A Conversation on Mental Health and the Job Market

A GradPro panel brought together a psychologist, a career advisor, and a faculty member to talk honestly about stress, uncertainty, and staying grounded during a difficult job market.

Earlier this month, graduate and professional students logged on for a conversation about the psychological toll of looking for a job. The innovative virtual event, “Mental Health and the Job Search,” was organized and moderated by GradPro’s Professional Development Liaison, Emily Mullin, who is also a Ph.D. Candidate in the Classics. It brought together three panelists whose professional lives put them in regular contact with graduate students: Dr. Sasha Blum, a licensed psychologist at UC Berkeley’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS); Dan Shaw, Associate Director for Specialized Communities at Berkeley Career Engagement (BCE); and Dr. Arash Komeili, Professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and Head Graduate Advisor for the Plant Biology Ph.D. program and the Graduate Group in Microbiology.

Mullin opened the panel by naming something that GradPro staff had been observing across programs: the anxiety students are carrying into the job search feels different lately, and heavier. Multiple sectors have shifted their hiring practices in recent years. Funding for research labs, nonprofits, and other institutions has grown less predictable. For students already managing the pressures of finishing a degree or reaching the end of a postdoc contract, that broader instability has made an already difficult process feel significantly more fraught.

Each panelist spoke from personal experience about navigating setbacks in their own careers and what helped them move forward.  Panelists emphasized the value they found in community during the job search and advised against treating the job search as a solitary endeavor, even when it can feel that way. The conversation was shaped by a simple question: what are graduate and professional students actually experiencing, and what helps? Below, we have expanded on takeaways from the conversation.

The job search can quickly expand to fill all available time and mental space if you let it. Without structure, it becomes easy to spend hours in an unfocused state,  refreshing job boards, tweaking the same cover letter, or spiraling into anxiety, without making meaningful progress. This is especially acute for recent graduates transitioning out of the structured rhythms of academic life. Tools like Trello and Google Calendar can help bridge this gap: the former is a visual tool to manage projects, workflow, or task tracking, while the latter lets you time-block search hours and make rest, exercise, and social time feel as legitimate as any task. For a more granular view of where your hours are actually going, Toggl Track lets you track time against different activities. Many job seekers discover they are spending far more time on low-yield tasks like passive browsing than they realize. Sustainability is not about doing more; it is about protecting your capacity to keep going. That means working with concrete goals rather than vague effort. Instead of “work on applications today,” a more sustainable approach looks like: “submit one application, identify three new postings, and spend 30 minutes on networking outreach.” Specificity makes the work feel finite, which makes it feel manageable. Tools like Cuckoo, a web-based productivity timer, and Forest App, which gamifies focused work sessions, can help you structure and protect the work time you decide to devote to the job search.  . 

GradPro’s Semester Planning Workbook offers a structured way to set SMART goals and manage workload across the semester, a resource designed specifically with burnout prevention in mind. GradPro also offers workshops throughout the year, including Planning Your Fall Semester, Planning Your Spring Semester, and Planning Your Summer Semester. Students can also book a GradPro Consultation for personalized guidance on how to build a sustainable routine for the job search process.

Rejection is an unavoidable part of the job search, and learning to absorb it without internalizing it as a verdict on your worth or potential is one of the most valuable skills you can develop. Every person who has successfully navigated a job search has a story of rejection, often many. For practical guidance on reframing setbacks, Dawn Graham’s Switchers and the Harvard Business Review piece “How to Bounce Back from Job Search Rejection” both offer grounded, actionable perspectives. For the longer view, Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans provides a Stanford-developed framework for navigating uncertainty with intention, and Meg Jay’s The Defining Decade speaks directly to the emotional and professional pressures unique to your twenties. What distinguishes those who move forward is not an absence of disappointment, but a willingness to stay connected to the people and practices that keep them grounded, and community matters here. Reddit’s r/jobs is an active space where job seekers share honest accounts of their searches; Fishbowl offers similar candor organized by industry; and LinkedIn Groups can connect you with peers in your specific field or graduation cohort.

When setbacks occur, resist the impulse to withdraw. Lean into your community, talk honestly about what you are experiencing, and remind yourself that the outcome of a single application or interview does not define the trajectory of your career. Berkeley Career Engagement can help you continue the search when y

On the question of networking, the panelists emphasized that maintaining a professional network is about cultivating relationships over time, and that these relationships can offer both practical opportunities and emotional support during a search. The NCFDD webinar “Cultivating Your Network of Mentors, Sponsors, and Collaborators,” available free to Berkeley students using a Berkeley email address, offers a practical framework for doing exactly that. GradPro’s “How to Maintain a Professional Network of Mentors and Sponsors” covers similar ground in an accessible form.

For students in STEM fields, QB3’s Graduate and Postdoc Career Development programming offers additional support, including campus-wide career initiatives and the Professionals in Residence program, which connects students with established bioscience professionals for mentoring. Across all fields, the value of community during a job search is hard to overstate — not just for leads, but for the normalizing effect of being around others who are navigating the same uncertainty. Showing up in these spaces, even passively at first, is itself a form of momentum. 

One of the most valuable things you can do during the job search is ask for help early with specific requests in mind. This means reaching out proactively to campus resources, whether you need someone to review your application materials, talk through career options, or help you understand the norms of your field’s hiring process.

Faculty advisors and Berkeley Career Engagement are two of the most important resources available to you at this stage. Your advisor can provide guidance on positioning yourself in your field, identifying opportunities, and navigating the norms of your discipline’s hiring process. Berkeley Career Engagement offers one-on-one appointments with career educators who can help with the practical dimensions of the search, from resume and cover letter review to offer evaluation and negotiation strategy. For those considering careers outside academia, So What Are You Going to Do With That? Finding Careers Outside Academia by Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius remains one of the most widely recommended guides in that space and is available online and in hard copy through the UC Berkeley Library. GradPro offers non-academic job search workshops, such as the Career Exploration for Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as for STEM.

To find out more about workshop offerings, please sign up for the Professional Development Digest to stay current on upcoming events and opportunities across campus. Also, consult with GradPro’s Professional Development Resource Lists for curated lists of on- and off-campus career and professional development resources and opportunities to support your preparation for careers in academia and beyond. 

Navigating the job search is not just a professional challenge; it is an emotional one. The process can bring real stress, self-doubt, and difficulty maintaining balance. Being intentional about the support you seek for yourself from others and from professional services can make a significant difference in how sustainable it feels.

What you can do for yourself: Start by taking stock of your own habits and practices that help you stay grounded. This might mean building in regular breaks, setting boundaries around how much time you spend on search-related tasks, practicing self-care routines, or working to recognize and interrupt negative self-talk when it surfaces. Managing the emotional rhythm of the search–the highs, rejections, and long stretches of uncertainty–is its own form of preparation.

What others can offer: Friends, family, trusted peers, and mentors are important sources of support throughout this process. Depending on the nature of your relationship with your advisor, it may also be appropriate to share how you are feeling about the search more broadly. Different people offer different kinds of support, and knowing who to turn to for what, whether that is honest conversation, practical encouragement, or simply company, is itself valuable. Take stock of the people in your life who help you feel grounded, and lean on them.

Professional support available to you: When the weight of the search feels like more than your immediate network can hold, UC Berkeley offers a range of dedicated mental health and wellness resources. CAPS provides both individual and group counseling options designed specifically for graduate students, and the Grad Wellness Center offers additional programming and community for those navigating stress and transition. Postdoctoral researchers can find tailored support through Visiting Scholar and Postdoc Affairs (VSPA), whose “Be Well” resource list compiles wellness tools relevant to that community. Reaching out to any of these services is not a last resort; it is a proactive and worthwhile step at any point in the process.

Acknowledge that this process is hard

The panel closed with each panelist offering a final reflection, something they wished they had known earlier, and something they wanted every attendee to carry with them. An underlying message cut across responses: the job search is hard, the current moment makes it harder, and no one should have to navigate it alone. Building a broad support system, being aware of the kinds of support different people in your life are best positioned to offer, and asking for help are all ways to make this process a little easier.

“Mental Health and the Job Search” was presented by GradPro on March 17, 2026. For more programming and resources, visit the GradPro website.

This article was written by Jonathan Landeros-Cisneros, Professional Development Liaison and a Ph.D. candidate in the Berkeley School of Education.