Tackle career perfectionism

By Hannah Woolley, Careers Consultant

This insight is part of our career wellbeing series.

Polished images of people enjoying seemingly perfect careers overwhelm us through social media, advertising, and popular culture.

It’s easy to get sucked in and believe that perfection is within reach if you strive for it, but this can be problematic. Chasing inaccessible goals is tiring, stressful and when faced with inevitable defeat, negative feelings may surface.

Sometimes perfectionism can creep in when you approach career activities. This might happen for several reasons. Perhaps:

• it’s rooted in a desire for control; you feel that by making a perfect career decision you’ll banish any uncertainty you feel about your future
• it’s born out of fear of negative consequences; you feel that if you don’t make a perfect job application it will result in rejection
• you’re seeking acceptance or approval; you feel that if you become a perfect professional, people will like and respect you

Being curious can help. Ask yourself what’s really going on...

Are you discounting career options because they aren’t quite perfect?

Exploring career options can feel daunting if you set out to discover the one thing that you want to do for your entire life. If you feel that your whole future rests on what you choose now, understandably, you might feel under pressure to identify a perfect career.

If this sounds familiar, try lowering the stakes by resetting your focus and considering options for the next six months to a year. By thinking short-term, you give yourself license to loosen the search criteria. Try working on the basis that if an option ticks two-thirds of your boxes, it’s worth investigating and possibly trying out.

This mindset shift might help you to remain open to more possibilities and possibly try something that makes you curious, safe in the knowledge that it isn’t forever and that you can change direction if you want to. In turn, you’ll gain real experience to inform your next move, and this will allow you to feel more in control when making future decisions.

Does your inner perfectionist rear up when you’re applying for jobs?

If you find yourself endlessly reworking the format of your CV or rewriting a cover letter over and over, the chances are that you’re being too harsh on yourself. It might be time to revisit the impossibly high standards that you’ve set and switch self-criticism to self-compassion.

This is not always easy to do, so it might help to seek a fresh perspective. Rather than agonising over every detail alone, working through it with someone else might help you to differentiate between changes that will improve the application and those that will make little difference. Plus, with encouragement from someone else, you’re more likely to recognise the merits of your work and feel more confident about hitting the submit button.

It’s worth keeping an eye on how much time you spend on each application. Doing a good job can bring satisfaction, but if you find that you’re spending hours tweaking minor details or starting over because you’re not satisfied with your efforts, the experience is unlikely to feel positive. Set yourself a time limit and have another activity lined up so you must stop. This will help you to avoid the temptation to endlessly refine things and allow you to keep a healthy sense of balance.

Moving towards embracing imperfection

If you do tend towards perfectionism, it might be a lot to suggest that you can just let go and embrace imperfection overnight. However, you could try to move towards this by noting any benefits associated with small changes. Over time, perhaps you can gently encourage yourself to accept that good enough is good enough.

Remember that you are not alone when it comes to careers decisions and applications. Book an appointment to talk to an adviser.

First published April 2021. Updated October 2025