Career Champions 2024: Understanding the Mental Health Challenges of the Job Search

There are many aspects of the job search that can affect how optimistic or overwhelmed students can feel, including:
- Feeling confused about what path to take next
- Responding to family/guardian pressures about getting the right type of job
- Concern about a lack of skill or experience
- Feeling overwhelmed by the need to network when chatting with people feels hard to do
- Not hearing back from employers about why their applications were not successful
- Experiencing challenging questions in interviews
- Having to make hard decisions about what offers to accept, if there is more than one, or whether to accept a less-than-ideal offer if it is the only one
- Not having any offers at all
- Feeling a disconnection between years of academic study and a job that doesn’t value that experience
- Feeling unsupported by advisors when following a career path different from others in a field of study.
In this discussion, staff from Career Services and Penn Wellness will discuss some of these situations, and talk through some best practices, advice, and resources that might help students, postdocs, alumni, and staff manage these challenges. There will be an opportunity for participants to ask questions in this session.
A conversation with
Dr. Zihui Lu, Manager, Wellness Coaching, Wellness at Penn
Laura Brasch, Associate Director, College Team, Penn Career Services
Megan Chambers, Associate Director, Wharton Undergraduate Team, Penn Career Services
Moderated by J. Michael DeAngelis, Senior Associate Director, Penn Career Services