3 Mental Shortcuts That Could Undermine Your Job Search

For the longest time, I thought I was free of biases. Undoubtedly, it was other people who had been hijacked by their tricky brains, not me. I even took an implicit association test from Harvard University to check if I had an unconscious bias toward women in science, and I was pleasantly reassured when the score told me I was OK. No surprise there, as I grew up in the U.S.S.R., where equality of opportunities was showcased by quasi-equal representation of men and women in sciences, especially in engineering.

However, my life outlook became blurry when I learned more about neuroscience, cognitive psychology and mindfulness. The last one, mindfulness, powered me to notice the small inconsistencies in my behaviors and thoughts that followed similar to others’ patterns. I realized that I, as much as other humans, am susceptible to the distorted thinking that the brain uses as shortcuts to spare energy on complex decision making. During my work in international and interdisciplinary environments, I saw researchers across the world use the same shortcuts, demonstrating this is not a one-culture phenomenon.

As a result, I’d like to explore three cognitive shortcuts that might get in the way of a successful job search and transition. Now let’s meet confirmation bias, misremembering and GI Joe fallacy.

Confirmation bias prevents us from exploring opportunities outside our comfort zone. Confirmation bias describes searching and interpreting information in a way that confirms our beliefs and values. This bias has received much attention in the media and beyond when explaining polarization and tribalism in the 21st century. But confirmation bias also inhabits other realms, including career management. I often encounter this type of thinking during my initial meetings with graduate students and postdocs at the beginning of their job search. This bias is more salient when the trainees have difficulty identifying positions because they are strictly bound by their limited knowledge and experiences.

For example, if you are a STEM graduate, you tend to look for jobs in three areas: academic faculty, teaching and research and development. Thus, you type these keywords into a search engine and receive "proof" that the only jobs available to you are indeed in these areas. Other vacancies in science policy, student affairs and the like simply don’t exist.

Another example is a belief that it is hard to get a nonacademic position. With that belief in mind, instead of looking for titles with "new opportunities for Ph.D.s" or "low Ph.D. unemployment," trainees search for articles that confirm the lack of jobs and unbearable competition, leading to unwanted stress and anxiety.

What to watch out for: Only seeing limited position types during an exploratory job search.

Countertactics:

• Expand your knowledge by talking to people from outside your professional and personal networks.
• Intentionally look for nontraditional careers in your academic and/or professional field.
• Use an incognito browser window to avoid an already "trained" search engine.

Using past experiences and your current mental state to infer future outcomes might lead to poor decision making. In the book Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert calls our brain a "nexting machine" with the main job of predicting how we will feel in the future based on our past experiences and our current state of mind. This cognitive strategy has preserved our species over millennia. Nevertheless, like a double-edged sword, it hurts us by introducing misremembering and projection bias into our mental arsenal. The projection bias assumes that we will share the same values, beliefs and behaviors in our future as in our present state. As for misremembering, research is clear: our memories are unreliable and change with each recollection, leading to a convincing illusion of authentic past experiences.

Working seamlessly together, projection bias and altered memories could impede any job hunt, as in the following example. Let’s say a few years ago, you went through a series of interviews for an industry position. During one phone call, a hiring manager appeared to be dispassionate about social issues and was concerned more with the company’s profit than the team’s well-being. Disappointed, you decided to take a postdoc position. When considering your next steps, you only recall the coldhearted manager but not the interviews with the team members. Moreover, you might be overestimating how important the commitment to social issues and company profits will be to you in the future when compared to leading a talented team and a well-funded, ambitious research project. Being tricked by your brain, you might unconsciously avoid the R&D sector, thus, missing a variety of opportunities and curtailing your job search.

What to watch out for: Avoiding appealing opportunities based on a single past experience or current emotional state.

Countertactics:

• Carefully and objectively examine your memories for missing information.
• Embrace a learner mind-set toward the future; it doesn’t have to be the same as your current state.
• Since humans can make appropriate predictions for others, imagine what an "average" person would do in this situation.

Knowing how to do it doesn’t mean you are doing it. This, by far, is one of my favorite cognitive distortions, sometimes called the GI Joe fallacy, or knowing isn’t half the battle. The most straightforward illustration is that I know that a healthy lifestyle with intuitive eating, constant movement and eight-hour sleep is good for me, yet I don’t live it. The same logic translates nicely to job-related matters. In my coaching practice, I’ve encountered students and postdocs who have eloquently explained to me and others what needs to be done to secure a job, yet they’ve failed to follow their own advice.

Puzzling at first, some explanation of this oddity came from the book Chatter by Ethan Kross. The author explains that giving advice is easier because of the perceived distance between "I" and "them." This distance creates space for objectivity and provides details for seeing a big picture. But when we try to apply the same strategy to ourselves, we often zoom in too close and get trapped in our internal narrative. Being wrapped up in too much personal information, we lose the ability to see the situation from the outside perspective and to identify alternatives to reach the desired outcome.

What to watch out for: Knowing what to do to reach your goal, but somehow your advice only works for others.

Countertactics:

• Create some distance by adopting an outsider view.
• Pretend you are advising a friend in a similar situation.
• Find a person who could help you to see a bigger picture.

In the end, our brain challenges us daily with hundreds of cognitive distortions and shortcuts. While it is unrealistic to catch every one of them, the first step is to become aware of our thinking and behavioral patterns by frequently reflecting on our experiences and examining the motivation behind our actions. Unfortunately, this habitual thinking can be difficult to catch; thus, I’d recommend looking for a career counselor or a coach to help you uncover the unhelpful patterns triggered during a job search. Such highly trained specialists can ask you direct questions and hold you accountable for the steps toward your new shiny job and a career transition. As for the trickster brain, proceed with caution and enjoy the benefits that will undoubtedly come from this reflection and awareness.