Just as there are good and bad times of the year to take a trip there are good and bad times of the year to look for work. My experience has been that the weeks between Thanksgiving and the New Years is a bad time, a slow period, for finding a new job.
I experienced two times in my life when I was in the middle of the interview process with an organization and the search committee made a decision just before Thanksgiving to postpone further action until after the first of the year. On average that is a five or six week period. That is a long time wait when you are eager to see the hiring process keep moving along.
It’s understandable why organizations and company’s put hiring decisions on hold during this time of the year. Everyone is preoccupied with holiday activities and events. Companies and organizations have special seasonal events that consume their time and energy. It helps to understand what is happening and somewhat eases the frustration.
In all fairness I have to say one of my best experiences getting hired occurred during the months of November and December. A church had just put me on hold when another church called me a week later and began phone interviews with me. The leadership then arranged several face-to-face interviews in quick succession. I was offered the position on the 24th of December. You never know when you may be hired.
In talking with hiring managers and job seekers I found out that December can be an ideal time to do a job search. They suggest keeping your ears and eyes open for positions that will be made public in January. Here’s why. Companies don’t want to hire at the end of the year. They want to stay within budget or don’t have any budget left for new hires. Come January, the new fiscal year starts and there is money in the budget for new staff.
It turns out that August can be another slow month for doing a job search. In the Northwest August is a very popular month for people to take summer vacations. It is hard to get decision makers together to review resumes and interview candidates when they are off camping or are at the beach. Companies and organizations have busy and slow times. They have windows when they hire. Take that into consideration when doing your job search.
Just as there are better seasons than others for traveling there are good and not so good times for doing a job search. Being aware of the seasonal trends have helped me understand what is happening and lowered my frustration level when progress goes slower than I like.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Day 16 The dreaded holiday season
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Day 15 Why a blog about my job search experience?
You are one of nearly a hundred people I invited this month to read my blog. Most of you reading this know me and are interested in my story. My blog is more than a summary of what I did to find work. It is a record of my thoughts and feelings. It is also a journal of my observations, opinions, and advice for others who find themselves looking for work or want to make a career change.
You can start reading the blog from this posting (Day 15) and go back-ward or you can go to the beginning (Day 1) and read forward. Use the archive on the right side of the blog to help you navigate through the past 14 postings. Scan and read the postings that interest you. Note that there is a search feature. Type in a word or a topic and the blog will display any postings where I have addressed that subject or used that term.
Someday you may decide that you want to find a different job because your current position is no longer a good fit. Someday you may come to the conclusion that you want a new job or career that is more fulfilling . Someday a family member or friend will need to find work. When that happens I hope you will remember to come back to my blog or send a person to read it.
My hope is that this blog will not only inform you about my own personal experience at looking for a new job it will help you or someone you know who could benefit from what I learned and experienced.
Explore the blog site. Check out my profile on the right side of the blog. Write a comment where indicated. Thank for taking an interest in what I have written.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Day 14 Use informational interviews to build your network
I enjoy meeting people, getting to know them, finding common interests and developing a relationship with them. I have also made many friends over the years through my work and involvement in professional events. I enjoy cultivating friendships with professional colleagues. Over the years I had developed a network of friends through both social and professional contacts.
When I first began doing informational interviews as part of my job search it didn't occur to me to use the opportunity to build and strengthen my professional network. Vocational counselors and articles stressed the value of obtaining information through informational interviews. I tended to approach informational interviews as one time opportunities to meet people and gather information. I did not view them at first as a great way to develop my professional network.
If I had it to do over again, I would approach job interviews as an opportunity to network and build ongoing relationships rather than as isolated fact gathering appointments.
There are several benefits to approaching informational interviews as an opportunity to connect and maintain ongoing relationships.
- You build friendships and acquaintances in the industry you want to work in. Think about it. When the day comes that you get hired there is a likelihood you will cross paths with the people you are interviewing with today.
- You may make new friends who share common interests and passions. If you don't like the majority of people you meet while doing informational interviews, maybe this is not the industry you should be going into.
- It is easier to call or go back to a person you have interviewed with earlier if you have begun to build a relationship with him or her. I had several occasions to write or call back to people I interviewed with earlier. Our initial meeting opened the door for future contacts.
- Friends introduce new friends to old friends. It was through friendships that grew out of interviews that led to me being introduced to others in the same field.
- Networking while you are doing informational interviews enlists others in helping you look for work. Friends like to help friends find work. If you develop genuine friendships with fellow professionals, you name and face is likely to come to mind when someone asks them "Know anybody you can recommend for this opening we've got coming up?"
Don't do informational interviews in isolation. View them as an opportunity to make new acquaintances and develop your social network.
Day 13 Get out and do Informational Interviews
I like to stay in my comfort zone. It was real tempting for me to write cover letters and email them with my resume to job postings. It worked for me in the past, why not now?
The problem with sending out resumes to companies and organizations was that it was not producing hits. Hardly anyone was calling or writing back to me. My old tried and true method of job hunting wasn't working. Increasing the number of resumes I sent out each week didn't make much difference either. Job search articles and career counselors were saying that today job seekers need to get out and do informational interviews. It is not just a matter of what you know but who you know.
My old strategy wasn't working I had to switch to a new strategy and rely on informational interviews. Informational interviews get you in front of people, people who are in industries you are interested in, people who are networked with others in companies you hope to get hired by.
Hiring managers like to hire people they know or hire people that have been referred to them by people they know and trust. Informational interviews is a way for people to get to know you. Think about it. When you need a car mechanic or a hair stylist, what do you do? You ask a few friends who they recommend. Or you ask them if they know anything about the person or company you are considering. How much better to be a known quantity then to be a stranger when your name comes up for consideration for a position.
Informational interviews work but they take time. They help you build a network of relationships that can help you get a job in an industry or company you want to get into.
I will have more to say about informational interviews in the days ahead.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Day 12 Better fishing holes for job postings
Early in my search I was tempted to look at every job posting that showed up on a job board. Not a smart idea. Do you know how many hundreds, no, thousands of postings there are for just one website like Monster? You have to narrow your search.
One thing I discovered that job boards seem to do a very poor job of selecting jobs that fit me.Even narrowing my search down to an industry and a geographic area proved unproductive. I would register for free service and select the job categories I wanted. The job board would then send me daily notices based on my criteria. What I found was that I got a lot of junk job postings that I had to wade through to find the ones that might fit me.
What I finally discovered was that the best job boards were highly specialized. I joined a professional association for Trainers and Developers. They had their own regional website and a section devoted to training and development jobs in the Portland area. I also connected with the local HR network and likewise found great leads in the Human Resource field through them.
I read a recent article that detailed where were the best places to look for job postings. Would you believe it? In one study last year 20% of the people hired for jobs found the job on the company website.
When fishing on the Internet look for professional association websites and company websites for employment. They are more productive then the big job boards. It takes time and effort to find these smaller websites but its worth the time and effort.
Day 11 Be productive, not just active
When I first started out applying for jobs I went to the job boards on the Internet. They posted hundreds of openings every day. Surely there are dozens of jobs I am ideally suited to fill. It surprised me and then dismayed me to realize that big name job boards generated very few leads. The job postings look promising, positions were within a reasonable distance from where I lived but I rarely resulted in a call or interview.
Do not mistake activity for being productive in your job search. Be careful what you measure. Eight hours in front of the computer looking at job postings is admirable but is it effective use of your time?
Responding to a hundred job postings may make you feel good but how many hits did they produce? How many interviews did they generate?
After weeks and months of fruitless hours searching the big boards I came to realize there had to be better places and ways to search for work.
If your Internet search isn't producing calls and interviews, then change strategy or tactics. Don't waste time, don't waste weeks and months hoping for results. I discovered that the jobs are out there but searching the job boards is not the best way to find out about them.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Day 10 Learn from the local experts
If you are going to be successful at fishing at an unfamiliar lake its helpful to get advice from the local fishing shop. The locals know the area lakes. They know what's biting. But most importantly they know where to fish and what kind of bait or technique to use.
I considered myself pretty knowledgeable and skilled at hooking and landing a new job even if it was in an unfamiliar industry. How hard can it be to prepare a good resume and present myself well in an interview?
A lot harder than I thought as it turns out. I made the mistake of relying too much and too long on my own skills in job searching before I sought out the help of local experts.
Spending several fruitless weeks (months?) sending out resumes in response to Internet job board postings made me realize maybe I am going about my job search wrong. I was getting virtually no worthwhile strikes for all the time and effort I was putting into scanning job postings.
After a month and a half of fairly unproductive effort I finally went to the local Oregon Worksource job office and began taking advantage of their free services. It was humbling to go in for help but well worth the effort. I couldn't believe the range of free workshops they offered and the free resources they had available for me to use. They offered 15 or 20 workshops every month on all aspects of job searching. They had postings of jobs. They offered weekly support groups for high tech professionals. I found the career counselor to be very busy but very caring and skilled at what they do. I also discovered that there were plenty of other mid-aged professionals like myself seeking out their help.
If you have some time to look and holding down career search expenses is very important to you, check out this service. Visit a local Worksource Oregon center to gain valuable knowledge and skills to improve your chances of finding and landing the kind of job you are looking for. Check them out at http://www.worksourceoregon.org/ If you live in another state, no problem. Just type in Worksource and your state name in Google and find a listing of a center near you.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Day 9 Create business cards for yourself
I needed a way to give people my personal contact information. I did not want to pass out old business cards from my old job. There were at least two reasons for that. Half of the contact information was incorrect. People could no longer reach me at my office number or company email address. And secondly, I did not want to be associated with my old occupation because I wanted to transition to a new career field.
A personal business card gave me a way to quickly and professionally pass on my contact information to others. Crossing out outdated information and scribbling new information on an old card does not look very professional. Writing my phone number on any scrap of paper and giving it out wasn't classy either.
A second thing I printed on my card was a job title or a job description of what I was planning to do. I used the label "Career Transition Consultant". I realized that people reading those words could pigeonhole me but I also wanted to help people remember the kind of career position I was looking for.
I discovered that adding the job description turned out to be very helpful. Most people reading the description said something positive and followed up with a question. "Interesting. There are a lot of people who could use help finding a new job." "What exactly do you do?" From these responses I gained confidence that people wanted this kind of service. Secondly, the questions they asked gave me the opportunity to clarify what kind of work I was looking for. And lastly, people started remembering me as that guy who wants to help people make career changes. People were associating me with the work I wanted to do and not the career I had done previously.
It is worth the time and expense to make business cards for yourself.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Day 8 Identity Crisis-Who am I now?
I tend to describe myself by the work that I do. So how do I identify myself now that I am out of work? I wanted to change careers and do something different so now I really am faced with a challenge. How do I describe myself without saying what I did before?
Most of us tend to categorize ourselves by our job title. "I am a teacher." "I am a manager." "I am a pastor." I made a shift from stating my job title to describing my former job skills. When people asked what I did I would say, "I was an educator." or I would say, "I was involved in training and development." I found myself experimenting with generic ways to describe myself.
What I quickly realized was that I needed to come up with a new way to identify who I was without boxing myself in to what I wanted my next career position to be. I had a general sense that I wanted to move into career coaching but I wasn't sure how best to describe my new identity.
After much thought and several failed attempts I finally came up with a tentative description that served me for several months. I called myself a
Career Transition Specialist. I tried the terms Halftime coach, career specialist and vocational counselor first. I found myself struggling to find just the right words to describe my new identity but I needed something to summarize what I wanted to become. I also needed to stop describing myself by my old job title.
To my delight I discovered that new people I met took me at face value for how I was now describing myself. In fact, I frequently got very positive and inquisitive responses from people. People would say, "That's interesting. What do you do?" That gave me a chance to briefly tell them what I hoped to do, to help people find careers or volunteer opportunities where they could make a shift from success to significance.
I learned early in my career search that I had to change how I saw myself and how I described myself to others. I had to stop identifying myself by my old job title and start introducing myself with a new career label.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Day 7 Finding a job in the nonprofit sector
I have a terrific web resource to tell you about today. It is a nonprofit organization called Action Without Borders. It's website is called Idealist http://www.idealist.org/ . It is the largest and best known nonprofit meeting place in the world for individuals and organizations wanting to connect with people and groups interested in the same causes.
Take a few minutes to explore this site and learn about their mission to bring people together to address issues of common interest. One of their goals is to encourage grassroots community collaboration. Their website makes it possible for anyone to post a notice and call people to meet and address issues in their very own city, town or even neighborhood. What a potential for finding like minded people in your very own area!
Also take time to look at its career center. This site is a great resource for job postings if you are looking for a career in the nonprofit sector.
Day 6 Decide when you will begin your job search
If you are released or laid off from a job with a severance package you may feel like you owe it to yourself to take a few months off before beginning your new career search. Weigh the pros and cons of postponing your job search before you make that decision.
To some extent the circumstances surrounding your termination may dictate how much time to take off before starting your search. As I mentioned in my first blog, I was caught off guard by my termination. I knew there was a good chance that I would be let go or that I would leave on my own but I thought it would be another six months before the employer or I would make that decision.
I was stunned when I learned that I was going to be let go. Two or three weeks passed before it was officially announced to my co-workers and the public. Nearly a month passed before I felt emotionally and physically ready to start my job search.
Set a time limit for how much time you need to transition from your old job to the starting date for searching for a new one. Get rested. Recover emotionally but decide when you you are going to start looking. Chances are, especially if you are over 45 that it is going to take longer, much longer than you think to find work. Be intentional about resting then be intentional about starting your job search.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Day 5 Invest in a good computer to make a career transition
When I lost my job I was tempted to curtail all spending outside of my basic budget. The only computer I owned was a family computer that was ten years old. It had an operating system and software dating to 1995. I thought I could get by with using this setup to do my Internet job search. I quickly found out that I was wrong. It was maddeningly slow.
My wife wisely urged me to invest in myself and buy a new laptop with wireless Internet capability. I hated to spend $1,200 dollars for the system and software but I am glad I did.
The ease and speed at which I could work was well worth the outlay. I could perform tasks that would normally freeze up my old machine.
The portability allowed me to type documents or check email while I waited in the car to pick up my daughter from school. I could take my computer and use it at the local coffee shop or library when I needed to get out of the house.
Having my own computer freed up the family computer. My wife and girls were used to using it for homework and correspondence. It was not fair to them for me to be using it all the time.
A fast computer with up-to-date software and good Internet capability is a necessity not a luxury.
If you just cannot afford to buy a new computer and pay the monthly fee for Internet service there is a temporary solution. Go to the library, the local worksource center or nearby community college and use their computers. You have limited access but at least you can accomplish some essential job search work online.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Day 4 Don’t rely on old knowledge and skills to find a new job
The last time I began a new job search was in 2003. But when I started looking again three years later in 2006 I quickly discovered that the rules and methods for finding a job and applying for it have radically changed.
The first change I noticed is that most job postings today are being done electronically. I used to rely on (for a subscription fee) a monthly mailing from my old alumni placement office for a listing of a few dozen jobs. A posting could be nearly a month old before I received it.
Today job seekers subscribe to Internet job boards. I fill out a free profile and request personalized job alerts to be sent to my email address daily or even hourly. I get a steady stream of job postings sent to me every day from several electronic job boards. The upside is that I am getting very fresh job postings. The downside is that most alerts do a very poor job of identifying useful leads.
The Internet allows me to do a much broader search for job postings than the old ways of finding job leads. Another downside is that I am often overwhelmed with dozens and even hundreds of worthless job postings.
The second change I noticed is that most companies want you to submit an electronic resume and not a paper one. It was not that long ago that you typed your resume and cover letter and mailed it to a potential employer. Today you submit it over the Internet via Email or you fill out an online application and upload your resume and cover letter and submit it on the company website.
The upside to this change is that you speed up the process of getting your resume to the employer. The downside is that you need to learn how to fill out and submit online applications. This is an essential skill you must learn. With many companies, the only way you can apply for a position is by doing it online. They no longer accept paper resumes.
Today you have to learn how to search for jobs on the Internet and you have to learn how to apply for them online. It is essential to learn how to do both. Learn and change how you look for work if you hope to make a successful job or career transition at this stage of your life.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Day 3 Plan you work (job search) and work your plan
When I began my search for a new career I discovered that I could easily get lost doing job searches on the Internet. Job sites like Monster and Career Builder listed hundred of jobs and offered dozens of articles to read about various careers. If I was not focused on what career trail I was on I could waste hours following interesting job leads but have nothing productive to show for my time.
After several experiences wasting hours wandering around aimlessly searching for job postings and reading about different careers I decided to change my approach. I began to start each day or computer session by writing down in a notebook what my job search objective would be before I got on the computer.
I found that I needed to write out a job search goal or an objective for myself each day or I would get lost in the Internet and forget what I was looking for. Since I wanted to make a career change I decided that I needed to explore various industries but only one at a time. What I would do is limit my career search to something like Training and Development. I might spend several days or even weeks exploring this one career.
When I came across a related career that interested me like Organizational Development I would write the name down and bookmark its website or link but I would not explore that career path right then. I found that this practice kept me focused and kept me from getting distracted and overwhelmed with the information I was learning.
To help me manage the information I gained about each career I investigated I started a career file. I created a new folder for each career category that interested me. Clearly identifying and limiting the scope of my search to one career at a time helped me to stay focused and productive.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Day 2 I started my new career search by identifying my transferable skills
The first thing I did to find work in a new career was identify my transferable skills. Over the years I have taken several types of skill and personality assessments-DISC, Myers-Briggs, Strengthfinder 2.0 and so forth. They are all good and helpful tools. They confirmed and clarified what I saw in myself and what friends and co-workers observed in me.
There was a second benefit to taking standardized assessment tests. It allowed me to describe myself in terms that employers understood since they were familiar with the same assessments.
Knowing my skill sets helped me decide what success stories to put in my resume. Over time I learned that employers are looking for more than a list of skill sets in a resume. They wanted to see how I put those skill sets to work to achieve results.
Looking back after a year's time, I did the right thing by identifying my transferable skills early in the process of making a career transition.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Day 1 The journey begins sooner than I thought
I planned to make a career change after my last daughter graduated from high school. I planned to leave on my timetable. Unexpectantly my employer terminated me and I found my self suddenly looking for work a year sooner than I anticipated.
Before I could even think about looking for new work I had to first constructively deal with the shock and the onslaught of thoughts and feelings that rose up in me. I went through a wide range of raw emotion.
I replayed and analyzed events and conversations I had with key people at work over the past six months to figure out why this termination happened and why I didn't see it coming.
I wrestled with myself and with God about how I would respond to the news that I was being let go. Fortunately I had been studying and teaching biblical Peacemaker principles for the past four months. God gave me the strength and the wisdom to see and take responsibility for my words and actions that contributed to my termination.
After much thought, prayer and wise counsel I went back to key leaders and co-workers with a mutually respected third party observer. My goal was to get closure for myself and for those involved in this decision. I was able to model what biblical conflict resolution looks like. The result was that all of us learned how to better relate to others and how to deal with conflict rather than avoid it until it is too late.
I was still suddenly out of work with no immediate prospect of a new job but I at least constructively dealt with my thoughts and feelings and made peace with those at my former workplace. This freed me up to look ahead and not focus on the past.