We Did It!

First off, I don't plan on giving up on this blog just because I have a job now.  I just plan on writing a more "professional" tips type blog to help and inspire others to keep searching.

I start my new job on September 3 and I have to say it wasn't without a few "outside the box" tweaks on the supposed professional advice that everyone seems to be giving these days.  Over the past 9 months I've realized that advice about the "right way" to find a job is about a dime a dozen.  Everyone thinks they have THE WAY to do it.  There are step by step guides, recruiters who get mad at you when you don't follow "their rules," companies that want you to shell out anywhere from $50 - 2,000 for resume writing services and "job search coaching."

I'm going to spend the rest of this blog giving pointers on which of the ideas are good & which ones you should throw out with last week's pizza box.  It's truly up to you to feel out the companies that you're interviewing with to figure out how to handle both the interview and the follow up.  I can tell you that the experience that got me this new job did not fall into any of the typical categories, I just had to read the atmosphere at the office and went with my gut.

I want to thank all of you for your support over the past few months and I look forward to sharing this latest adventure with you.

Finding My Center

While waiting to hear back from my "final interview" today I decided to spend some time on Pinterest (follow me there if you'd like), exercise, meditate/pray, & spend some time to "find my center."

I have to say that this day has kinda sucked because I was told that I would hear back from HR after my interview before the end of the day... not sure if they just got busy and couldn't get back to me OR they decided that I must be insane and offered the job to someone else (they DID say "You're not as technically savvy [ouch] as some of the others applying for the position but your personality won us over, we're taking a gamble on you.  We figure you'll jump right in & self teach and be ready to run within the month."  I didn't go in there looking any more crazy than I usually do today, so I'm hoping that I still had the personality on my side since they didn't think I was technically savvy enough... (ouch again).

Add to the fact that I haven't heard anything from them yet that DH finally went to the ER today for his mix of headaches, nausea, fatigue & just general crappiness... and since it has been 3 weeks since this headache hit him, I was honestly surprised he didn't end up with a small child growing in his brain or something.  Seems his brain is ok (or, as ok as it has ever been) and he just has been taking in too much salt, his hiatal hernia has been acting up & all this has triggered a 3 week migraine (NO thank you, I'll just sit here & pinterest/center myself).

So, just to share, here are some of the wonderful ways I spent centering myself today:

 

Thinking about this!

 

Wanting one of these!

 

Reflecting on this!

BUT

I still felt like this!

So, I decided...

I'm going to make one of these...

Eat the whole thing myself...

 

Then...

 Pass out, over stuffed but with a smile on my face!

 

So, here's to tomorrow being the day I get the good news... if not, here's to "centering myself" with a polka-dot cake!

Gratitude Without Attitude

I know it has been a while since my last post, it's not because I haven't had anything to write... It's mostly been because this whole job search thing has me so depressed that I find it hard to sit on the computer any longer than it takes me to search for jobs, post for those positions, answer emails associated with said jobs, and write then re-write and then re-write my resume again.  I don't get why there have to be SO many versions of the same job descriptions and bullet points, I've tried to explain till I'm blue in the face what it is that I do & have done, but no one seems to get it or care.

Anyway, my job search hasn't taken a back seat by any stretch of the imagination but I have spent more time and energy on building a strong spiritual foundation here at home and trying to worry less about when said job will come.  Our latest sermon series at our church has been about worry & how it does nothing to resolve the problem, etc.  I've noticed that I'm just a slight control freak when it comes to what I believe is the right job for me vs. what plans God has planned for me.

I've been to several in person (usually 2nd or 3rd) interviews with just a touch of hope attached to each of them.  My head tells me that these jobs are PERFECT for me but there's always something in my gut telling me that they're not right.  That gut feeling never kept me from doing exactly what my mother told me never to do (Putting all my eggs in one basket, et. al.) and leading me to sink just a little deeper into this supposed hopelessness.  I get my hopes all up and then I hear nothing for a few weeks, I do what I've been advised to do by calling or emailing to follow up & am informed by Mr or Ms HR Mgr that they have decided to go with another candidate or continue searching as they have not yet found what they are looking for.

So, what I decided to do a little while back was to focus on what I CAN do/control and take care of those things - updating my resume, writing kick butt cover letters, applying to jobs I would actually ENJOY doing instead of every job that pops up that I completely qualify for (over the first 6 months of unemployment I LITERALLY applied for over 300 jobs, in the past 2 months I have only applied to truly focused positions & am down to about 5 a week.)  As stated in Matthew 6:26 "Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value then they?"  God has my back, as long as I am doing all that I am able, the rest is surrendered to Him.  It will all work in according to His plan anyway, so why do I insist on keeping my grubby little human hands in the middle of it?  I don't have a real answer for that right now, but I do know that I am doing my best to steer clear of being a "Hover Christian" because God doesn't need me to watch over Him... He is watching over me.

For that I am truly grateful & I'm going to do my best to not let my control freak attitude cause me to go walking off on someone else's path when mine would be SO much easier to walk.

University Blues

Yesterday I had an interview with a private university here in the ATL area. I believe it went well but one can never really tell.  They laughed at my jokes, I seemed to fit right in, I even followed up with what I would consider a really amazing Thank You email  - yet I still have no idea how it went.

I'm reminded of how I felt each time I went to speak with my adviser on the campus of my beloved Capstone. Even when I knew I had everything in the bag, when my semester had gone so well that I may not even have to show up for finals, I was still nervous as a whore in church whenever I would have to meet with her.  I always had this sense of impending doom.

I know for a fact that this particular job would be fulfilling, I would NEVER be bored, I would actually enjoy going to it every day, and my boss wouldn't be some crazy Jekyll & Hyde character like I have faced in similar situations before.  Add to it that since it is a university and they just don't pay as well as the corporate world BUT I would be given the opportunity to go through the business school's MBA program as a part of my compensation - I just don't see how any one else could be more perfect for the position.

It was probably the best interview I've had in the 6 months I've been unemployed.  I know that I've only got three weeks left of unemployment benefits.  They're hoping to make a decision by the 4th of July.  Forgive me if I'm not all that cheery & witty this go round, I'm just starting to get a bit disheartened by this whole job search thing & am starting to question my whole life direction.

Is it worth it to "get in good" with recruiters?

Everywhere you look today, if you're in the job market, you're bombarded by recruiters.  There are the good ones that work directly for employers (HR Recruiting teams for companies like Home Depot & Sage Software are the norm) and then there are the ones that aren't so good.  Those guys get paid at different levels if they send a qualified resume to an employer, set up a phone interview, if they get you to an in person interview & at a totally different pay level if you "convert" into an employee.

So, let's say you're talking to a recruiter almost daily, you have quite a rapport built with them, they're coaching you non-stop & then *poof* they stop calling.  That means the employer is no longer interested in you & because of that the recruiter no longer sees any value in dealing with you anymore.  I personally find this rude and totally unprofessional.  There's no wonder that recruiters get such a bad name.  If you don't "convert" into an employee there's no point in them trying to "groom" you for the perfect job they found for you, you no longer have any worth to them & they're out looking for someone else to fill that perfect position so they can get paid.  I believe that if they really wanted to help you find a job they would spend some time after they hear back from the potential employer giving you feedback about what may have been shortfalls in your interview or resume critiques, but nothing like this has happened for me in the 6 months I have been on the search.

The dedicated company recruiters (HR team members at various companies like Home Depot, et al) will not do any sort of "coaching" regarding the job for which you will be interviewing.  They are just there as a front line filter to be sure you fit the criteria that the hiring manager is looking for in a candidate/employee.  They aren't paid by the amount of resumes that they pass along to hiring managers, they may get bonuses for finding a candidate after they work there for 3 months or so, but their job isn't to get  you into that position like the contract recruiters.

There's all this advice out there about what keywords to use in your resume or on your online profiles on LinkedIn, Monster, The Ladders, Career Builder, Dice.com and the like in order to get yourself recognized by recruiters.  But, I find myself wondering daily if it is even worth it.  They almost always get my hopes up, never return calls or emails, and dump me after what I consider a good call/interview.  It's like dating in college all over again.  One starts to get a complex, and with no real feedback about what you could do to change, one just continues to do what one has always done.

So, I'm wondering, for any of you who have been on the search for new employment lately, have you used an interview "coach" to get you primed or to give you feedback based on how you reported the interviews you've had?  What say you?

Resume Schmesume....

If you're searching for a job in this economy I'm sure your email is bombarded with tons of legit and not quite so legit job search engines.  I swear, I should probably try to get a job being a job search engine operator.  It seems like every Tom, Dick & Harry has a new one out there these days.  If you sign up for one they tend to pimp out your email address to others & before you know it you're getting tons of MLM, Get Rich Quick schemes & make millions by reading emails with no experience in anything... I don't know what kind of socially inept email list I managed to get myself on, but I'm not amused.

But I'm going to get off my soap box about scam emails and "find the right job for you while you wear pajamas & eat ice cream" job offers.  I'm going to talk about the perfect resume...

What?  The perfect resume?  Does that even exist?  It seems everyone wants to tell me something different every day.  It should all fit on one page, use bullet points, don't use bullet points, tell about your achievements at previous positions, tell about your actual duties, don't tell about your duties... so on and so forth.  NOW we come to the biggie, these so-called professional resume writers.  Sign up on any of the big 3 job search sites (TheLadders.com, Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com) and when you upload your resume they'll automatically "critique" that resume and then give you feedback on how that resume could better serve you if you paid them to rewrite it for you.

These services range anywhere from $99 to almost $400.  I opted for the latter because I had been unemployed for 3 months at the point I got my tax return & decided that I haven't been getting any calls from my resume submissions... what would it hurt?  Well, they did a pretty good job piecing together a new resume for me that got the attention of recruiters & HR managers. BUT they only actually spoke with me once & didn't really work with me regarding my short term contract position that I held last year. 

Plus, get this... for $395 the girl that rewrote my resume couldn't even cut & paste my contact information.  When I received the email with the resume attached I only looked at the bullet points & condensed self promotion for each position.  I made the ASSUMPTION that the resume writer would have at least gotten my contact information correct since it was on the original resume.  Nope, wrong!!  In fact, I had been using the resume with the wrong email address on it for months.  A prospective employer was the one that pointed out that an email they were sending to confirm an in person interview had bounced, my email had been incorrect...

So, I did what every red-blooded American would do.  I demanded a refund, of the full amount, based solely on a typo that showed on my resume twice (apparently she couldn't copy/paste from MY resume but she was capable of copy/pasting from her own error).  I truly wasn't expecting one, I was figuring they would hem & haw about it and offer partial refund or extended subscription to their site.  Boy, was I blown away that they offered & actually refunded the money within 2 days of my request. THAT is customer service at its best.

Now, if I could get them to actually find me a job within a decent driving distance... I'd be even happier.

What Not to Do

Hello everyone, welcome to the first blog post of many that will be chronicling my job search journey in a recession economy in the big city.

I'll go through what I've done (take note, I'm still unemployed as of this writing so obviously DON'T do these things), what I'm planning to do & how I spend my time after my daily searches.

Tomorrow I'll start with a post regarding professional resume writers & how you shouldn't trust them explicitly.  But before all the fun starts I want to discuss how my day went today.

My DH and I were on the other side of town picking up his medication from his Dr.'s office when I decided I MUST have a gourmet cupcake.  We drove to the first location McEntyre's Bakery in Smyrna, GA which happens to be closed on Mondays.  This was unfortunate because I was practically licking the window by the time we arrived and would have pressed my nose against the glass to stare at the desserts had it not been quite so warm today.  We then decided that we could do a quick Google Place search and see what else might be nearby.  This led us to CamiCakes in Vinings and after reading about the drool inducing Banana Cream, Black & White, and CinnaSwirl cupcakes I was a woman on a mission.... but...

My wallet wasn't in the car, I had thought I had gotten it on our way over to Smyrna but apparently not.  Therefore, all those yummy cupcakes would have to wait, though after seeing them through the window I was sort of grateful that I hadn't had my money because it seemed they were another example of where the icing to cake ratio was 3:1.

We drove back home, got the wallet and went back out on our cupcake mission.  I wasn't all that excited to get out again, traffic was going to be a nightmare as the rush hour (in Atlanta that runs between 3-7 pm) was about to begin.  But my DH insisted I needed a bit of sparkle in my day.  He stated that I was spending too much time in the house & stressing over this job hunt.  It has gone on now for almost 6 months and I deserved to have a treat today.  So off we went again... and I MUST say I have now found the most perfect cupcakes in all of Atlanta.  Trust me, I've tried them from a combination of specialty cupcake shops, traditional bakeries, and grocery stores (the grocery stores should NOT be trying this market, they have enough trouble with normal cakes as it  is, don't try gourmet flavors, who knows what we'll end up with), probably 20+ locations in the Atlanta area have been hit on my bakery confection adventures.

 I can't stress enough how perfect these cupcakes are.... the icing to cake ratio is 1:2 which means you aren't choked with the sweetness of too much icing (who are they trying to convince with those things?), the cake is perfectly moist & flavored - just like grandma used to make, and the icing flavors aren't over powering or too sweet (even with the perfect icing to cake ratio, chemical-y artificial flavorings & over sweetened icing can totally throw me off the cupcake love fest).

So, I have totally found my new favorite cupcake bakery, Carolyn's Cupcakes of Decatur, GA.  The Carrie Strawberry cupcake reminded me of Nestle Quik strawberry flavored milk, just "fake" enough to remind me of my childhood.  The Nutella cupcake was like pure heaven, my only suggestion would be to add a Nutella filling to the cake itself... but otherwise it was perfection.  And the Cinnamon Swirl cupcake is quite possibly the best dessert (whether it be cake, cupcake, doughnut, or cinnamon roll) that I have ever tasted!

Next time you're in the Emory/Decatur area on LaVista Rd stop in and have one of Carolyn's Cupcakes.  They are perfection in a little paper cup.  They brought a smile to my face today as I was waiting to hear back from one of my potential employers and as my DH stated, sometimes you just need to smile!!