Job Searching When You're Sick

It’s that time of year once again that always follows back to school time and marks the beginning of fall. No not Halloween with little princesses and monsters running amok; instead, it’s cold and flu season where everyone’s sinuses are running amok.

Trying as hard as you can to sanitize everything you come in contact with and stopping short of wearing a surgical mask in public will only get you so far. Odds are you’ll still get sick at some point in the season.

A common cold can be a serious stumbling block in your momentum when you’re on the job hunt. It can be difficult enough to adhere to a schedule that keeps you in the market and off the couch when you are unemployed. An illness can make an easy excuse to slide back into the doldrums of daytime television and meaningless web time. Others find it difficult to grant themselves the down time they need to get better and wind up turning a 3 day cold into 2 weeks.

Whichever side of the sickbed you get out on there needs to be a balance of productivity and rest. Here are some helpful tasks and tips to keep to keep you on track while searching for a job under the weather:
 

• Keep Contacts Current – Update your phone contacts while lying on the couch. Delete anyone you have lost contact with or might have changed their information. Add email and home or business address info if you have it. As you go through all the names make a list of who you want to connect with when you’re feeling better. Maybe a friend or relative has heard of on opening recently. You can always start the conversation by saying, “Sorry I haven’t been around, I’ve been sick.”

• Silence is Golden – This is not the week to make calls. You won’t get a sympathetic vote by sounding nasally stuffed with congestion hweezing out words with a raspy voice in between violent coughing spells. Stick to scanning online job search engines and inquiring about potential positions via email. If you can’t reschedule a phone interview don’t dope yourself up in order to sound better. Your voice might be clearer but your head won’t be if you down a bunch of Dayquill beforehand. Instead stock up on throat lozenges and menthol rub. Taking a steaming hot shower shortly before your meeting starts will really loosen up the goo in your nose and give you a clearheaded feeling in more ways than one.

• Stop Bad Habits – Maybe a week in bed is just what you need to stop smoking, or curb your caffeine addiction. Switch to drinking hot tea instead of coffee. You can step down from black tea to white to slowly curb the cravings. Not only will it soothe your sore throat it will keep congestion down unlike a double mocha latte. Mask your nicotine withdrawals and the crappy attitude that come with quitting smoking with your cold symptoms. Nobody will be hanging around for you to offend anyway and it will help your throat and lungs feel better now and in the future.

Be smart about staying well, but don’t beat yourself up if you need to go down for the count. The important thing to keep in mind is that it’s only temporary and with a little ingenuity you can keep your job search rolling even when you feel like a lump.

By Heather Fairchild - Heather is a multimedia developer with experience in web, film, photography and animation as well as traditional fine arts like painting and sculpting. In addition to writing for CommunicationsJobsBlog.net, she is co-founder of design and promotion company. Heather’s spare time consists of making puppets, teaching Sunday School, building Legos and doing science experiments with her children.