a human, not knowing if a human saw that, or if a person could respond back to you. There's nothing that actually moves you forward. You've done an action, but it hasn't moved you forward. But your brain thinks it has. It's like, well, I applied, you know, that's all I have to do. I've applied, that's it. And it's deceptive because you haven't actually done anything that's going to move you forward, right? You've maybe given yourself a 1 to 2% chance. And that's not a very high chance. The likelihood of you moving forward by doing that activity over and over and over again is very, very, very small. Since we have so many people doing this, we have so many people complaining about how the system is broken and how it's not working. And that is the narrative that is growing. And that's the problem. When you're feeling like you're doing that, here's the truth. You're not talking to humans. And if you're not talking to enough humans, then you won't get the momentum to move forward that you need. Okay, so what I mean is, did you have a conversation with an actual human where you said, hey, this is what I do for helping, this is what I'm hired for, I can help you do this, this, and this, and this in your department, would you like to hire me, yes or no? And if you're not actually getting a response that— from a human that says no, then you haven't moved yourself forward at all. You've just kind of tricked your brain into thinking you're being productive, but you're not actually being productive. So the application that you sent in, I hate to break it to you, but it does not count. And if you are getting responses, if you are getting interviews, then that's different. Okay, then that's actually creating results for you. And that work works for you. But it's very, very minor that that happens. But most people are not creating results. And just saying, sitting back and being like, well, I've applied to 300 jobs, and it's not working. So I'm working really hard, I'm feeling burnt out, and nothing's happening. And that is the problem. That attitude is the problem, and that lack of awareness is the problem, right? So a resume sent into the void does not count. An easy apply does not count. A conversation with a human being who can say yes or no to you, that is the measure that counts. So the measure of whether or not you did something to move you forward, even if it didn't get you the whole way yet, is did you have an actual interaction with somebody that counted? Did you have an interaction with somebody where they could say, yes, I will refer you, I will move you forward, or I will interview you, or I will consider you? Or did they say no? And then if they said no, that counts too. So most people are just having too many of these, and like they're having more applications than conversations, and that's what's going to slow this down tremendously. Imagine if you were going on an interview every single day and you were discovering exactly what was going wrong with these interviews, why you weren't getting the offer, you were dissecting it, you were debriefing it, you had a clear picture of what was next, and you were going in with a new frame of mind, with a new attitude, with a new lens on what went wrong, you would be guaranteed to land the offer. But when we're not going on enough interviews, we're not having enough conversations, that's where the first problem is. And the first thing that makes the job hunt go from taking this long to taking this long. Go ahead and like this video, by the way. If you like it, give it a thumbs up and let people know about it because it'll expand the reach for the channel, which I would really appreciate. But let's move on to reason 2. The second reason people are not landing a job offer quickly is because they're not excavating the data from the failure. They're not extracting the value from the experience that they just had. And this is normal because people, they don't want to go into like dissecting what went wrong. They want to kind of be in avoidance because it's easier. And I've done this too. It's not a conscious thing. I'm just like, okay, let's just move to the next thing. Let's just keep going. Let's just get to the next thing. Or you take a while to recover And then you have to get yourself psyched back up to go again. So have you ever said something like, I'm going on interviews and I just don't know what I'm doing wrong? I just don't know why it's not working. I just don't know what's going wrong. If you are saying that, if you are repeating that in your head, that is a problem because you need to know what's going wrong. You need to at least have some theories about what could be going wrong. Now, you're not going to get feedback from the employer. We can't rely on that. So it's up to you. It's your responsibility to figure out exactly what is going wrong. Now, I'm an expert in this. This is what I do. Day in, day out is help figure this out with people. If you're going on interviews and you're, you're wondering like, it's not working, what am I doing wrong? But you're not actually digging into like, what are my top 3 theories about what actually went wrong here? Then here's a place to start. You want to ask yourself these 3 questions. Were you sure that you communicated your values so clearly that it was beyond a shadow of a doubt that you would contribute at least double the value that you were asking to be paid? Question 2, did you tell stories so specific that they felt pulled into what you were saying and they could see exactly how they applied to what they're doing and how that is going to fix their problems? 3, did you ask questions that showed them the kind of hire you'd be? Did you ask questions that made them think? Most people are leaving interviews hoping. They're like, I don't really know. I think I did okay. I think I did great. But there are ways that you can actually figure this out very clearly. Inside my program, there's a method called Questions Versus Answers. And in that method, I show you how to pinpoint specifically how to figure out what it is they need, like what it is they need you to say, exactly how you need to say it. Because most people, they won't know that, and they'll just be kind of shooting at a moving target. It won't make any sense because you'll be like, I hope I got that answer right. I hope that's what they needed to hear. I hope I said it right. And you can't know that unless you have some information first. And I show you exactly how you need to get that. You need to switch the interview dynamic. You need to be able to do that in a way that really resonates with them. So every interview that doesn't turn into an offer is clear information. You just haven't done the work to extract it yet. But most people avoid it. They don't look at it. They just want to go to the next thing, or they spend some time being in that disappointment or despair. I have a full comprehensive program, by the way. It's called Mindset to Hired, and it'll help you with every single individual step of this, how to have these conversations, how to do debriefs, how to debrief your interview so that you have those top 3 theories of what went wrong. And if that's happening to you and that's something you'd like help with, I'll put the link in the notes below so you can find it. Next reason is you're engaging in drama. Now, this one is not one that's fun to hear. People don't like it and it might sting a little bit, but I can't tell you how much drama there is out there and how easy it is to get pulled into it, right? The brain kind of is attracted to the drama. So you might see somebody's post online that says, The hiring process is broken. These are all the steps I had to go through, and then I got ghosted. Or you might see somebody posting about how they got rejected because they were overqualified, and they'll make a post about how unfair that is. Or any number of posts that you might see about people putting out there this drama, and then it attracts more drama because people are like, oh yeah, that happened to me too. Oh yeah, that's me too. Oh yeah, I totally relate. And what's happening there is the people posting and the people engaging and responding to the post are just contributing to the drama and growing the drama. And then the drama is actually taking you out of the focus that you need to be communicating your value better, to be telling your stories more precisely, to be actually refining what's actually going to get you the position, right? The drama is for the masses. It is for the people who want to waste their time there. That is not for the people who are winning. And from someone who's coached hundreds of people who have landed job offers in the last 12 months, I can tell you the people who are engaging in the drama are not winning. People who are winning don't have time to engage in that drama. They're busy figuring out exactly what they need to do next, how their top theories for improving what they just did, and going again. That's what speeds up the process. That's what makes it fast. So there it is, the 3 reasons: you're measuring the wrong things, you're tricking your brain into thinking applications are productive, and then you're not having enough conversations. Not enough humans are saying yes or no to you On a daily, weekly basis. You're not learning from your failures, you're just repeating them without knowing, right? You don't know what you don't know. I didn't know this for a long time either, so I'm not judging. I'm just saying you have to learn from your failures, and you have— that is a skill. You have to do a better job of learning from your failures. You can't go into your next interview not knowing what you did wrong, or you're engaging in drama, and that is not necessary, and it is not helpful in any way, shape, or form. Once you recognize these patterns, you can finally break free. You can stop doing them. You can focus. You can make things go faster for you because trust me, things can move very quickly. Once you start ignoring all the stuff that doesn't matter, things start picking up speed because you start picking up speed and you actually start going somewhere. So when you're running, you actually feel like you're running. You don't feel like you're on a treadmill anymore. The next challenge I see people facing is when they actually start getting these interviews and they start actively engaging in really meaningful conversations where they have opportunity to express their value, then they start to see all these other things that could, you know, they could be doing wrong as to why they're not getting the offer. So I have created a free guide. It's called 8 Reasons Smart People Land Interviews But No Offers. And by the end of that guide, you'll have everything you need to see why you haven't landed that offer yet. It'll give you the 8 reasons, and one of those reasons or more is going to apply to you, and you'll be able to pinpoint it and make tweaks specifically from the information in that guide. And I can't tell you how much feedback I've gotten on that guide. It has helped people land offers directly. It has helped people progress to the next level, to final rounds in big companies. And you can grab that guide completely free. All you have to do is click the link below.