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It has been great. I haven’t even thought about searching for a job. I haven’t touched my resume. The break has been good.
The state of Washington was a bit late getting into this recession and is late coming out of it as well. The state budgets are constrained beyond belief and the cuts they are looking at are truly draconian. With this backdrop, I’m thinking that the possibility of having my current 6 month UW position morph into a full time permanent position is pretty slim. I’m not burning any bridges though, the work is there, and my skill set is very helpful for where they are as an organization. A permanent position is like a carrot dangling just out of reach. I will be working hard to get to the carrot and at the same time I will need to be looking for work.
Time passes by so quickly, I have already been in the position for 5 weeks. I want to go at least another 3 weeks before I get serious about job hunting again. This will begin with adding information about my current position to my resume and getting that all ready to go.
Even though I haven’t be looking for work, this doesn’t mean I’m not actively working to get my self in a better position for job hunting. This is the time for active networking, networking that is a little easier for me, because I’m not so desperate for a job right now. Right now it a lot more about connecting, catching up, and having discussions, all of which I love to do.
Some of the best advice I got about networking was to plan to make so many connections per week. Plan to reach out and either make a new connection or exercise an existing connection.
If you think of your network as a neural network, you can also think of the adage of lose it or lose. In the brain, this means that if don’t use a neural connection, your brain will clip the connection in the name of conservation. This applies to the relationships that you have. If you don’t exercise the connections to the people in your network every so often then, when you need them, they won’t be there.
Most of the networking connections I’m talking about are not your closest of friends. Rather these are connections that you had friendly conversation about what was happening in their lives, how many kids they have, and what they are working on. These are connections with people that you may have worked closely with in the past, but now only see once every blue moon. Or they may be people that you have conversed with only online, that you befriended in a group discussion setting, and have conversations about this and that, but if they sat next to you in a restaurant you wouldn’t know them from Adam.
The limiting factor, of course, is that there is only so much time in the day. It is hard if not impossible to connect with everyone. And there are many different degrees of connections.
Finding good articles or a video to share is a way to connect to many people all at once. I feel that it is important to be very self critical about what you share, and really look to only share quality material. Material that is not bigoted, extreme, or offensive. For myself, if only takes a few times of someone sharing what I think of as offensive material before I just ignore all subsequent material, or if really egregious, I delete them from my network.
Humor can be a tough one to share. There isn’t very much I would share widely. Normally, I will only share with a very select group, because it is so easy for humor to be taken in ways not envisioned or intended.
Sharing material that wouldn’t be widely enjoyed with a smaller select group is a little deeper connection. Sharing Process Improvement or Systems Thinking material only with the people in my network that I know are interested in this subject is an example of this. Another great way of doing this is by adding to group discussions on LinkedIn or Ning sites.
One of the areas that I have been trying to increase is in sending email notes directly to people and seeing how they are doing. More or less just saying hi and checking in on them. This will generally end up in one or two more email exchanges of learning what people are up and sharing what I am doing.
As we all know, having a face-to-face talk is vastly superior to electronically connecting. Getting together with someone for coffee or lunch is a fantastic way to connect. Other ways to do this is by getting involved in organizations. I have a couple organizations that I am continuing my involvement with, though making the meetings is harder now that I’m working.
So, I’m not looking for work, but I am trying to increase my networking presence now so that when I re-enter the job market, my network is in better shape than when I left. That I will be able to call upon and receive support from my network.
Where I need to focus is in cutting out the time to do this everyday. Not just wasting long hours on Facebook, but rather spending concerted effort to strengthen the neural network pathways.
In general terms how are you planning with your current income to budget for the possible months ahead? Were there particular tax ramifications from receiving the layoff package as well as unemployment last year? Would you have done anything differently with your budget if you had known how long the period of unemployment would last? Are you preparing and budgeting for what may lie ahead? In general terms, what were the financial takeaways and lessons learned from the time of unemployment and now re-employment? This is the one area of your experience that you haven't addressed with us but which could be really helpful.
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