My job search process

It's been over 3 weeks since I got news of our lay off and each day has been very different from the last. If I were to break down the weeks, I'd say that the first week was filled with straight-up grieving--a real demonstration of how mental state (reminder of the loss of identity for past 4 years and impact to family and future) translates to the physical (sobbing, inability to act). Again and again, I could explain why being let go is actually a really, really good thing for the company and me, but on the more primal side, it is a loss, plain and simple, like losing someone you love to a prolonged terminal illness, only many times less bad. Not a surprise and perhaps even a relief, but intensely painful nonetheless. Rather than fight the feeling, I went with the flow and kept myself out of public view until my body could catch up with the rational side of things.

That first week was about finding things to distract myself like talking to colleagues, doing small projects around the house, helping throw a birthday party, writing, and exercise so I could make it to bed each night and wake up the next day feeling like a different person.

Others I spoke to were submitting resumes almost immediately after the news. The kinds of sentiments I heard were fraught with anxiety. People had just moved jobs, relocated, needed the money, had much invested in finding jobs at the same level. There is a good deal of fear that comes out at these times and I can descend into worst case scenarios with the best. But for the most part, knowing we had a rainy day fund made things so much better and knowing that I had already been working on the the "next thing" helped too. My resume was pretty polished (could always use fine-tuning for specific jobs, but highlights were captured in the most flattering way I could manage), I had been working with a mentor at another division, and Fat Tony and I had been thinking about needing to get another income stream into the house. This turn of events was exactly what I needed to move on.

What surprised me was how methodical I got, not in a documenting and cataloging kind of way, but in a deliberate, "this is my goal this week, this is my goal next, and so on" way. First week was all about grieving. Second week was about reflection: who am I, what do I want? what do I need? Third week was about gathering information. Fourth week for applying for the first set. Then it will be about reiterating reflection, information gathering, and application.

The moment I started my job search was not when I started looking at ads, but when I started imagining myself doing a job, pretending I was in that role and imagining the kinds of customers or markets I would be working in. The jobs certainly weren't ones that cleanly fit my background and experience. They were simply jobs that just sound kind of interesting within sales and marketing. From there I started digging into the companies. I reached out to certain people in my network (LinkedIn is so great), telling them where things are and asking people with connections to those companies to talk to me about what they know. People can be incredibly helpful as most understand they might be in the same boat sooner or later. I made a list and starting keeping tabs on progress for each one.


I will take a moment to say that I can't stress how important it is to have informational interviewing skills here. Ideally, you should always be looking for the opportunity for informational interviews. It builds your network, builds your base of knowledge, builds your interviewing skills, makes you bolder. To prosper in the corporate world, I believe it is absolutely essential. But again and again, I get the sentiment that networking is difficult, not something people want to do, they find reasons not to send a simple email suggesting some sort of common activity like a call, a customer visit, an informational interview. This is a great shame because you are willingly keeping yourself in the dark. I can proselytize here because I avoided networking for most of my life too. I get why you might not want to reach out, but the way I've made it work for me has been to think that it is not about me being schmoozy and overly ambitious, but having honest desire to learn. And as far as fearing rejection, we should all learn to deal with rejection and failure as soon as possible. It wasn't until I was well into my thirties that I understood that rejection and failure are more informative than success in a lot of ways. I've made many attempts to reach out with a good number of failures, where people blow you off, make you feel small, or where nothing comes of your meeting. That's OK That's just life. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't.

All this said, I still have my hang-ups. I am certainly not comfortable with "networking events". The one time I attended one in the Bay Area, I came away thinking I was an utter moron and destined for failure. That was really not the right venue for me at the time and the excuse I like to use now for avoiding these events is that I live too far away from where they happen to attend and be a responsible family member. So my goal here is to find other ways to meet people. Perhaps in the blogosphere, perhaps at community events, as long as it doesn't feel like a corporate meat market, I'm good.

OK, so where was I? Oh yes, this week is about applying. Wish me luck.