From Helpless to Hopeful During the Job Search |
Recently I spent a few minutes reading posts of frustrated job-seekers on a popular social media site. I observed a painful pattern. It was obvious that highly-qualified job-seekers consistently submit sometimes hundreds of applications. They then wait. They hear nothing. Or they receive automated rejections sometimes many weeks or months later. What the job seekers describe is not just disappointment but something deeper, a growing sense that nothing they do matters anymore. Neuroscience has a name for this state of mind and emotion. It is not weakness nor lack of effort; it is learned hopelessness, which our brains are amazingly sensitive to.
Baratta, Seligman, and Maier (2023) explain that the brain is constantly monitoring whether our actions lead to controllable outcomes. Believing that outcomes are controllable gives hope and increases a sense of power to overcome a problem. When effort reliably produces results, stress responses are likely to remain flexible and temporary. But when effort (e.g. applying for jobs) is repeatedly met with silence, randomness, or rejection regarding job opportunities, a different stress pattern takes hold. These brain-based stress responses relate to job seekers who have been persistently searching for and applying for jobs with no success.
At the center of the cognitive neuroscientific process leading to (Baratta, Seligman, & Maier). When the brain repeatedly detects a lack of control, this brainstem region becomes overactive; it floods the system........