Here’s What You Can Do if You Have a Stressful Job

It’s a common occurrence for people to be stressed about their jobs. After all, there’s only so much a person can take before getting overwhelmed.

Sure, a certain amount of stress is healthy and normal. According to Summa Health, “stress helps you meet your daily challenges and motivates you to reach your goals, ultimately making you a smarter, happier, and healthier person.” However, we should know that when stress reaches a certain level, it could take a heavy toll on your body. This could lead to burnout and anxiety.

What more if you’re a fresh grad? As a person fresh out of college, you’re not used to the workload given to you as your first job is a whole new different matter from your previous college organizations and group work. Aside from not being used to the workload, it’s also a big possibility that you’re not enjoying what you’re doing.  As a fresh grad, you’re probably still figuring out what you want to do with your career. With this, your job can really become a huge stressor as you find difficulty seeing value in it.

In this article, we’ve compiled a list of things you could do when you don’t find value in your first job anymore!

1: Know your why.

The first step is to figure out your why. Why are you in this job and in this industry in the first place? Why did you apply to this certain company? What urged you to choose this job over the other opportunities you sought out? When you figure out your why, you’ll be able to understand your purpose.

Before you accepted your first offer, your purpose already helped guide your decision in choosing your first job. Thus, it can also help you make better sense of your situation right now. If you don’t find value in your work now, maybe your why would remind you of why you chose the path you’re on right now.

However, not everyone has reached a point in their lives where they’re fully guided by a sense of purpose. Some of us are still lost in our careers. With this, it’s important to know that this is completely normal! Everyone’s career journey varies and not everyone moves at the same pace.

If that’s the case, then one way for you to figure out a possible reason is to understand how your job role now fits into the big picture of the overall company. You could talk to your supervisor about this so you could better grasp why your role is important!

2: Find a mentor and ask them questions.

In connection with the previous tip, finding a career mentor can also help you navigate your first job much more easily. This is because career mentors are there to provide guidance and assistance.

Once you find a career mentor, you could then ask them questions as well as any insights into your situation as a fresh grad. Surely, they’ve experienced something like this before! You could also ask about the next possible steps you could take that will help you take charge of your career.

Finding career mentors isn’t an easy feat. To start, you could connect with any professional you look up to! It could be your aunt, your boss, or another professional in the same industry! As long as this person can provide you with valuable advice that you can use in your own career, you will be able to form a fruitful relationship with them.

3: Think of it as on-the-job training.

As mentioned before, it’s a really big possibility that you wouldn’t love your first job. However, it’s important to remember that even though you’re not enjoying it, you could still learn valuable skills in your current role that you could apply to your future ones!

As such, you could start to think about your current role as on-the-job training or an internship opportunity. We know that the most vital thing you could bring to a role is experience, and on-the-job training and internship opportunities can give you just that!

If you reframe the way you think about your current role, you could start to approach it in a different way. Like an intern, you’re there to observe your supervisors and to learn. You’re there to pick up new skills and learnings that you could apply outside of the company or the industry.

With this new mindset, you could hopefully begin to see your first job in a different light! Instead of first seeing it as a source of stress, you could view it as a learning experience for you to develop your soft and hard skills.

4: Create connections.

If at this point you still feel that this job really is not for you and that you’ve exhausted all the possible steps you need to take, then you can start thinking about your next possible steps. However, in thinking about your next steps, you shouldn’t completely forget about your previous company.

Before you eventually leave your current job, make sure to create connections with your peers and supervisors. This will be incredibly helpful because you would not want to burn any bridges.

However, remember that creating connections does not happen overnight. Aside from this, you also need to make sure that you’re being genuine with your interactions. Your reasons for connecting with these people shouldn’t simply be because you want to get something from them in the future.

5: Consider this a lesson in self-awareness.

Once you’ve decided to leave your current role, it’s important to not think about your time in that company being a complete waste of time. You could consider this opportunity a lesson in self-awareness. Instead of seeing this as a setback, you could consider this as a way for you to learn more about yourself. In the future, you’ll realize that certain jobs aren’t for you. This would make decisions easier and faster.

Thus, knowing yourself is the key to success. Steering clear of other opportunities in favor of ones you really like can help you take your career to the next level. When you understand your strengths, weaknesses, values, and beliefs, you can take better control of the direction of your life.

Having a better sense of self-awareness can not only help you in your career! This could also help you in your personal life and your relationships with others which would lead to personal growth.

All in all, here are the different things you could do when you don’t find value and passion in your first job. Remember that your first job will not determine the rest of your life so don’t overthink the choices you will have in the future based on your current role.

If this article helped you, follow Kalibrr for more career advice!

Kalibrr is a recruitment technology company that aims to transform how candidates find jobs and how companies hire talent. Placing the candidate experience at the center of everything it does, we continue to attract the best talent from all over, with more than 5.5 million professionals and counting. Kalibrr ultimately connects these talents to companies in search of their next generation of leaders.

The only end-to-end recruitment solutions provider in Southeast Asia, Kalibrr is headquartered in Makati, Philippines, with offices in San Francisco, California, and Jakarta, Indonesia. Established in 2012, it has served over 18,000 clients and is backed by some of the world’s most powerful start-up incubators and venture capitalists. These include Y Combinator, Omidyar Network, Patamar Capital, Wavemaker Partners, and Kickstart Ventures.

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