Unemployment is a critical life event for anyone who goes through it. Although job seekers often only have finite resources, they play a key role in their search for a new career. A study co-authored by Serge da Motta Veiga, a researcher at NEOMA, sheds light on a compensatory effect between these resources, encouraging job seekers to focus their energy on their strengths.

Unemployment is a real-life concern that touches millions of people worldwide. It can be a temporary affair or long-term. In France, the worst hit are mostly young people under 25 and workers who do not have any qualifications. During this critical period, job seekers often see their resources – financial, social and personal – fall away, and their physical and mental well-being deteriorate. Understanding how to optimise the chances of finding work is a major challenge not just for the unemployed but also for the employment agencies that are there to help them.

The study by the NEOMA researcher and his colleagues looked at the various resources available to job seekers and the impact they have. The authors set out to discover whether these resources carry equivalent weight and whether they can offset each other when looking for work.

Strategic resources specific to each individual

Previous research has shown that resources are of vital importance when looking for work. But what kind of resources do we mean? The researchers identified two main categories. First, so-called “contextual” resources derived from the individual’s social environment, including networking behaviours designed to make and maintain professional relationships and uncover new job opportunities. The importance of networking is based on the idea that many job offers are never advertised. Personal recommendations or contacts may then play a crucial role in landing work.

Other resources, called “personal” resources, refer to an individual’s personal character traits. The characteristics cited in the study include self-efficacy: a person’s belief in their own ability to successfully perform the tasks needed to find employment. This includes getting a CV ready and sitting mock interviews – or even how an individual manages their job search on a daily basis.

When “more” doesn’t mean “better”

How and to what extent does this set of resources influence the search for employment? The study pours cold water on the widespread idea that the more resources a candidate has, the more likely they are to obtain an interview. It draws on the concept of “equifinality”, which refers to the fact that a goal can be achieved by following various different paths. Or, to put it another way: when trying to find a job, a higher level of one type of resource may offset a lower level of a different type. So, if a job seeker has an excellent social network, it could compensate for low self-confidence, and vice-versa.

The researchers observed this compensatory mechanism when following 89 unemployed people over eight months as they took part in job search workshops in Switzerland. The job seekers who actively used their network – or who believed in their ability to find employment – were more tenacious and obtained job interviews. The researchers point out, however, that when a candidate had both types of resource, it did not mean they secured more interviews than applicants who had only one.

Rethinking the way we look for work

By definition, job seekers do not have access to many resources. And yet, when they use the resources they do have effectively, they can maximize their chances of getting an interview. Better personal knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses is essential for success, especially since resources fluctuate over time. The unemployed may have a low sense of personal efficacy at any given moment, which is when they could redirect their efforts to extending their network.

And this is just as important when it comes to the support provided by employment agencies, which could, for example, put the focus on networking workshops or coaching sessions to boost the pre-identified strengths of candidates. The study insists on the importance of a balanced, personalised and dynamic approach to looking for a job. In addition, the research encourages us to examine the role of other resources, such as the resilience of candidates, which may in turn be beneficial for prospecting for work.

Find out more

Da Motta Veiga, S., Debus, M., Schmitz-Wilhelmy, A., Ambühl, M., Hasler, K., Kleinmann, M. (2024) Contextual and personal resources in unemployed job search: An intra-individual perspective. Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12540