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Not everyone comes to a résumé writer for résumés. Sometimes job
seekers feel overwhelmed, and need to confess their fears. In those situations,
the writer has to change wardrobes to serve as “lay priest” or psychoanalyst.
There
is a long index of phobias floating around. The more popular ones include claustrophobia
(fear of confined space),
arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and
laliophobia (fear of speaking). While
the list of phobias stretches well into the hundreds, there does not appear to
be a fear expressly linked to the job market.
This
fear may be a compilation of other phobias. These might include such fears as hypenglyophobia
(the fear of responsibility), kainophobia (the fear of anything new)
or perhaps xenophobia (the fear of strangers or the unknown), and
kakorrhiophobia (the fear of failure).
According
to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 5.3 million Americans
suffer from some type of social phobias. I am lumping fear of the job market into mix. While I am not a licensed
psychoanalyst, I will hazard a wild guess and declare it a combination of fears
most closely aligned to the fear of failure and fear of the unknown.
An
individual who suffers from job market phobia is strikingly similar to a person
rowing a boat with one oar in the water. Up close, it appears the individual is
making a cogent effort to move the boat forward—in this case, a job search—but
as you watch from a distance, you realize the boat is merely traveling in
circles.
Job
market fear is not as uncommon as one might suspect. I have seen some of my
finest résumés go unused. This usually becomes known when a client informs me
nine months or two years into the employment voyage that the résumé was never
put to use.
Asking
why rarely produces a candid response. The litany of answers range from, “I put
my job search on hold due to (fill-in the
blank),” “I’ve decided to make a career change,” and “The right opportunity
hasn’t presented itself.” There have
been other responses, of course, but these are among the most common.
Fear in any form ultimately imposes lifestyle
restrictions, capable of robbing one of mental and physical peace. The
perceived danger—usually imaginary, controls one’s otherwise proactive job
search. Common symptoms of fear include elevated heart rate, excessive
perspiration, trembling, anxiety attacks and breathing difficulty.
Once fear of the job market becomes entrenched, a new
routine becomes established to avoid these side effects. For the job seeker
with only one oar in the water, traveling in circles becomes the new normal. As
for the esoteric phobia involved—be that anything
new, the unknown or failure, never needs to be addressed.
To
paraphrase FDR, the only thing job hunters have to fear is fear itself.