Feeling Discouraged in the Admin Job Search? That's Normal
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder encourages aspiring administrators who are discouraged by the competitive job search process.
Key Takeaways
- Rejection is part of the process - Administrative hiring is competitive, and not getting the first job you apply for is completely normal
- Keep improving your materials - Each round of applications is a chance to strengthen your resume, cover letter, and interview skills
- Persistence wins - The candidates who succeed are the ones who keep applying and keep getting better
Transcript
If you're looking for an admin job, it can be a little bit discouraging after weeks or months of applying for jobs and then either not hearing back at all or eventually hearing back that you didn't get the job or you didn't move on in the process.
It can be kind of discouraging because a lot of people expect...
that getting an admin job is very similar to getting a teaching job or any other kind of job where it's kind of easy, you apply, and if you're qualified, you're probably going to get it.
Well, admin jobs have just very different numbers attached to them.
There are often well over 100 applicants for every position.
So it's important to have realistic expectations that you're not going to get every job you apply for.
You're probably going to have to apply for 25 to 50 jobs realistically to get an offer.
And you have to be competitive at every stage of the process.
So For example, if you're not getting any interviews or if you're not getting very many interviews, let's say 20% of the time you should be getting an interview.
If you're not, that means that one thing you've got to look at is the competitiveness of your application materials.
So what does the interview team base their decision on, you know, like who they interview?
They base that on your application materials.
And if your application materials are just not that competitive, then it doesn't matter how good you are, how great you would do in an interview.
You're not going to get an interview.
if your materials are not competitive.
So don't take this too personally.
Don't take this as a reflection of your character or your experience.
Just recognize that if you've sent in 50 applications and haven't gotten any interviews, it's probably because your application materials need some work.
And the good thing about that is, the nice part about this, is that you can do something about it.
You can improve your application materials very, very quickly.
For example, a lot of resumes cover skills like here are all the skills i have and then they go into all the experience and all the duties and all this like there's a lot of stuff in resumes that needs to be there but people also put a lot of other stuff that doesn't need to be there so we have something called the resume blueprint that is free that is an outline of exactly what needs to go in your resume and what does not need to go in your resume for example if you're if you're including skills i don't like to see skills in a resume i think they make it weaker because they're basically unsupported claims.
So we want your resume to be as strong as possible.
And you can download that resume blueprint at principalcenter.com slash blueprint.