The Job Market Is Making Good People Doubt Themselves

One of the biggest problems in the job market right now is that it is making perfectly capable people question themselves.

Not because they are weak.

Not because they are underqualified.

Not because they have suddenly forgotten how to do the job.

But because the process itself is messy, inconsistent, and far more risk-averse than most people realise.

I have seen a lot of that this week.

We welcomed new people into the Sprint. A communications person. A transformation and product delivery leader. Another supply chain person. All smart. All experienced. All the sort of people who, frankly, should be in jobs by now. Yet they are finding the process hard, confusing, and weirdly demoralising.

That is not unusual anymore.

I have also watched people get poor feedback that does not really stack up. I have seen interview processes drag on for too long, with too many rounds, too many opinions, and too little clarity. I have seen candidates leave interviews feeling not just disappointed, but a bit robbed.

As if they showed up in good faith and the process did not.

That feeling matters more than employers seem to understand.

The best outcome after an interview is not always getting the job.

Sometimes the best outcome is being able to say, "fair enough. I get it. I know why I did not get it. I can work with that".

But when people leave with confusing feedback, vague objections, or the sense that their ideas have been taken and their experience has been flattened into something generic, it does real damage.

Not just to confidence, but to decision-making.

Because this is what happens next.

People start overthinking.

They start sanding down their personality.

They start rewriting good CVs into bland ones.

They start applying for things they do not even want, just to feel movement.

They become more cautious at exactly the point they need to be clearer and braver.

That is why I keep saying this job search is not just about effort. It is about positioning.

It is marketing.

It is sales.

It is buyer psychology.

If the market is nervous, political, and overloaded, then your job is not to throw more information at it. Your job is to reduce the perceived risk of hiring you.

That means being clearer, not longer.

Sharper, not busier.

More commercial, not more desperate.

One of the loveliest things this week was hearing from someone who has landed a six-figure offer.

One of the words they used was audacity.

That mattered.

Not because they became some shouty, overconfident version of themselves. But because they stopped staying inside the lines of what felt “normal”.

They took a few more chances.

They used AI in a smarter way.

Not to do the thinking for them, but to help them think better, articulate better, and move faster.

That is a huge distinction, by the way.

I do not think AI is most useful when it replaces effort. I think it is most useful when it supports judgement.

When it helps you spot patterns, tighten your message, prepare properly, and say the thing you were circling around but had not quite landed yet.

That is also how I think about coaching more broadly. I do not want to just do things for people. I want them to understand what is actually going on, so they can make better decisions long after they stop needing me.

And maybe that is why a small moment from this week stayed with me.

I took a day off to take my husband to hospital for one of his regular appointments as part of his clinical trial. He is doing really well, but it was a horrible procedure and I could see he was in pain. I got up to hold his hand and, quite unexpectedly, my own body started reacting. Light-headed. Seeing stars.

I put my head between knees, trying not to become the problem in the room.

What struck me afterwards was this: from the outside, I probably looked fairly steady. On the inside, my system was having quite a big response.

I think that is true for a lot of job seekers right now.

People look fine.

They are still applying.

Still showing up.

Still trying to sound sensible and upbeat.

But underneath, the process is taking chunks out of them.

So here is the point I want to leave you with.

If your confidence has dipped, do not automatically treat that as proof that you are doing badly.

It may simply be a very normal response to a process that is not giving you enough signal, enough fairness, or enough momentum.

What to do instead?

Go back to the evidence.

Look at whether your CV is genuinely positioned for the market you want, not just “tailored” in the usual way.

Look at whether your message makes you feel like a safe, useful hire.

Look at whether you are being too polite, too generic, or too hidden.

Look at whether you are waiting for permission instead of showing a bit more audacity.

Because in this market, caution alone is not getting many people hired.

Clarity helps.

Positioning helps.

Better decisions help.

And yes, sometimes a bit of audacity helps too.

If your job search feels harder than it should right now, you are not imagining it.

But that does not mean you are stuck.

And if you want help figuring out which part of your job search is actually broken, I am running the Job Reset Workshop on 6 May at 1pm UK time.

You can register here: https://146442866.hs-sites-eu1.com/workshop