They Are Special, I Am Not: Self-Esteem in a Ruthless Job Market
My name is Meera. I recently graduated from King’s College London with a bachelor’s degree in English. Since graduating, the search for employment has been a demoralising process wherein most of my applications are met with no response and each vague rejection seems to pose more questions than answers.
From incessant professional rejection arose personal angst. Fuelled by constant comparison, I became overwhelmed by a feeling of inadequacy, therefore I wanted to reflect on how to retain a core sense of self amidst the disheartening process of job hunting.
A Spiralling Graduate
Post graduate life can feel like a liminal vacuum. You are suspended between possibilities and constraints, negotiating the tensions of hope and dread. When I submitted my final piece of university coursework, the immediate feeling was not the relief that I had anticipated. Instead, I felt a new burden descend on me: the necessity to chase employment. For the first time in my life, I did not know where I would be when September rolled around. And yet, in spite of the fear, I was optimistic about the fact that my future could be what I made of it.
Throughout my final academic year, I applied for many graduate schemes and various entry-level positions to no avail. Once I graduated, the search only ramped up and my days consisted of constantly scanning websites for job opportunities, tailoring my CV for each one, and precisely curating countless covering letters.
Months of repeating, refining, and again repeating this process left me deflated. Eventually, I felt as though I was perpetually pitching myself to a world without space for me. After sending out hundreds of applications, I became so jaded by the process but, more alarmingly, I lost all confidence. I was severely unimpressed by the bullet point personality presented on my CV which felt so far removed from who I am. Then came the existential spiral: who am I?
Internalising Rejection
Rather than channelling the waves of rejection into generative introspection, I internalised it. Beyond mere disheartenment, my self-doubt became deafening and made me second-guess every life choice that had gotten me to the point of being directionless. I questioned all I knew to be true of myself, as the voice of doubt insisted that I was unimportant, not special, and therefore should not even bother trying to make something of myself.
Call it youthful ignorance, but prior to approaching job applications with desperation I used to lead with a baseline of self-belief, a quiet confidence that I was good enough. This belief withered with every rejection. If I am not truly convinced that I would thrive in a given position, how can I expect a hiring manager to see my potential?
The few written rejection emails I received stated that there were simply too many applicants to provide individual feedback. In the depths of my spiralling, my impulse was to compare myself to the other applicants as I envisioned them. To my mind, these people whom I did not know and could not see were not just more qualified than me, they wanted the job more and had surely been working towards this position for their whole lives.
Social Comparison Theory
This thought-pattern reflects the framework of social comparison theory. As conceived by Leon Festinger, social comparison theory outlines how individuals compare themselves to others in order to determine their personal and social worth. Such comparisons can be either upward or downward; in the upward comparison we look to those whom we deem superior, and this can, at its best, trigger motivation but often conjures feelings of inadequacy. Inversely, the downward comparison arises upon looking at people who are worse off or less skilled than ourselves, consequently boosting our confidence and self-esteem.
However, unlike Festinger’s conception, in my model the objects of comparison are imaginary entities. Of course, the other applicants were real people but how they took shape in my head felt as if I were battling heightened, parallel versions of myself. The smarter me, the more experienced me, the me with more transferable skills. Comparing my reality against the expectation I had of myself was the root of my spiral whereby I could not help but take professional rejection personally. Battling impossibly perfect, invented figurations of the ideal applicant that I should have been pushed me deeper into self-loathing. If comparison is the proverbial thief of joy, I was robbing my own house.
Resisting Comparison
What can be gained from reflecting upon social comparison theory is an understanding that neither the upward nor downward comparison is entirely accurate. In every comparison, there is always an element of subjectivity which skews judgement, and this is intensely amplified when comparing the real, flawed beings we are against unrealistic standards we set of ourselves.
As I endeavour to persevere with my career ambitions, I must also learn to reconcile the disconnect between my expectations and my reality. The reality being that I exist in a job market in which over 1 million young people are not in employment, education, or training.
Cynicism only exacerbates the potential for self-pity and idleness, so how do we retain faith in droughts of hope?
In the abyss of hopelessness, I often return to a line from Maya Angelou’s book, Letter to My Daughter, in which Angelou recalls Hebrews 11:1 to declare that ‘faith is the evidence of all things unseen’. To my understanding, holding onto faith is to maintain belief in a better tomorrow, for there is a worthwhile future to be shaped by a positive attitude. Persistence will have pay off.
I will continue applying for various jobs, being open to opportunities that may arise in my periphery. I will face more rejection; many applications will certainly disappear into silence. But I will work to not disappear with them.
This article has been sponsored by the Psychiatry Research Trust, who are dedicated to supporting young scientists in their groundbreaking research efforts within the field of mental health. If you wish to support their work, please consider donating.
