Older job seekers have well-established difficulties returning to the labor force, especially if they’ve been unemployed for some time. This results in both a financial and psychosocial burden, with those involved stressed and doubting their abilities.
Research from ETH Zurich suggests that a short, 15-minute reflection exercise is often all it takes to regain that sense of self-belief and subsequently increase the chances of landing a new job.
“People who ascertain that they know who they are and what they stand for find it easier to market themselves convincingly to potential employers. This increases their chances of finding a job,” the researchers explain.
Looking at your values
The researchers worked with 866 folks who were out of work. A third of them were older than 50. In one group, 532 were officially jobless in Zurich, and almost half of them had a university degree. The rest of the 334 participants were job seekers from the US and Europe, and around a third of them also had a university degree.
In both parts of the study, people were split into two groups by chance. Each group got a list of 13 values like health, sports, social connections, and learning.
One group was asked to spend 10 to 15 minutes writing about why two or three of these values were important to them personally and how these values showed up in their lives. At the same time, the other group also wrote about two or three values, but they had to explain why these values might be important to other people, even if they personally didn’t care much about them.
The results were clear and surprising to the researchers. People who took 15 minutes to think about their own values not only had a better chance of finding a job but also found one more quickly and got more job offers. What was really surprising was that this exercise helped people over 50 and those who had been unemployed for a long time just as much. These two groups often have a harder time finding new jobs.
For the folks in the online part of the study, the odds of finding a job doubled after four weeks: 13.7% of those who did the reflection exercise succeeded. In the control group, only 6.2% did. The chance of success was even better for job seekers at the Zurich RAV: nearly 11% of those who wrote about their values found a new job after four weeks, while only 3.4% in the control group did.
Short-term boost
The researchers found, however, that the boost was not sustained, and after around eight weeks its impact waned. They believe this could be because the motivational impact of the exercise diminished over time.
Nonetheless, the study found that job seekers who used the exercise were registered with the RAV for nearly 3 days less than those who didn’t. While this seems quite small, it can add up to a big saving across the employment service as a whole.
“Encouraging job seekers to think about important personal values is a way to boost their self-confidence. They’re then more likely to see themselves as valuable individuals who have something to contribute at work and in society,” the researchers conclude.
