Among the many effects wreaked by COVID-19 is widespread unemployment.
With even typically resilient fields such as health careopens in new window and educationopens in new window showing signs of vulnerability, trying to land a job during a pandemic may seem impossible.
But the shifting landscape also brings with it new opportunities, particularly as the strain of the pandemic has put mental health higher on everyone's radar, says Russ Riendeau, PhD, chief behavioral scientist at New Frontier Search Company, an executive search firm near Chicago. For instance, business and other organizational leaders may not previously have thought much about employee morale, building a resilient workforce and other skills that psychologists can foster, Riendeau says.
Yet it's up to psychologists to do the research to show how their skills can pay off for potential employers, he says, whether that's by proposing to implement telemedicine mental health support for employees or pitching how behavioral-based interview techniques can identify talented employees that the competition may overlook.
“Psychologists are going to be able to literally invent themselves and invent jobs,” says Riendeau, who co-authored an article about job hunting in a post-pandemic worldopens in new window. It's more important than ever, he says, to focus on your strengths as a psychologist and “then leverage those strengths and your value.”
Jing Feng, PhD, agrees that emerging shifts in how Americans live and learn will open up new job realms. As more classes rapidly move online, psychologists who are knowledgeable about human factors can play a key role in maximizing virtual education, says Feng, associate professor in the Human Factors and Applied Cognition Program at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
“For example, it could be a usability researcher or a human factors psychologist that helps to ensure that the interface design of these online education platforms would allow the material that's being delivered through such platforms to be effective,” she says.
Some strategies that Feng, Riendeau and other psychologists suggest:
Expand your network. It has never been a more important time to expand your contacts in your field through informational interviewing, says Paul Yost, PhD, an associate professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Seattle Pacific University in Washington state. To start expanding your network, reach out to three people, either with a cold email or through an introduction from someone else, he says. Ask for no more than 30 minutes of their time.
With many people teleworking and some having a bit more down time, you're more likely to connect with these contacts, he says, “People are just looking to help others and it feels so good to be able to do that.”
Resist the urge to ask about job opportunities directly, as people will feel used, Yost says. Instead use that half an hour to gain insights into what types of skills are valued—skills that you can feature on your resume—as well as emerging opportunities in that field, he says. Before wrapping up the call, ask for names of two other people you should speak with. Always send a thank you note or email and mention a part of the conversation that you found particularly helpful, Yost says.
Highlight your crisis skills. Look for ways to illustrate your innate resilience—in conversations and on your resume—with examples of how you've handled other pre-pandemic crises, Riendeau says. It may be something personal, such as the death of a loved one or a fire that destroyed the family home.
Explain what steps you took in the wake of that crisis, whether it was seeking therapy or going back to school or volunteering for the Red Cross. “Show the activities that led to the accomplishment of overcoming that adversity,” Riendeau says.
Get savvy about virtual promotion. Physical distancing has made today's job hunt more virtual than ever, Riendeau says. Be sure to maximize those interviews: Set the screen so the camera is at eye level. Check that the light is in front of you rather than from behind, which will darken your image on the screen. Men and women should wear a bit of makeup, some powder or bronzer will brighten up your screen image.
Also, speak at a conversational level, Riendeau says. “People have a tendency to yell into the microphone—these mics are very sensitive.” As an ice breaker, just as the interview gets started, ask the person you're speaking with if the volume and image are clear.
Most of all, practice with someone you trust in the days ahead, so you get comfortable with seeing your face reflected back from the screen as you talk, Riendeau says. “Even within 10 minutes you can improve your interview skills by easily 50%, just by practicing.”
Learn from setbacks. Any job search, even in the best economy, involves disappointments. What matters is how you handle the loss of a coveted job or tenure-track position, says Patrick Carroll, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at The Ohio State University at Lima. “It's a problem if you really don't attempt to learn from that failure, if there is something you could have done better,” he says.
You could adopt a defensive strategy, dismissing the failure to what Carroll describes as a situational cause, such as the fault of a biased hiring committee or a terrible job market. But the risk then is that you may miss out on learning opportunities to improve upon a skill deficiency that, unless corrected, may lead to later failures if you continue to pursue your original goal, Carroll says.
Instead, Carroll recommends a learning-based response. That approach may involve maintaining an optimistic causal outlook of one's competence while, at the same time, considering negative feedback to extract critical self-improvement information, he says.
Although this process may still lead you to conclude that the hiring committee was stacked against you, it may also lead you to figure out that you need to boost your knowledge in some areas or update your interviewing style, he says.
Once you work through what went wrong, you'll not only boost your odds of overcoming job hunt failure but also improve your self-esteem, says Carroll, who has published related research (Self and Identityopens in new window, Vol. 14, No. 4, 2015). In fact, people who learned from failures not only exhibited higher self-esteem and lower doubt than those who had used defensive strategies, he says, “but their self-esteem and their doubt were on par with those who had never failed.”
Think more flexibly. While there may be fewer tenure-track positions open in the near term, Feng suggests that you can still look for research opportunities and, in some cases, even a short-term job outside of academia. For those with human factors and applied cognition expertise, landing a consulting or IT company job for a few years can burnish your application skills and that may help you later land an academic position, as long as you've continued to research and publish, she says.
If you're interested in launching a practice this year, you may find it more difficult to recruit patients given that so many people are short on cash, Yost says. But you may be able to market your psychological knowledge and skills to organizations and start building a business that way, Yost says.
As one example, Yost points to how assisted living and other retirement communities have been hit hard by the pandemic. Perhaps some of those facilities may be interested in contracting with a psychologist to provide guidance and support for patients and staff, he suggests.
“We have an opportunity to impact a society that's reeling right now,” Yost says. “So, where can your skills best support others?”
