The One Thing You Can Control When the Job Search Makes You Question Everything

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Bernie Borges: this episode is also available on my Fulfilled Leadership YouTube channel. The link is in the show notes. Before I get into this episode, I want to tell you what I'm doing because this isn't a one off video. This is another one of those series that I'm recording. And specifically it's the first of, um, four episodes. And they're designed to go together kind of like chapters. So if this one resonates, don't go anywhere. Be sure that you're subscribed to my YouTube channel or on your favorite podcast player or my weekly newsletter so you can catch this four part series which is about self leadership. Now hear me out. Hear me out. The honest reason that I'm doing this is because a lot of people right now are not okay. The job market has gotten strange and hard. Good people, experienced people, skilled people are getting shut out by systems that they can't even see. And when that happens, it's easy to feel like the ground has shifted underneath you. And in some ways it has. The things that you always counted on just stopped. So if that's you, stay with me. And if it's someone you know, share this with them. So over these four episodes, what I'm not going to do is give you a pep talk or some five step hack to beat the algorithm. I want to do something meaningful and I think more useful. I want to walk you back to the one thing that you can count on when everything on the outside gets shaky and then help you rebuild from there. So I'll start today by calling out exactly what, what's happening. And then episode by episode, I'll work our way toward a real concrete plan that you can actually use to get to your destination. This plan is not going to be some magic wand that makes everything easy Sorry, that doesn't exist. But it will be a plan that you can get behind because it will be your plan. A plan that can have an impact on your career situation.

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Bernie Borges: Hey, if you don't know me, I'm, um, Bernie Borges. I'm, um, the CEO of, uh, Fulfilled at Work Academy. I hope you'll stay with me. So, let's get into it. I want to begin with a scenario that I'm seeing nearly every day goes something like this. You sent the resume. It's not a stretch application. It's the one where you read the job description and you thought, wow, this is literally what I've done for the last 15 years. You tailored your application, you read it twice, maybe three times, you hit submit, and then nothing happens. Nothing. No call, no email, not even the polite, we've decided to move forward with other candidates. Just silence. So a few days later, you do it again and again. And somewhere around the 15th time, a, uh, thought that you never used to have before starts to creep in. What if everything that I know how to do doesn't count anymore? Look, if that's anywhere close to where you are right now, I want to be straight with you. You're not going to beat the algorithm, so don't waste your time or effort or energy trying. I've talked with a lot of people lately who are in this exact spot. These are skilled people, experienced people. People who, by every reasonable measure, should be getting a callback within a week. And they're getting nothing. And here's what makes it so disorienting. For most of our working lives, the deal felt pretty simple. Do good work, build a track record, build relationships. And then when you need the next thing in your career, your experience speaks for you. It works for you. That was the deal. That was the thing that you could actually count on. That deal has quietly changed. Maybe it's even obsolete. AI is reshaping every workplace, but most transformations fail because they ignore the human side of change. Fulfilled at Work Academy's four move framework helps leaders reduce fear, create clarity, preserve meaning, and build Adaptability. So your people don't just survive AI change, they thrive in it. And you get the outcomes you need if you're a leader navigating this right now. Let's talk book a complimentary discovery call, and let's explore what human led AI, uh, transformation looks like for your organization. The link is in the show notes. We'd love to connect. A lot of companies are now running applications through AI screening. You know that I don't have to tell you that the screening does their job before a single human ever lays eyes on these applications. That means that your 15 or 20 or 30 years of real hard won experience can get filtered out in about four seconds. Not because you're not qualified, but because a system that was looking for something else that day. And to rub salt in the wound, what they might have been looking for might not even be fair to someone with your credentials. I can only imagine how much that stings. Now, I'm not telling you this to make you angry, though it's okay if, if it does. I'm telling you this because I think a lot of people are walking around processing this as some kind of a failure, like I must be doing something wrong, I must not be good enough anymore, and I want to gently push back on that. A lot of what's happening to you right now is not a verdict on your worth. It's a market that got strange fast and in ways that nobody really prepared us for. And the instinct, the very natural instinct, is to just do more of what used to work, apply to more jobs, send more resumes, hustle harder, network more. And I understand that completely. But I think a lot of us are starting to feel that the old playbook isn't landing the way it used to. You're working harder than ever and you're getting less back. That's an exhausting way to live. So here's a question that I've actually struggled with myself, and I want you to think about it. In a situation like this, what can you actually control? You. What can you control? Well, let's be honest about what you can't control. You can't control the screening technology. You can't control which companies are hiring and which ones froze everything. You can't control whether a hiring manager you'll never meet decides that your resume gets seen. You can't control whether they call back. I'm not going to dress that up. That part is genuinely out of your hands. And pretending otherwise would be one of those empty motivational lines that makes you feel worse. Not Better. But here's the thing that I keep coming back to. When so much gets pulled out of our hands at once, it's easy to conclude that everything is out of your control. And that's the part that isn't true, because there's a whole category here that's still completely yours. And that's how to talk to yourself at the end of the day, when you get no responses, that's yours. Whether you let an algorithm's silence become the story that you believe about your own value, that's yours too. What you do with the strange, uncomfortable, unasked for space that opens up when the work you built your years around suddenly isn't there anymore, that's yours too. You know, I know that that can sound like small comfort or no comfort when the mortgage is real and the clock is real. And I am not minimizing any of that. What I'm saying is, when the circumstances stop responding to you, the one thing left that does respond to you is you. That's self leadership. And that turns out to matter more than it might sound like right now. You know, if you've been watching my videos for a while, you know, you may remember that I recently devoted four episodes digging into AI. Uh, not from a technology standpoint, but what it's doing to work, how the smartest organizations are actually using it, from the standpoint of, um, building trust with staff, having those trust conversations. And I came out of that with a conviction that I really didn't fully have going into it. Now, when we talk about this, we look at AI and how AI can screen your application. It can automate a huge chunk of the tasks that used to make up your job. And in some cases, yes, in some cases, it can even take the whole role entirely. And that's real. I'm, uh, not going to soften it. But there's one thing that AI can't do. It can't lead the person you are. When your career scaffolding gets pulled away, think about what's been holding a lot of us up for years. A title, a company badge, a paycheck that showed up every two weeks like clockwork. A track record that we could point to. That's what I mean by scaffolding. It's external, it's incredibly useful right up until the moment that it's not there. And then you find out how much of your identity was actually connected to that scaffolding. AI is really good at things that can be specified or un optimized or made more efficient or repeated or Scaled. You know the drill. But AI Is not good at the work of being a steady, clear, grounded human being in the middle of uncertainty. That work has no shortcut. There's no model that does it for you. And in a world where more and more of work is getting automated, that deeply human capacity. I'm talking about things like judgment, discernment, critical thinking, relationship building, nonverbal, and verbal communication, these human traits aren't becoming less valuable. They're becoming the whole game. So when I say that there's a part of this that's still yours, that this is what I'm talking about. The most automatable parts of your work might be under threat. But the least automatable part of you, how you lead yourself, that's not under threat because it can't be automated. Nobody can take it or screen it or even downsize it. Now, I want to say something a little harder, and I want to say it, uh, as someone who's on this road as well, not someone standing safely off to the side, because I'm not immune to any of this. What this moment is exposing for a lot of us is how much of who we think we are. We hand it over to what we do. Ask almost anyone, hey, tell me about yourself. And within about 10 seconds, they're telling you about their job. Now, look, that's not a flaw in you. That's how nearly all of us were built. Our work became our identity so gradually that we never even noticed that the handoff was happening. And it works beautifully until the work goes away. Then suddenly it's not just, I lost my income. It's, I don't know who I am right now. And that second sentence is the one that really knocks people sideways. That's the one that nobody warned you about. I m don't think the answer is to care less about your work. I love work. I think work can be one of the most meaningful things in life. What I'm questioning is whether it's wise to let it carry the entire weight of who we are. Because when you do that, anything that hits your work hits all of you and all at once. And here's the part that I find oddly hopeful right now. Whether you wanted it or not, you've been handed something that most people never get. A, uh, forced pause. It's a moment in your life where the autopilot gets switched off, and it's painful, I know. But it's also the exact moment where the most important questions actually become askable. In fact, you can't even avoid them. Questions like what fulfills me? What are my values at this point in my life? And how aligned am I between my values and my current life? I've watched people in my programs come through seasons like this as the strongest ones who let those questions get asked instead of just ignoring them and accepting silence. So I'm not going to wrap this up in a bow and pretend to hand you some tip or trick or hack because your situation doesn't have a bow on it and you'd see right through it if I tried. What I'll leave you with for this episode is this. You can't control whether they call you back, but you can control who's standing here when they do or when they don't. And that person, steadier, clearer, more confident, harder to knock over that person is something that you can actually build. Starting now, no permission and no callback is required. That's what this four part series is about.

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Bernie Borges: four episodes on how to lead yourself when you can't lead the circumstances. Today on this episode, I identified the ground moving. Next time I want to talk about something that I see almost everyone do without realizing it and that's leaning the whole weight of their life into one single support and why that's the real risk underneath all of this. Whether your work got, uh, taken from you or you just never built it. So by the end of this series, I'm going to point you to a tool that I built. It's a free 90 day self leadership blueprint and it walks you through turning all of this from a feeling into an actual plan. And I'll tell you exactly where to get it in the last episode. So for now, just stay with the series because I think we're building something real here. If this hits home for you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone you know who's quietly going through this. They just might need to hear that they're not failing. You can connect with me on the socials or subscribe to my weekly newsletter where I unpack this stuff and share each episode each week. You can get the subscription link in the show Notes Bernie I'm Bernie Borges, your fulfillment architect. I'm glad you're here. I'll, uh, catch you on the next episode. Thanks for listening to the Life Fulfilled podcast. At Fulfilled at Work Academy, we help leaders build teams that feel valued, energized and committed before burnout or turnover ever show up. Through our fulfillment Centric Leadership workshops, coaching and masterminds, we equip leaders to lead with both head and heart because fulfilled leaders build high performing cultures. Visit fulfilledatworkacademy.com to learn more. And remember, fulfillment isn't a soft skill. It's a strategic skill. It's a performance strategy. I'm, um, Bernie Borges, your fulfillment architect. Until next time, I wish you a, uh, life fulfilled.

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