Jim

Job Search Ideas

I was talking to a friend that had recently lost his job and I started thinking about my experience trying to find a job and I came up with the email below. I was "underemployed" for about two years while I was doing some contract work. It took time to find something I would enjoy and I went down a lot of blind alleys -- alleys I would love to help you avoid! Below is my best shot at trying to condense everything down to a manageable web page. The bullets are prioritized in the order that I recommend:

Take a look at www.asktheheadhunter.net, read some of his articles and start with Introduction (left side of the site). I think he has the right approach to looking for a job.
Join Linkedin.com – before you go to Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com. LinkedIn is a kind of a facebook for professionals. You can put your full or partial resume out there and have friends or contacts join your network. Once you have built a network, make sure you change your profile every couple of weeks to remind everyone you are around still. Personal networking is the number one way to find a job. Plus, I have had more headhunters cold call me in the last six months due to Linkedin.com than Monster and Careerbuilder combined.
Talk to your friends and former business contacts. Let them know you are looking and figure out a way to make sure they remember you are out there (LinkedIn helps a lot if they are members and active).
Ask those friends and former business contacts to help you expand your network. Ask them to introduce you to new contacts you may be interested in or provide a couple of people they think are interesting.
Focus on working for someone you know if at all possible. It makes the transition much smoother and comfortable. A friend commented, “I have taken jobs in high-risk (high-reward) opportunities where I did not have a personal relationship with the mgt team. I ultimately regretted this later when looking back.”
Create a Problem, Action, Result (PAR) for things you have done in your career. I was told to come up with 3 – 6 items for every year I worked, but that is difficult. This did a couple of things for me: it reminded me about things I have done in my career that were good, it helped shape my resume, and best of all, I had a reference document that I would review before I went on interviews. It was a great way to keep my career highlights fresh in my head for interviews. It also helps with the next bullet...
Make a focused effort around customizing your background and experiences around specific target companies or markets (similar to a personal value prop - -aligning your background with target goals/vision).
Create a 30 second, 60 second and 5 minute "commercial' about your career. This isn’t recorded, it is just something that you will be ready with to explain your career, values, knowledge... to someone you have just met. The thirty second version is the launch pad, 60 seconds is great to have and the 5 minute commercial gets you ready to expand the 30 / 60 second commercials.
Join Monster.com and Careerbuilder -- you have to do this, but it may not help. Create a job search agent on these sites, but notice where it is on this list…
Consider volunteering for a non-profit. It gets you out, working with people and you may meet someone that knows someone that needs something!
Find at least one thing that makes you happy and do it. It could be golf, fishing, art,… but have a way to get away from the job search. This will help you with the next bullet.
A friend of my sent me the quote below on Attitude. Looking back, this was the biggest thing I was lacking when I was looking for a job - a good attitude. It is hard to keep a good attitude, but it matters. Work at it.

Attitude by Charles Swindoll

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes.

PAR Examples

P - IGUG CD - IGUG was looking for a gift to give to users who attended conferences. The Internet would become more mainstream in a couple of years, yet there were many utilities available on the internet that Intergraph Users could not access. Also, Intergraph, Bentley (makers of MicroStation), and the user community had utilities they were willing to share with users, but did not want the cost associated with distributing or supporting these files.

A - Wrote a proposal to the IGUG Board of Directors for them to finance an IGUG Contributed Software Library CD. After the Board accepted the proposal, I met with Intergraph and Bentley representatives to collect their contributions, requested and received contributions from the user community, organized the folder and file structure, wrote the documentation (readme files) for each folder and the whole CD. FTP’ed the contents of the CD to the CD maker.

R - The CD was a huge success for IGUG, with local and international groups requesting copies of the CDs. The user community embraced the CD and attendance was at its peak for the next conference.

P - Mexican Contract - Axiem’s Mexican Division was planning on spending $1.3 M on IT to support a contract renewal that was under negotiation.

A - The COO sent me down to Mexico to look at and approve budget. I asked for the proposed contract, read it, and made the necessary changes to the budget.

R - I cut the IT expense from $1.3 M to $400,000. A majority of the extra costs were due to the Mexican division not understanding the contract. I also warned the division manager that the proposed rate structure could result in "free" engineering hours for the contracting company. This language was modified before we signed.