(This article is part of a book called How to Find a Job, which now is available as an ebook on Kindle, nook, and Smashwords. All of the chapters have been revised, many have been expanded, and the book contains three bonus chapters (including Negotiating) that are not available on this blog.)
When I first started writing this book, I contemplated including a sample résumé or two. Specifically, I thought about including my own, because I know that it worked.
How do I know?
Easy: I based in on my father-in-law’s résumé. It got him a job. And it got me a job. And since he was at a level where he could hire people, he knew what he liked to see in a résumé, and in his own words, he would have definitely called me in for an interview if he saw my résumé.
(This is a huge compliment. Trust me.)
But here’s the thing: Go to ten different web sites, and you’re going to find ten different styles of résumé.
You don’t even have to do that, really. Open up the latest version of Word, click the option in the upper-left corner (it claims it’s the Office button on my version) and one of the options under new documents is Résumé.
There are over 120 résumé templates there. And any one of them might work for you.
For that matter, I don’t think you can talk to two different résumé experts without discovering that they split in a major way about some résumé detail.
For example: I went to a networking group where the leader swore up, down, and sideways that having a two-page résumé was not only acceptable, but the norm these days.
And then I talked to a friend who had just gotten a business degree. She told me she’d been informed that unless you were going for a job at C-level (CEO, CFO) your résumé could never, ever, ever, ever, be longer than a page. Not ever.
Even on my own résumé, I had a so-called expert recommend that I take off the word “Achievements,” which I had used to highlight what I had accomplished at each one of my jobs. This was the same person who said I should remove the Month/Year listing for each one of my jobs, and list only the years, to make it look like I had been at my last job longer.
Later, I started to feel the Year/Year thing was dishonest, and I changed it back.
So I have, in the end, only three pieces of advice I’ve collated on making a great résumé:
1. The right résumé is the one that gets you the job.
What does that mean? It means that there is no such thing as a wrong résumé. Can you get all your jobs and accomplishments on one page? Great. Do it. If it gets you the job, it was the right résumé. If it didn’t, it might have been the wrong one. If you send out the same résumé 20 times and no one calls you back, think about changing it.
But really, the way any one person reacts to your résumé comes down to what they’re looking for, and whether or not it’s on your résumé at the moment they’re looking for it. Much the way a horror movie isn’t going to appeal to a romance movie fan, well, if you don’t have what they want, you aren’t getting the call.
In the end, your résumé must be simple, easy to read (every HR person I spoke to during my job search said they spent somewhere between 90 seconds and two minutes looking at a résumé), and tell the person looking at it why you’re the best person for the job.
Everything else is just shuffling the words.
2. Weed out every typo.
Before you send out your résumé to anyone who can give you a job, send it to five friends with English degrees.
If you don’t have friends with English degrees, go to the local office of the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) and have someone look over your résumé. Or call up a few good friends.
But whatever you do, get it checked.
Your résumé’s job is to get you a job, and if there are grammatical errors on it, the only thing your résumé is telling people is that you don’t care enough to assemble a one-to-two-page piece of paper and make it error free. So what kind of work are you going to do for them?
So get it looked at. A lot. And if you have a very picky friend, after you make the fixes, send it to them again to make sure you didn’t add a typo.
It’s worth the time it takes.
3. In today’s world, there’s no such thing as having just one résumé.
When I really started thinking about what skills I had, I began to realize that having just one résumé was insufficient. So I started making copies of my résumé and moving information around.
I made about a dozen folders inside the Résumé folder on my computer, I copied my résumé into each one, and I started making changes.
So, for example, in my Freelance Writing folder, I moved all my freelance work to the top of my résumé, and I devoted extra verbiage to the various magazines, newspapers, and online forums I had written for.
When I put together a teaching résumé, I emphasized all the work I had done at my jobs that involved me working in an educational capacity.
And so on.
A lot of job experts will tell you that each résumé you send out should be tweaked for the job you’re applying to. So, for example, if the job description listed “punctual” somewhere, they would find a way to get the word punctual on their résumé.
This was mostly designed to game the system when companies started using computers to vet résumés. And it might work. I don’t know. I know people who would spend hours tweaking their résumés, but I never heard conclusive proof one way or another that this got them more interviews.
(The very odd rumor I heard was that some people took to copy/pasting the job description in the footer of their electronic résumés, and then turning the font white so the computer would pick their résumé out of the stack, but a human wouldn’t be able to read it. The only problem there is, computers often reformat things. I’m guessing if anyone ever tried this trick, they probably got caught and didn’t get the job. Don’t waste your time.)
This leads me to my last thought on this particular tweak. Many résumé formats include a Summary Paragraph. I don’t know that it’s a requirement, but I was told by two different HR people how important it was. If you’re not familiar with one, it goes at the top of résumé and it looks like this:
Six years experience in chicken farming. Worked as a feeder, sorter, medicine-maker, milker, and chicken-builder.
Depending on the job type in question (teaching, writing, computers) I would always list my skills in the order that would most interest the person reading it. So for a computer job, I would write:
7 years experience in on-the-phone and on-site computer troubleshooting. 6 years experience in on-site education. 5 years of experience in journalism.
But if the job was in writing, I’d arrange it like so:
5 years of experience in journalism. 7 years experience in on-the-phone and on-site computer troubleshooting. 6 years experience in education.
As it turns out, this is the right thing to do, as both HR people informed me that if they didn’t see what they were looking for in that first line, they would toss the résumé into the No pile. They had 200 other résumés to look at, and skipping over someone who didn’t list the skills they needed saved them precious minutes.
Now, this might concern you, because you want to be a chicken farmer and you’ve never been one before. Relax. Find the skills that will interest HR and put those first. Your customer service experience, for example.
Other Résumé Tips and Tricks:
Here are a few other things that I learned during my tenure as an unemployed person.
Name your résumé something that will be easy to search for on your computer.
Mine was Joshua Grover-David Patterson Résumé.doc.
Why call it that? Because as time wore on and I wrote more cover letters, put together more collections of data about myself for networking meetings, and various other tasks, after a while my résumé was buried in the clutter of the Résumé folder on my computer.
And there are a number of other reasons to do this. You might drag and drop your résumé into the wrong folder. You might get a job, lose the job, and then have to find your résumé again a year or two down the road.
The point is, make it easy to find, and easy to locate using the Search function. By giving your résumé an easy title to remember, it will be easy to locate for uploading, emailing, printing, and whatever else you need it for. Yours should be Your Complete Name Résumé.doc.
Next, get yourself a jump drive and back up your résumé on it.
This one is simple enough. You should always back up the important files on your computer, and right now your résumé is the most important computer file you own. And if you have the jump drive with you, a fresh copy of your résumé is always one computer away.
Emphasize your accomplishments.
I’m still at a loss as to why my so-called job guru insisted that I remove the word Accomplishments from my résumé. It didn’t save space, and didn’t make my résumé any easier to read. In fact, it made it more difficult, as some of my paragraphs blended together on the page and it become harder to tell what was my job description, and what I did above and beyond my job description.
When I added that single word, suddenly in interviews I could easily point to what I had done that was exceptional. And make sure what you list there is exceptional. Employee of the Month. Amount of money you saved the company. Ways that you made a big impact.
Showed up for work on time every day isn’t an accomplishment, it’s just expected.
Always have a copy of your résumé with you.
When I started getting interviews and going to networking meetings, I went to an office supply store and spent fifty dollars on a nice black satchel, a professional-looking binder, and a punch of plastic sheets to store papers in.
Then I printed up five copies of my résumé, along with all the different kinds of documents I’ve written, and I put them into the folder.
Why? Because you never know when someone is going to ask for a résumé, so you want to have one on hand. I even went to a couple of interviews where the person who was supposed to talk to me had either misplaced my résumé or, in one case, was interviewing me because another person was called away on an emergency.
Carry copies of your résumé. And when you update your résumé recycle your old ones and make new copies.
Keep track of where you send your résumés.
This one will be key if the Unemployment Insurance people ever ask you where you’ve been applying. The fact is, it’s easy to let this slip by for a week or two. Don’t let that happen. Write down where you applied, and make sure that each week you’re not applying to the same places.
Create a text-only résumé.
It’s probably worth your time to make a “no frills” résumé.
By which I mean: Go to File | Save As |and under Save as Type, choose .txt. Then open up that file in a program other than word (Notepad or Wordpad, for example) and clean out the formatting junk in it.
What is this good for? Résumé copy/pasting, which you’ll surely be doing lots of as you continue to send out résumés.
Why would you want this? Well, a lot of the time, jobs will ask that you copy and paste your résumé into the body of an email. And sometimes, that works great.
And other times, it looks terrible, as all your formatting becomes characters your email program doesn’t understand.
Speaking of which, always remember when applying for a job to follow the rules laid out in the job posting. If they say no attachments, it means that if you attach your résumé to an email then it will probably be deleted before a human ever sees it.
And if the job requires transcripts, or reference contacts, or work samples? Make sure you provide what they’re asking for.
At one point, a friend and I applied for the same job. Both of us were qualified. Neither of us got a call for an interview. Why? Because we both missed one of the required attachments.
Give them everything they ask for. Always.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
How to Find a Job: What Are Your Needs?
(This article is part of a book called How to Find a Job, which now is available as an ebook on Kindle, nook, and Smashwords. All of the chapters have been revised, many have been expanded, and the book contains three bonus chapters (including Negotiating) that are not available on this blog.)
When I lost my job, my wife was an award-winning journalist, and we had a two-year-old.
When you’re a journalist, you have crazy hours. It’s just a fact. You do not go in at eight, eat lunch at noon, and leave at five. You might work late shifts throughout the week. You might have weekend shifts. You might have an early deadline, and head off to work well before the sun rises.
So this meant that my job, whatever it was going to be, had to be on the total opposite spectrum. I did need to work 8-5. I did need to have my weekends free. I did need to know that no one was going to be calling me at ten at night and asking me to come in for an emergency shift.
And I could never be more than 30 minutes away from our day care, because I had to pick up and drop off our child.
Some people want a big salary. Some people want six weeks of vacation. Some people want to work 30 hours a week. Some people want to work from home.
The point is, you need to think about all these things before you start looking for work.
And I should probably emphasize the word “before.”
Once again, you should write them down. Why?
Because it’s more than probable as the weeks go on that you will start to slip on where you’re willing to send a resume.
Somewhere near the tail end of my first year on unemployment, I started to panic. At the time, my unemployment funds were running out, I had no idea if there would be another extension, and I knew that I was close to tapping into the money we had saved up that I had sworn I’d never touch.
So I took an interview in a place that was too far away for me to drive in 30 minutes. And the pay was too low. And while the job involved writing, it was mostly advertising a product I had little to no interest in.
Now, granted, I got the interview. And I showed up in my suit, and because I spent several years taking voice lessons and acting in plays, musicals, and operas, I knew how to act the part of the enthusiastic worker. And more to the point, I was honest about the fact that, while they would always get my 40 hours, I was always going to be a little late and leaving a little early.
And I didn’t get the job.
I would love to say that was the first and last time I applied for a job that I knew wasn’t going to work for the life I had, but it wasn’t. I sent out a handful of resumes while I was job-hunting for things that I knew simply were not going to happen.
I’m here to tell you, don’t do that.
Granted, there may be a week during your unemployment that you have to apply for something, and there’s a job listing in front of you, and it’s too far away, or the pay is too low, or any other number of possible problems.
And it’s all you have to apply for.
If that’s what you’ve got, well, go ahead and do it. But before you do, take a look at the list of things you need, and make a list of all the things you’re going to need to ask them for in order to make the job happen.
Then, after you apply, tuck that list in with the list of jobs you’ve applied for, so if you get the interview you can bring them up.
So let’s go back to that list. What should be on it? Well… whatever is most important to you.
In my case it was:
Within a 20 minute drive of my day care.
No nights, weekends or other odd hours.
Little or no travel.
Willing to be flexible in the event of family emergency (sick child, etc.).
A livable wage.
Did I have other requirements? I did. But these were the ones that I couldn’t budge on, no matter what. And in the end, I got them all.
You might have a totally different idea of what your needs and/or wants are. Sit down. List them. Figure out which ones are the ones that you can’t ever, ever, ever budge on.
And don’t budge.
When I lost my job, my wife was an award-winning journalist, and we had a two-year-old.
When you’re a journalist, you have crazy hours. It’s just a fact. You do not go in at eight, eat lunch at noon, and leave at five. You might work late shifts throughout the week. You might have weekend shifts. You might have an early deadline, and head off to work well before the sun rises.
So this meant that my job, whatever it was going to be, had to be on the total opposite spectrum. I did need to work 8-5. I did need to have my weekends free. I did need to know that no one was going to be calling me at ten at night and asking me to come in for an emergency shift.
And I could never be more than 30 minutes away from our day care, because I had to pick up and drop off our child.
Some people want a big salary. Some people want six weeks of vacation. Some people want to work 30 hours a week. Some people want to work from home.
The point is, you need to think about all these things before you start looking for work.
And I should probably emphasize the word “before.”
Once again, you should write them down. Why?
Because it’s more than probable as the weeks go on that you will start to slip on where you’re willing to send a resume.
Somewhere near the tail end of my first year on unemployment, I started to panic. At the time, my unemployment funds were running out, I had no idea if there would be another extension, and I knew that I was close to tapping into the money we had saved up that I had sworn I’d never touch.
So I took an interview in a place that was too far away for me to drive in 30 minutes. And the pay was too low. And while the job involved writing, it was mostly advertising a product I had little to no interest in.
Now, granted, I got the interview. And I showed up in my suit, and because I spent several years taking voice lessons and acting in plays, musicals, and operas, I knew how to act the part of the enthusiastic worker. And more to the point, I was honest about the fact that, while they would always get my 40 hours, I was always going to be a little late and leaving a little early.
And I didn’t get the job.
I would love to say that was the first and last time I applied for a job that I knew wasn’t going to work for the life I had, but it wasn’t. I sent out a handful of resumes while I was job-hunting for things that I knew simply were not going to happen.
I’m here to tell you, don’t do that.
Granted, there may be a week during your unemployment that you have to apply for something, and there’s a job listing in front of you, and it’s too far away, or the pay is too low, or any other number of possible problems.
And it’s all you have to apply for.
If that’s what you’ve got, well, go ahead and do it. But before you do, take a look at the list of things you need, and make a list of all the things you’re going to need to ask them for in order to make the job happen.
Then, after you apply, tuck that list in with the list of jobs you’ve applied for, so if you get the interview you can bring them up.
So let’s go back to that list. What should be on it? Well… whatever is most important to you.
In my case it was:
Within a 20 minute drive of my day care.
No nights, weekends or other odd hours.
Little or no travel.
Willing to be flexible in the event of family emergency (sick child, etc.).
A livable wage.
Did I have other requirements? I did. But these were the ones that I couldn’t budge on, no matter what. And in the end, I got them all.
You might have a totally different idea of what your needs and/or wants are. Sit down. List them. Figure out which ones are the ones that you can’t ever, ever, ever budge on.
And don’t budge.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
How to Find a Job: What Are You Good At?
(This article is part of a book called How to Find a Job, which now is available as an ebook on Kindle, nook, and Smashwords. All of the chapters have been revised, many have been expanded, and the book contains three bonus chapters (including Negotiating) that are not available on this blog.)
As I talked about in What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up, one of the things I always find is that people generally think about doing more of what they’ve always done.
And that’s fine. If you were once a loan officer, and want to be one again, then you probably have the necessary skills to be one again.
But the problem with the current economy is that if you were let go from your job, there’s a strong chance that what you do isn’t as in demand as you would like it to be.
Take me, for example.
About six weeks into being unemployed, I got a letter to report to my local Department of Workforce Development (DWD) office.
Now, at the time, I was already going to a (very expensive) office that my ex-company had set me up with. There were computers at the expensive place I could use. Fancy paper to print resumes. Highly paid individuals who could help me vet my resume and cover letter. Classes I could take that would tell me what I was good at, and where I should look for work.
They even had a networking meeting every Friday morning, and bonus classes almost every week, covering everything from opening your own business to… other business-related stuff.
You get the picture.
At any rate, I was called to the DWD. If I didn’t report, they would cut off my Unemployment Insurance (UI) and that, as they say, would be that.
So I went to a two-hour meeting, where they told me all the wonderful things that the DWD had made available to me. Which was pretty much all the same stuff that was available to me at the building across town.
When I arrived, the very first thing that happened was that we were told why we had been called into the meeting in the first place.
Answer One: You were frequently out of work. (Obviously, this wasn’t me.)
Answer Two: There were few or no available jobs in your line of business.
How’s that for a cold splash of water in the face? I had been called into the meeting because THERE WERE NO JOBS I COULD DO. (Cue ominous music.)
The thing is, I went into that meeting feeling pretty good about myself. I was getting my resume together. I was meeting people who I thought might have leads for me. And, okay, there weren’t a lot of job leads out there on the Internet for a guy like me, but I was finding some. Surely I would find more, right?
Well, apparently, the government of my state felt differently.
I spent the rest of the meeting feeling vaguely nauseous.
But in a way, it gave me a push that I really needed. Previous to that point, I had set my heels into the ground and said that I was going to get a job doing more-or-less what I had already been doing. That was my skill set, that was what my resume said I could do, and that’s what I was going to do.
I quite literally “forgot” that I had spent seven years doing an entirely different job, which had an entirely different skill set. I also ignored the fact that I had an education degree.
My brain just sat there, saying that I could do one thing, and only one thing.
But that wasn’t true of me, and I’m sure it’s not true of you.
Granted, you may have skills you don’t want to utilize. You might be able to fix cars and build houses, but maybe you hate building houses. Fair enough.
You might be able to do taxes and sell cars, but you hated selling cars.
Fair enough.
But perhaps you can combine those skills and find a whole new way to use them that’s going to bring home a paycheck and make your workday enjoyable as well.
How? Well, that’s up to you.
Over the course of the last three years, I’ve seen a handful of my friends leave the field of journalism.
One of them started teaching writing at a local school.
Another, who did a lot of work in the business field, got into the non-profit world as a liaison to large businesses. It was easy for them, because the person was already on a first-name basis with most of the people they were going to be in contact with.
Another moved into grant writing.
Now, you could argue that two out of these three examples just took another writing job. And that’s true. But what they did NOT do is leave one newspaper and join up with another newspaper, or magazine, or newsletter. They took their skills and applied them in another way.
As for me, I blew the dust off my old education degree and taught a bunch of kids how to make movies, using the skills I developed writing independent films. I had a lot of fun, and I got to help an amazing bunch of kids make a project that is now part of my hometown’s school curriculum.
That’s a lot of storytelling, but I hope it makes my point: You are more than what you were doing just before you lost your job.
And if you want to go back to doing exactly what you were doing, then that’s fine, and the very best of luck to you.
But don’t ever forget that you have other skills you can pull from. Figure out what they are. Write them down. Find places to put them on your resume.
And then compare and contrast them to the list of things you’ve always wanted to be.
There are possibilities there.
As I talked about in What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up, one of the things I always find is that people generally think about doing more of what they’ve always done.
And that’s fine. If you were once a loan officer, and want to be one again, then you probably have the necessary skills to be one again.
But the problem with the current economy is that if you were let go from your job, there’s a strong chance that what you do isn’t as in demand as you would like it to be.
Take me, for example.
About six weeks into being unemployed, I got a letter to report to my local Department of Workforce Development (DWD) office.
Now, at the time, I was already going to a (very expensive) office that my ex-company had set me up with. There were computers at the expensive place I could use. Fancy paper to print resumes. Highly paid individuals who could help me vet my resume and cover letter. Classes I could take that would tell me what I was good at, and where I should look for work.
They even had a networking meeting every Friday morning, and bonus classes almost every week, covering everything from opening your own business to… other business-related stuff.
You get the picture.
At any rate, I was called to the DWD. If I didn’t report, they would cut off my Unemployment Insurance (UI) and that, as they say, would be that.
So I went to a two-hour meeting, where they told me all the wonderful things that the DWD had made available to me. Which was pretty much all the same stuff that was available to me at the building across town.
When I arrived, the very first thing that happened was that we were told why we had been called into the meeting in the first place.
Answer One: You were frequently out of work. (Obviously, this wasn’t me.)
Answer Two: There were few or no available jobs in your line of business.
How’s that for a cold splash of water in the face? I had been called into the meeting because THERE WERE NO JOBS I COULD DO. (Cue ominous music.)
The thing is, I went into that meeting feeling pretty good about myself. I was getting my resume together. I was meeting people who I thought might have leads for me. And, okay, there weren’t a lot of job leads out there on the Internet for a guy like me, but I was finding some. Surely I would find more, right?
Well, apparently, the government of my state felt differently.
I spent the rest of the meeting feeling vaguely nauseous.
But in a way, it gave me a push that I really needed. Previous to that point, I had set my heels into the ground and said that I was going to get a job doing more-or-less what I had already been doing. That was my skill set, that was what my resume said I could do, and that’s what I was going to do.
I quite literally “forgot” that I had spent seven years doing an entirely different job, which had an entirely different skill set. I also ignored the fact that I had an education degree.
My brain just sat there, saying that I could do one thing, and only one thing.
But that wasn’t true of me, and I’m sure it’s not true of you.
Granted, you may have skills you don’t want to utilize. You might be able to fix cars and build houses, but maybe you hate building houses. Fair enough.
You might be able to do taxes and sell cars, but you hated selling cars.
Fair enough.
But perhaps you can combine those skills and find a whole new way to use them that’s going to bring home a paycheck and make your workday enjoyable as well.
How? Well, that’s up to you.
Over the course of the last three years, I’ve seen a handful of my friends leave the field of journalism.
One of them started teaching writing at a local school.
Another, who did a lot of work in the business field, got into the non-profit world as a liaison to large businesses. It was easy for them, because the person was already on a first-name basis with most of the people they were going to be in contact with.
Another moved into grant writing.
Now, you could argue that two out of these three examples just took another writing job. And that’s true. But what they did NOT do is leave one newspaper and join up with another newspaper, or magazine, or newsletter. They took their skills and applied them in another way.
As for me, I blew the dust off my old education degree and taught a bunch of kids how to make movies, using the skills I developed writing independent films. I had a lot of fun, and I got to help an amazing bunch of kids make a project that is now part of my hometown’s school curriculum.
That’s a lot of storytelling, but I hope it makes my point: You are more than what you were doing just before you lost your job.
And if you want to go back to doing exactly what you were doing, then that’s fine, and the very best of luck to you.
But don’t ever forget that you have other skills you can pull from. Figure out what they are. Write them down. Find places to put them on your resume.
And then compare and contrast them to the list of things you’ve always wanted to be.
There are possibilities there.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
How to Find a Job: What You Want to Be When You Grow Up
(This article is part of a book called How to Find a Job, which now is available as an ebook on Kindle, nook, and Smashwords. All of the chapters have been revised, many have been expanded, and the book contains three bonus chapters (including Negotiating) that are not available on this blog.)
When you’re a little kid, you spend a lot of time thinking about what you’re going to be when you grow up. Interestingly, my daughter answered this question at school, and at four years of age she’s decided she’s going to be a princess.
It could happen.
In middle school, I was given a set of questions which then spit out a list of jobs I was “suited for.” The top two were, at the time, Priest and Disk Jockey.
In high school, you start thinking about college or technical school, and what you want to do, and what degree you’ll get that will lead you to that career. Then in college, maybe you refine that plan.
Then you graduate, and you get a job, and for a while there, you think you’re set for life. This is what you do, and eventually you’ll go from the guy on the bottom rung to being the guy on the top rung. From the chicken farmer to the owner of the chicken farm, or Chicken Farms, Inc. Or maybe just the assistant manager, if you’re less ambitious.
And most humans are, to a degree, sedentary. Even if they don’t like their job, they can at least tolerate it. So they stay where they are, and they get their raises and their promotions, and they never look outside their little box.
But if you’ve lost your job, well, congratulations! You’ve just been thrown out of the box.
So ask yourself a question, maybe for the first time in years: What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?
Now, I’m not saying that if you were a loan officer, that you should think about becoming a chicken farmer. There’s little to no skill set crossover there.
But hey. Don’t let me spoil your dream.
Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with saying that you still want to be a loan officer. There’s nothing wrong with assembling your resume so that people can tell you were a good loan officer.
And if there are dozens of loan officer jobs, then go for them, and get one, and have a great life.
But if there’s something else you wanted to do, this might be the perfect time to look into it.
So do yourself a favor. Put together your resume. Fix all the typos in your cover letter. And get out there and apply for those jobs you know you can get.
But while you’re at it, take some time, even if it’s just an hour one day, and think about what you really want to do with your life. And if it’s important to you, try to make it happen.
When you’re a little kid, you spend a lot of time thinking about what you’re going to be when you grow up. Interestingly, my daughter answered this question at school, and at four years of age she’s decided she’s going to be a princess.
It could happen.
In middle school, I was given a set of questions which then spit out a list of jobs I was “suited for.” The top two were, at the time, Priest and Disk Jockey.
In high school, you start thinking about college or technical school, and what you want to do, and what degree you’ll get that will lead you to that career. Then in college, maybe you refine that plan.
Then you graduate, and you get a job, and for a while there, you think you’re set for life. This is what you do, and eventually you’ll go from the guy on the bottom rung to being the guy on the top rung. From the chicken farmer to the owner of the chicken farm, or Chicken Farms, Inc. Or maybe just the assistant manager, if you’re less ambitious.
And most humans are, to a degree, sedentary. Even if they don’t like their job, they can at least tolerate it. So they stay where they are, and they get their raises and their promotions, and they never look outside their little box.
But if you’ve lost your job, well, congratulations! You’ve just been thrown out of the box.
So ask yourself a question, maybe for the first time in years: What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?
Now, I’m not saying that if you were a loan officer, that you should think about becoming a chicken farmer. There’s little to no skill set crossover there.
But hey. Don’t let me spoil your dream.
Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with saying that you still want to be a loan officer. There’s nothing wrong with assembling your resume so that people can tell you were a good loan officer.
And if there are dozens of loan officer jobs, then go for them, and get one, and have a great life.
But if there’s something else you wanted to do, this might be the perfect time to look into it.
So do yourself a favor. Put together your resume. Fix all the typos in your cover letter. And get out there and apply for those jobs you know you can get.
But while you’re at it, take some time, even if it’s just an hour one day, and think about what you really want to do with your life. And if it’s important to you, try to make it happen.
Misfits Cover - Plus a Surprise!
Here's the Misfits cover. Fun!
And here's the slightly altered Baby Teeth cover...
And here's the slightly altered Baby Teeth cover...
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
How to Find a Job: A Few Quick Thoughts on Unemployment
(This article is part of a book called How to Find a Job, which now is available as an ebook on Kindle, nook, and Smashwords. All of the chapters have been revised, many have been expanded, and the book contains three bonus chapters (including Negotiating) that are not available on this blog.)
Being unemployed is no fun.
Trying to figure out how Unemployment Insurance (UI) works is even less fun.
Why?
Well, originally, I wanted to fill this chapter with a set of steps that would tell you how to go about filing for UI. But guess what?
That’s impossible.
Why?
Because the rules are different in just about every state. And as a bonus, the rules are always changing. Even if I spent the next couple of months researching (UI), and released this book the moment that information was complete and accurate…
Chances are good that the information would not be complete and accurate by the time you downloaded and started to read this chapter.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have advice. I do.
But before I get to it, I have to make a couple assumptions.
1. You’re a good worker who did your job.
2. You were laid off, and not fired, nor did you quit your job.
Why do I have to make those assumptions? Because if I don’t all my advice is null and void.
At one point, while trying to help a friend, he told me he’d been let go. He told me he was having trouble getting his UI money. I made suggestions. I offered thoughts.
Then I found out he had been fired.
Being fired, whether justly or unjustly, is a whole different issue. It makes it harder to find work, and it makes it harder to convince your local government that you deserve UI, which more often than not requires that you worked hard and obeyed the rules of your workplace.
So if you didn’t, you might be out of luck. And you might want to give some thought to your work ethic before you start hunting for another job.
All that said, a few thoughts:
1. Unemployment Insurance is confusing and underfunded, and getting clarification is a massive headache. So call on Thursday.
A True Story: The week I was going to be let go, I called up the fine folks at UI and to tell them I was losing my job and to ask them what I needed to do next.
I was put on hold for a minute. And then UI hung up on me, with a message to check their web site. I called back several times, and every single time I was hung up on before I could talk to a person. They didn’t have anyone to talk to me, and there was no hold option. There was just the web site.
So do yourself a favor: Go to the web site.
More often than not, your questions will be answered if you read through all the information there. And why not take the time? You could be unemployed for a while, and you have some free time. So sit back and start reading.
If there’s something you really don’t understand, write it down. And call on Thursday. Why Thursday? Because according to a woman I met from the UI office, that’s the least-busy day. You might still have to try a few times (I always did) but you’ll get through.
2. Sooner or later, you may end up Under Investigation. There’s nothing to do but wait, answer their questions, and keep filing for UI.
When I lost my job, I hopped online and signed up for UI, a simple and quick process that resulted in them sending me a check within a matter of days. It was simple and mostly made sense.
Over the next two years I spent five different periods of my life Under Investigation, which was confusing and emotionally draining and did damage to my savings account. Why?
In a word, freelance work.
I started writing for a magazine. And I took on some work at a local school. And I did a freelance movie-editing job. And I wrote a script for an industrial video.
I told UI all of these things, and at the time, they didn’t care.
And then my UI money would run out, and they would have to recalculate what I should be getting, and suddenly, my checks were On Hold.
According to the letter I got, this could last five weeks or longer.
It was always longer, especially the last time, which took 13 weeks.
The fact is, this is an extra-scary time. You’ll get a letter each week telling you they don’t know when you’ll get your money, but that you should keep filing. You’ll get extra letters, asking for monetary information. And you’ll probably end up on the phone with UI, who somehow always manage to call just when you’re in the middle of doing something, and you have no idea where the information they want is located.
Take a breath. Relax. If you did everything they asked of you (and I’m going to assume you did) sooner or later, everything will work itself out.
And please, don’t let my experience sour you on freelance work. While I didn’t enjoy being investigated, everyone I spoke to was kind and fair and just wanted to make sure that everybody on UI was following all the rules.
More importantly, it’s good to get fresh work on your resume. Never pass up that chance.
3. Always remember that it’s your money, and that you deserve it.
One of the things that surprised me was how many people I met got mumbly when they told me they were on unemployment. And I understood. Being on unemployment was something that happened to other people. People with medical conditions. People who were too lazy to work.
Other People.
But there’s no reason to feel shame. At one point, the country I lived in topped out at 15% unemployment. For those easily confused by math (like myself!) that means every time you saw a grouping adults capable of working 15 of them didn’t have a job.
As I type this, the number is still bouncing up and down a bit, but it’s around 9%. A big improvement, yes. But it still means that when you look at 100 people, 9 of them don’t have a job.
My point? You are not alone in your predicament. And UI was designed to help you through it. Now, it might not be enough (in fact, it almost certainly isn’t) but it is something, you have paid into it, and this is what that money is for.
So if someone asks you, tell them the truth. You’re unemployed. You’re currently searching for a job.
Then tell them what you do, and ask them if they know anyone who needs you. Because people love to help.
4. Don’t expect to be off UI in the very near future.
While this isn’t about UI specifically, I do think that it’s important to keep yourself in a positive frame of mind.
When you lose your job, it’s easy to think that in two weeks, or three, or four, you’ll be back to work and things will be status quo.
When I lost my job, I stumbled across a comforting video that told me that at that time, the average span people were unemployed was about 19 weeks.
Granted, I didn’t want to spend 19 weeks without a job, but if that was the average, well, that was the average, and why fight it?
I hit 19 weeks, and then I started to panic. But then I looked around at all the other people I’d run into in my networking meetings. Most or all of them had been let go the same week I had, and here we all were, still looking for work.
I felt the same way after a year.
I felt the same way after two years.
Then things started to change. More of the people in my networking groups started getting jobs. Soon there were fewer and fewer faces I knew.
And then one day shortly thereafter, I had a job.
The economy is in flux. Look around. If you’re seeing that your friends are still out there hunting for work, then take some comfort in that. If you see that all your friends are getting work, then take comfort in knowing that you probably will as well.
And if everyone you know is getting hired but you, start thinking about changing your strategies a bit. But remember – it happens when it happens.
And you’ll be okay.
Being unemployed is no fun.
Trying to figure out how Unemployment Insurance (UI) works is even less fun.
Why?
Well, originally, I wanted to fill this chapter with a set of steps that would tell you how to go about filing for UI. But guess what?
That’s impossible.
Why?
Because the rules are different in just about every state. And as a bonus, the rules are always changing. Even if I spent the next couple of months researching (UI), and released this book the moment that information was complete and accurate…
Chances are good that the information would not be complete and accurate by the time you downloaded and started to read this chapter.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have advice. I do.
But before I get to it, I have to make a couple assumptions.
1. You’re a good worker who did your job.
2. You were laid off, and not fired, nor did you quit your job.
Why do I have to make those assumptions? Because if I don’t all my advice is null and void.
At one point, while trying to help a friend, he told me he’d been let go. He told me he was having trouble getting his UI money. I made suggestions. I offered thoughts.
Then I found out he had been fired.
Being fired, whether justly or unjustly, is a whole different issue. It makes it harder to find work, and it makes it harder to convince your local government that you deserve UI, which more often than not requires that you worked hard and obeyed the rules of your workplace.
So if you didn’t, you might be out of luck. And you might want to give some thought to your work ethic before you start hunting for another job.
All that said, a few thoughts:
1. Unemployment Insurance is confusing and underfunded, and getting clarification is a massive headache. So call on Thursday.
A True Story: The week I was going to be let go, I called up the fine folks at UI and to tell them I was losing my job and to ask them what I needed to do next.
I was put on hold for a minute. And then UI hung up on me, with a message to check their web site. I called back several times, and every single time I was hung up on before I could talk to a person. They didn’t have anyone to talk to me, and there was no hold option. There was just the web site.
So do yourself a favor: Go to the web site.
More often than not, your questions will be answered if you read through all the information there. And why not take the time? You could be unemployed for a while, and you have some free time. So sit back and start reading.
If there’s something you really don’t understand, write it down. And call on Thursday. Why Thursday? Because according to a woman I met from the UI office, that’s the least-busy day. You might still have to try a few times (I always did) but you’ll get through.
2. Sooner or later, you may end up Under Investigation. There’s nothing to do but wait, answer their questions, and keep filing for UI.
When I lost my job, I hopped online and signed up for UI, a simple and quick process that resulted in them sending me a check within a matter of days. It was simple and mostly made sense.
Over the next two years I spent five different periods of my life Under Investigation, which was confusing and emotionally draining and did damage to my savings account. Why?
In a word, freelance work.
I started writing for a magazine. And I took on some work at a local school. And I did a freelance movie-editing job. And I wrote a script for an industrial video.
I told UI all of these things, and at the time, they didn’t care.
And then my UI money would run out, and they would have to recalculate what I should be getting, and suddenly, my checks were On Hold.
According to the letter I got, this could last five weeks or longer.
It was always longer, especially the last time, which took 13 weeks.
The fact is, this is an extra-scary time. You’ll get a letter each week telling you they don’t know when you’ll get your money, but that you should keep filing. You’ll get extra letters, asking for monetary information. And you’ll probably end up on the phone with UI, who somehow always manage to call just when you’re in the middle of doing something, and you have no idea where the information they want is located.
Take a breath. Relax. If you did everything they asked of you (and I’m going to assume you did) sooner or later, everything will work itself out.
And please, don’t let my experience sour you on freelance work. While I didn’t enjoy being investigated, everyone I spoke to was kind and fair and just wanted to make sure that everybody on UI was following all the rules.
More importantly, it’s good to get fresh work on your resume. Never pass up that chance.
3. Always remember that it’s your money, and that you deserve it.
One of the things that surprised me was how many people I met got mumbly when they told me they were on unemployment. And I understood. Being on unemployment was something that happened to other people. People with medical conditions. People who were too lazy to work.
Other People.
But there’s no reason to feel shame. At one point, the country I lived in topped out at 15% unemployment. For those easily confused by math (like myself!) that means every time you saw a grouping adults capable of working 15 of them didn’t have a job.
As I type this, the number is still bouncing up and down a bit, but it’s around 9%. A big improvement, yes. But it still means that when you look at 100 people, 9 of them don’t have a job.
My point? You are not alone in your predicament. And UI was designed to help you through it. Now, it might not be enough (in fact, it almost certainly isn’t) but it is something, you have paid into it, and this is what that money is for.
So if someone asks you, tell them the truth. You’re unemployed. You’re currently searching for a job.
Then tell them what you do, and ask them if they know anyone who needs you. Because people love to help.
4. Don’t expect to be off UI in the very near future.
While this isn’t about UI specifically, I do think that it’s important to keep yourself in a positive frame of mind.
When you lose your job, it’s easy to think that in two weeks, or three, or four, you’ll be back to work and things will be status quo.
When I lost my job, I stumbled across a comforting video that told me that at that time, the average span people were unemployed was about 19 weeks.
Granted, I didn’t want to spend 19 weeks without a job, but if that was the average, well, that was the average, and why fight it?
I hit 19 weeks, and then I started to panic. But then I looked around at all the other people I’d run into in my networking meetings. Most or all of them had been let go the same week I had, and here we all were, still looking for work.
I felt the same way after a year.
I felt the same way after two years.
Then things started to change. More of the people in my networking groups started getting jobs. Soon there were fewer and fewer faces I knew.
And then one day shortly thereafter, I had a job.
The economy is in flux. Look around. If you’re seeing that your friends are still out there hunting for work, then take some comfort in that. If you see that all your friends are getting work, then take comfort in knowing that you probably will as well.
And if everyone you know is getting hired but you, start thinking about changing your strategies a bit. But remember – it happens when it happens.
And you’ll be okay.
Monday, November 7, 2011
How to Find a Job: Introduction
(This is part of an ongoing series on how to find a job. If you have a question or comment or something I think I should add, please hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, or leave a comment here (Links are to your right). I’ll be releasing the revised, expanded chapters as an ebook!)
When I became a part of the work force of the United States of America, it was 1991, and I was in high school. Over the course of my high school career, I worked as a dishwasher, a sandwich maker, and a delivery driver.
In college, I toiled at a computer help desk for my work-study job (mostly saving lost papers from damaged disks), and during the summers I was everything from a furniture assembler to a blackjack dealer. (Ah, temp work!)
Then in 1998, I graduated from college, and it was time to go from having a job to having a career.
It was a great time to enter the work force. At one point a friend informed me that Madison, Wisconsin was experiencing negative unemployment – there were more jobs than workers to fill them.
I got a job at a medium-sized company, and worked there for almost ten years. During that time, the economy started to crumble, and I went from engaged to married to married with a child.
When an opportunity arose to take a new position at another company that offered me more money and a shorter commute, I took it.
Then the bottom fell out of the economy, and I fell with it. I was Let Go.
(It’s funny, really. Two words, five letters, and yet they completely upend your life.)
I spent the next two years either unemployed or underemployed. And while that was distressing to me, what bothered me even more was watching good friends of mine also losing jobs as the economy continued to worsen.
As they got their world flipped upside-down, I started reaching out to them. I’d send them encouraging emails. I’d tell them what web sites to use to hunt for work. When they wanted to see what a resume looked like, I’d send them a copy of mine, as it had been vetted by a half-dozen experts and friends, and was getting me interviews.
And wonder of wonders, my friends got jobs. While, I should note, I remained unemployed. (I later realized there was a reason for that, which I’ll talk about later.)
Still, I got a lot of nice thank-yous from friends and family. One good friend referred to me as the Obi Wan Kenobi of the unemployed. I was the master, showing all the Jedi-in-training how to not just find a job, but handle the stresses of not having a job.
The thing is, I didn’t spend those two years doing nothing. I didn’t sit around and wait for a job to come to me. I went out looking for work, and took on part-time and freelance jobs in an effort to keep myself busy and explore new avenues of my abilities.
I also started putting my novels, which I had been unable to get an agent to look at, up on the Kindle, nook and on Smashwords. I started getting great reviews. And I started a new blog, Everybody Thinks They Can Write.
When I finally got a full-time job more than two years later, I immediately wrote an essay about how I found work. I originally wrote it as a letter to a really wonderful woman who runs a great networking group in my area.
Then I put a revised version of it up on my blog… and it kind of took off. I got emails about it. I got Facebook questions about it. And I got Tweets about it. A LOT of tweets about it, both people who sent it on to friends, and folks who worked in HR and loved my thoughts and attitude, and some folks who were looking for work and got the encouragement at the exact moment they needed it.
The thing of it is, I knew exactly how they felt. During the course of my unemployment, I had low periods. I suspect everyone does. When you lose your job, your first thought is not, “Oh good, I know how to handle this,” but, “What am I going to do?”
Even going to your local library often adds to the confusion, instead of taking away from it. There are probably thousands of books, dozens of networking opportunities, and a handful of headhunters and job gurus available, and trying to figure out what is going to work for you and what you have to spend on it can often make things worse instead of better.
Plus, right now, you’re trying to hold onto every single dollar you have, because you don’t know when you’ll be making more of them.
And that’s why wrote this book.
When I lost my job, I hit the library. I went to networking meetings. And my company generously offered me a free program that was designed to train me in the fine art of finding a job. I experienced the confusion of not really knowing what to do.
In the middle of all of it, my favorite networking lady (the one I sent the email in the next chapter) said this: “If there was a book that told you how to get a job, and it always worked, someone would have already written it, and everyone would have read it.”
That’s why I wrote this.
I wanted to put all the information I got into one book, and sell it, cheap. This book will not tell you, step-by-step, how to get a job.
What it does is it distills all the things I learned over the course of two years into short, easy-to-digest chapters. I wanted to write a book that was simple, fun to read, and would offer up hope and an idea of how to move forward from here.
I wanted to write a book for all my friends who had lost a job, or who will lose their job, that gives the exact same advice I’d give them if we got together over dinner.
I hope this book helps you find work. I hope it fills your head with ideas you haven’t thought of.
And I hope that it gives YOU some hope, when you need it the most.
Happy job hunting.
And by the way, if you read this and have questions, feel free to drop me a line on Twitter, Like me on Facebook, or visit my blog and ask questions. At some point, I’d like to revise and expand this book, and I will put your name in the Thank Yous.
When I became a part of the work force of the United States of America, it was 1991, and I was in high school. Over the course of my high school career, I worked as a dishwasher, a sandwich maker, and a delivery driver.
In college, I toiled at a computer help desk for my work-study job (mostly saving lost papers from damaged disks), and during the summers I was everything from a furniture assembler to a blackjack dealer. (Ah, temp work!)
Then in 1998, I graduated from college, and it was time to go from having a job to having a career.
It was a great time to enter the work force. At one point a friend informed me that Madison, Wisconsin was experiencing negative unemployment – there were more jobs than workers to fill them.
I got a job at a medium-sized company, and worked there for almost ten years. During that time, the economy started to crumble, and I went from engaged to married to married with a child.
When an opportunity arose to take a new position at another company that offered me more money and a shorter commute, I took it.
Then the bottom fell out of the economy, and I fell with it. I was Let Go.
(It’s funny, really. Two words, five letters, and yet they completely upend your life.)
I spent the next two years either unemployed or underemployed. And while that was distressing to me, what bothered me even more was watching good friends of mine also losing jobs as the economy continued to worsen.
As they got their world flipped upside-down, I started reaching out to them. I’d send them encouraging emails. I’d tell them what web sites to use to hunt for work. When they wanted to see what a resume looked like, I’d send them a copy of mine, as it had been vetted by a half-dozen experts and friends, and was getting me interviews.
And wonder of wonders, my friends got jobs. While, I should note, I remained unemployed. (I later realized there was a reason for that, which I’ll talk about later.)
Still, I got a lot of nice thank-yous from friends and family. One good friend referred to me as the Obi Wan Kenobi of the unemployed. I was the master, showing all the Jedi-in-training how to not just find a job, but handle the stresses of not having a job.
The thing is, I didn’t spend those two years doing nothing. I didn’t sit around and wait for a job to come to me. I went out looking for work, and took on part-time and freelance jobs in an effort to keep myself busy and explore new avenues of my abilities.
I also started putting my novels, which I had been unable to get an agent to look at, up on the Kindle, nook and on Smashwords. I started getting great reviews. And I started a new blog, Everybody Thinks They Can Write.
When I finally got a full-time job more than two years later, I immediately wrote an essay about how I found work. I originally wrote it as a letter to a really wonderful woman who runs a great networking group in my area.
Then I put a revised version of it up on my blog… and it kind of took off. I got emails about it. I got Facebook questions about it. And I got Tweets about it. A LOT of tweets about it, both people who sent it on to friends, and folks who worked in HR and loved my thoughts and attitude, and some folks who were looking for work and got the encouragement at the exact moment they needed it.
The thing of it is, I knew exactly how they felt. During the course of my unemployment, I had low periods. I suspect everyone does. When you lose your job, your first thought is not, “Oh good, I know how to handle this,” but, “What am I going to do?”
Even going to your local library often adds to the confusion, instead of taking away from it. There are probably thousands of books, dozens of networking opportunities, and a handful of headhunters and job gurus available, and trying to figure out what is going to work for you and what you have to spend on it can often make things worse instead of better.
Plus, right now, you’re trying to hold onto every single dollar you have, because you don’t know when you’ll be making more of them.
And that’s why wrote this book.
When I lost my job, I hit the library. I went to networking meetings. And my company generously offered me a free program that was designed to train me in the fine art of finding a job. I experienced the confusion of not really knowing what to do.
In the middle of all of it, my favorite networking lady (the one I sent the email in the next chapter) said this: “If there was a book that told you how to get a job, and it always worked, someone would have already written it, and everyone would have read it.”
That’s why I wrote this.
I wanted to put all the information I got into one book, and sell it, cheap. This book will not tell you, step-by-step, how to get a job.
What it does is it distills all the things I learned over the course of two years into short, easy-to-digest chapters. I wanted to write a book that was simple, fun to read, and would offer up hope and an idea of how to move forward from here.
I wanted to write a book for all my friends who had lost a job, or who will lose their job, that gives the exact same advice I’d give them if we got together over dinner.
I hope this book helps you find work. I hope it fills your head with ideas you haven’t thought of.
And I hope that it gives YOU some hope, when you need it the most.
Happy job hunting.
And by the way, if you read this and have questions, feel free to drop me a line on Twitter, Like me on Facebook, or visit my blog and ask questions. At some point, I’d like to revise and expand this book, and I will put your name in the Thank Yous.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)