Application anxiety can stand in the way of our professional happiness. Because if you are afraid to submit your documents or go to an interview, you may not get a (new) job. Reason enough to deal with the topic of application anxiety and to look for ways out of the career trap. We reveal how it can succeed.
Job application anxiety: What is it??
Job application anxiety means that people are afraid to submit their application documents to a potential employer. The reason is Fear of being rejected. Without a doubt, a rejection does not have a positive effect on one’s self-esteem. Even the most self-confident applicants are not left cold by a job rejection.
Other people still manage to hand in their application documents, but suffer from excessive nervousness afterwards. They also fear that their profile, knowledge and soft skills might not be sufficient to convince in the application process.
Still other people manage to submit their documents and wait for the vote of the recruiter. If you then receive an invitation to a job interview, however, your fear of applying for a job strikes you. Already in the days before the job interview they are so nervous that they can no longer sleep and hardly concentrate. You then even play with the idea of cancelling the job interview.
Who is affected by job application anxiety?
Now, you might get the idea that job application anxiety particularly afflicts those people who are apply for the first time. That so especially pupils, trainees or university graduates, in other words, people just starting out in their careers are particularly affected by job application anxiety. But this does not have to be true in every case. There are also People, which only become apparent in the Experience fear of (re)applying for a job in the course of their professional life. This can lead to them staying with an employer who no longer makes them happy or who does not appreciate their competencies and performance.
Often this is the beginning of an unhappy professional career. Employees who are reluctant to do their job because they are annoyed by the working atmosphere and would prefer to work in another company usually no longer perform well. They only do their job by the book and no longer contribute to the company to an excessive degree. This is also noticed by superiors, who will probably have something to say about it. At this point, a vicious circle of bad feedback and even worse performance often begins, which can only be broken with great effort. The fatal thing is that employees who are rarely praised doubt their own competencies. Thus, they lack the necessary self-confidence to apply for a new position. Their job application anxiety keeps them from looking for a new employer.
Reasons for fear of a job application
Job application anxiety can have very different causes. In most cases, it’s not just one reason that causes employees to shy away from applying, but the interplay of different ones. For example, the following reasons and causes occur repeatedly:
- The personality of the applicant: People who are more introverted are, in a sense, innately afraid of being the center of attention. But this is exactly what happens when they apply for a job. You and your skills will be looked at more closely and examined for suitability. At the latest in the interview, the applicant must convince with his personality. And that’s exactly what shy, reticent people don’t like to think about. Because of this fear, they shy away from applying for a job and prefer not to do it at all.
- The fear of rejection: For many employees, the fear of rejection by the potential employer plays a major role in causing them to develop job application anxiety. And in fact this cannot be completely dismissed out of hand. After all, no one can say how the application process will go for the individual candidate. It is quite possible that he actually gets a rejection on his application or a negative message after the interview. As a rule, a whole series of interested people apply for an advertised position. It’s quite normal for the majority to receive a rejection letter.
- The fear of uncertain situations: Some people do not want to put themselves in situations whose outcome is relatively uncertain for them. This does not just mean the fear of rejection by the HR professional. Everything could go well at the interview and they could get the job. In this case, however, there is still the danger that the new job or the new colleagues will be completely different from what you had hoped for. A difficult thing, because after only a short time in the new company, they can not apply again somewhere else. This uncertainty can lead to the fear of a new job application. With the result that these people do not even try to find a new job.
Overcoming the fear of applying for a job
If you are also one of those people who suffer from application anxiety, you do not have to surrender to your fate without a fight. There are ways to combat and, in the best case, overcome job application anxiety: