Keeping Your Job Search Secret From Your Partner? Here’s Why to Reconsider

As a species, humans are secretive about the oddest things.

We’ll overshare about buying sports bras, our kids or even how much money we make.

But when it comes to job searches, we like to play our cards close to the vest.

According to a new survey by Indeed, 50% of people worldwide and 58% of Americans wouldn’t tell a partner they’re applying for a job.

UK residents are even more reticent to share: A mere 37% of survey respondents say they’d share with a partner that they’re looking for work.

That seems a bit… counterintuitive to me, but I guess on some level, I get it.

Professor Paul Dolan, behavioral economist at London School of Economics, told Indeed he believes it’s a matter of pride.

“Admitting that we are looking for a job means exposing others to our potential success or failure,” he said. “To avoid embarrassing ourselves, we choose to hide our searches.”

Why It Pays to Be Candid About Your Job Search

It’s not uncommon to want our partners to see only our best efforts.

After all, it’s much more rewarding to reveal a successful job offer to our SO with a flourish rather than cry all over them after the ninth rejection in a row (ask me how I know).

The thing is, shutting partners out of our job search efforts also closes the door on potential opportunities for networking and, perhaps more important, support.

Being upfront with your partner that you’re applying for new jobs can:

• Protect you from wage gap issues and other forms of discrimination

• Keep you from falling victim to work scams

• Give you someone to lean on when attending networking events

• Increase the value of your online and in-person networking efforts

• Open doors to money-making ideas that never occurred to you

There’s nothing that says you have to tell everyone you know you’re in the market for a new job, but you probably don’t need to hide it from your sweetheart.

After all, looking for a job is challenging enough. We need support wherever we can get it.

Lisa McGreevy is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She believes the best job search support a partner can offer comes in the form of cupcakes and cookies.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

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