Near the end. (Layoff) Part II

Recently, I interviewed for the permanent position that I have been working at for the last 9 months in a temporary capacity. Thought this would be a good time to do an overview of the journey that I have been through to this time.  This was written before I found out that I was selected for the position.  This is part 2 of a three part post. 

Write your resume for three audiences. First audience is the computer. Match the words in the Job requisition to the words in your resume. The more matches the higher your score only the top ones make it past the computer screening. Second audience is an HR person. Generally, this person is not qualified to judge the technical merits of your submission, but understands the business, has a pretty good bullshit monitor for people trying to game the system, (like putting the entire job requisition in invisible type to get by the computer screen). The HR representative does not read your whole resume. They read less than 7 seconds. A good test…

Near the end (Layoff). Part I

  Yesterday, I interviewed for the permanent position that I have been working at for the last 9 months in a temporary capacity. Thought this would be a good time to do an overview of the journey that I have been through to this time.

I may be near the end of this part of the journey; a journey that started almost 2 years ago, when after 23 years of very dedicated service, I received the 60-day Warn notice from Boeing. I had no pre-warning that I understood. It was a shock to my system to say the least.

In ways, I was a by-product of the Great Recession, the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, this one brought on my greed in banking and finance communities just like that one.

Networking VII -Gone but not forgotten.

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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.

Day 285- Transition–Not Over but on Pause

The last few weeks have been flurry of activity in the job search.  I have mentioned before that it seemed like the job market changed dramatically awhile back.  It seems there has been more jobs advertised, leading to more applications , leading to more phone and personal interviews.  At the same time I have been increasing the amount of networking that I have been doing which also has caused an increase in activity.

Others have commented that they have experienced this same shift in their search, so it isn’t just constrained to this region or only to the types of jobs I’m looking for. There is no way of telling if this is just a blimp of employers trying to jump into activity at the beginning of the year and will die down here shortly. Or if this is a fundamental change in the job market, indicating that this long recession is finally starting to recover in ways that real people can feel.  

This activity has also led to a job for me.  Not the permanent position that I have been looking for, but there is some slight possibility that I will be able to turn this into a longer term position.  The job is temporary assignment for 6 months at UW, and then depending on how I perform and how the UW budget comes out for next year come out, which right now is not looking particularly rosy will combine to determine if more work will be involved.

Day 276–Transition—Uptick

Maybe it is just wishful thinking, but it seems that starting last Thursday there was a noticeable uptick in job activity in the areas  I search.  The number of job requisitions I go through each day has increased and the number of jobs that see that turn out to be of interest for applying has seemed to go up.

At the same time, my personal job hunting activity has gone up.  This week I have four interviews and I have 4 possibilities for positions in the works.  Three are shorter term contracts that could lead to longer term employment and one is a full time position.  This is the most activity that I have seen since I was laid off.

Each of these four has come about in a different way.  One was from an interview from December.  I wasn’t chosen, but my resume was passed on to someone else.  One came from a recruiter seeing my LinkedIn profile and then contacting me directly.  One is from some personal networking I had done with friend.  And the last is from a  job requisition that I put in near the end of the year.

The timing for hiring at Boeing usually comes after budgets are finalized and released.  This seems to happen towards the mid or end of February.  The Pace of Boeing jobs has remain constant since moving lower for the holidays around the end of November.  I’m wondering if other big companies have this same sort of beginning of the year delays.  If they do, then the next few weeks could see even more improvement in the jobs market.

This has combined to improve my outlook on the situation.  It was hard for me to remain upbeat at the end of 2010.  But the sun is out today, and the outlook seems bright.  Bright, not just for finding a job, but for finding a a position where I can bring all of my talents to bear in helping organizations, teams, and individuals become more productive and to expand their boundaries or concepts of themselves.  This is what I love to do and I do this as a organizational change management consultant and by helping in with continuous process improvement.   With this uptick, I’m seeing more of these positions, and with that an uptick in my personal emotional situation is taking place.

I hope the sun keeps shining!

Day 200–Transition–The Saga Continues

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I can’t believe that this is day 200.  This journey continues with little or no end in site.  Today I learned that 13,000 people will lose extended unemployment benefits in just King County later this month.  That is a lot of people being affected and that is just one county in the state (though  most populous).

Over the last week and a half I got my hopes way up high and had them crashed to the ground.  A job I interviewed for, seemed like they were going to extend an offer, but in the end they did not.  I really thought this was going to be the one.  I was a fool. 

Today I had the privilege to  a keynote presenter at a local community college staff workshop.  It was nice to do some work in my field, something I that I really enjoy doing, as opposed to searching and filling out job requisitions.  I did an 1 1/2 hour session called Leading from the inside out.  This was a series of exercises designed to help people find the passions that they can use to drive their personal leadership.

Day 170 – Transition- ProLango Resources

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After two of the three ProLango classes, I was sent out a list of resources that I thought I would share.  I haven’t made it through reading all of these so I have no idea how good they are.  I do know that I have enjoyed and felt enrich by all of the articles of Paul’s that I have read.

Class 1: Career Optimization Seminar:

• How a Black Mark Can Derail a Job Search - The Wall Street Journal
• How to stay off the recruiter "blacklist" - NWjobs (The Seattle Times)
• The rules for job hunting have changed - The News Tribune
• Why is it so hard to find a job today - ProLango Consulting
• They’re just not that into you - ProLango Consulting

Class 2: Resume Search Optimization

• New cyber-rules for resume writing - NWjobs (The Seattle Times)
• Resume Writing Basics - ProLango Consulting

Class 3 :

• Can’t find any resources for this one.

Here is a link to Paul’s other online articles:

• online column with NWjobs (The Seattle Times)

And this is an interview that Paul did for the Seattle Link Up group that organizes networking sessions each month.  The topic of the interview is how to get the most out of these networking events:

• http://bit.ly/tsnetwork

I hope you find these useful.

I haven’t had a quote for a while here’s today’s:

In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

-- Eric Hoffer

Related articles

• Day 168 - Transition - Third ProLango class (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• Day 153 - Good Courses to Take (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)

• Day 157- Transition - Feelings just below the surface (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)

Day 99 Transition – Pins and Needles.

It is another day of studying to prepare for an interview.  Wednesday is interview day.  There isn’t near as much material to review as the last interview, though I there is a particular method that I need to go back and bone up on.  I imagine that I will put about 10 hours into this over the next few days.
Looking for work must be part of God’s plan to build patience in people.  The waiting to hear news about job applications entered or interviews results is the hardest part of job hunting.  It starts with not hearing much of anything.  Job application after job application goes in with little or not response.  Some do send a note:

Thank you for your application, but we have decided to go with someone that is infinitely more qualified, better looking, and is just a all around better specimen of a human being. 

These usually come about two or three weeks after you have lost any knowledge about ever putting in the application.  If I’m lucky, a search of my records provides that link, “Oh yes, I see I did apply for that company. “
The next step, sometimes, is the phone interview.   Apparently, these have no social implications of providing response back to the interviewee.  At least I have never received a note saying:

Thank you for your phone conversation.  We have decide to go with a person with much better tonality.   Also in the future we would suggest going with a mobile carrier with a little better sound quality.

The response from the phone interview would be getting a request for a second interview.  I’m not sure the rational length of time one should hold on to hope of getting a positive response from a phone interview.   My longest is two months, so I have decided to give up hope on all phone interviews that don’t get back to me within 3 months.
Getting a second interview from a first interview is new territory for me and  I’m in the wait mode right now.  Based on my questioning in the interview, a response could have been receive (best case scenario) last Friday.  I’m pretty sure this is one of the special  Buddhist levels of hell—the waiting for a interview response hell realm.   
I use all sorts of methods to cope; or should I say my torture devices all exist in my own mind and include methods such as:

•  Putting it out of mind—just refuse to think about it.  This can only work for so long.
• Praying—trying to illicit outside help or influence using my more Christian beliefs.   This is mixed with guilt of asking for such trivial selfish desires.
• Reviewing the interview—reviewing the interview for the millionth time trying to understand what could have discounted something. 
• Timeline review—my interview happened here, let’s say they are interviewing 5 people, they complete here, and I should get called just about, ah, let’s see…, now.  It is amazing how complicated I can make these timelines.
• I should have…—making up actions that I should have done to be more successful. (I should have bought the $2 Thank You cards and not the ones on sale for $1.57)

Well it is pins and needles for a while. Hopefully, I will hear soon.

"The gem cannot be polished without friction, not a man perfected without trials."
                                              -- Chinese Proverb