Job boards create depression.

Job boards create depression.

I’ve talked about writing this post for years. With candidates in transition. With leaders trying to understand their talent pool. With anyone who’d listen. I’d say “this is the post I need to write.” Well, it’s time.

If your shoulders just dropped reading that first line, you’re not alone. I’ve watched thousands of people pour themselves into applications on these platforms only to meet silence. No feedback. No clarity. Just a void where answers should be.

And if you’ve been in that void, you know what it does to you. You’ve applied to fifty, eighty, a hundred roles. You check your email compulsively. You refresh your LinkedIn. You wonder if the application even went through. You tell yourself to be patient. And then weeks pass.

Here’s what that void does: it makes people guess. And when vulnerable people in transition guess about why they weren’t chosen, they don’t guess kindly. The self-talk spirals. I wasn’t good enough. I’m too old. Too expensive. Too much. Not enough. Over months of applications and silence, that narrative hardens. People stop questioning the system and start questioning themselves.

So they take another course. Update their resume again. Stretch for a job that doesn’t align with who they are, just to feel like they’re doing something. And when they don’t get that job either? They feel terrible about a role they never wanted in the first place.

People spend so much time performing for the needs of others that they spend very little time understanding their own. And here’s what nobody says out loud: job searching in transition is a grief experience. Your identity is tied to your work. When that’s disrupted, something real is lost. The title. The routine. The sense of purpose. The colleagues. The version of yourself that showed up every day and knew what they were doing. That loss deserves to be named. And it almost never is.

Instead, the advice is always the same. Get on the job boards. Apply broadly. Cast a wide net. The system was built for volume, not humans. It was designed to make hiring easier, not to make transition more dignified. There is no feedback loop because feedback doesn’t scale. And so thousands of worthy people are left guessing in silence about their own value.

The problem isn’t you. You’re working in a broken system.

It’s hard to say be resilient. It’s hard to say tighten your resume. None of those things work. Your professional wellness is connected to your personal wellness in ways most people never talk about. When one is disrupted, you feel it everywhere. At your desk. At your dinner table. In the version of yourself you bring home to your family.

Transition includes grief. That’s real. Give yourself permission to feel it.

I realize I just named everything that’s broken without telling you what to do about it. I’ll fix that. Because I’ve watched people build remarkable momentum from exactly this place.