Job Seeking Advice From a Friend

Ron was in transition for 33 months - partly because he had too narrow a focus on jobs, but also because he had a few diversions along the way.


He summarizes here some lessons he learned:

Maintain a positive attitude. You can't keep yourself motivated when you are always feeling negative. You might think you should avoid being around negative people, but these are people you can play a role in helping.

Continue to be Active. Volunteer with a NFP to reinforce that, whatever your employment position, you still have something of value to offer others.

Expand your Job Search Scope. Be open to contract work or consulting. They're a great way to maintain skills or develop new skills and it helps fill a void on your resume. Along with volunteering, it also gives you something concrete to talk about when an employer asks you what you've been doing since you left your last position.

Technology is Not Just for IT Folks. Social media such as LinkedIn and Facebook are now important parts of your job search toolbox. I undertook to learn more about CRM and Six Sigma and now feel better prepared for this new role.

Develop your Personal Brand. It's tough, but in a competitive job market, you have to be able to articulate what makes you a better candidate than the others. And you need to leave people with some kind of simple metaphor or slogan that helps keep you top of mind. If they can't remember who you are, they probably won't ask you back for the next round of interviews.

Continue to be Active. I hear people who say they're on LinkedIn and it isn't doing anything for them. They're probably not contributing to group discussions or answering questions that allow them to interact and connect with other LinkedIn members. Take a good look at an active LinkedIn member's profile and activity as a model.

Interact with Other Professions. The A-Team I belonged to had senior people from Finance, HR, Corporate Law, Operations, IT and Sales/Marketing. I learned a lot from my fellow members and the discussions about business issues helped give me insights into the challenges facing other professions and were just plain intellectually stimulating. I found this broadened my outlook, allowed me to ask some more challenging questions during interviews and enabled me to present myself as being well-rounded, not just a sales and marketing guy.

Have Something in Reserve. Broaden your interests to develop some activity you can carry with you into retirement. For me, it's my band. We've had an opportunity to develop our skills and become more accomplished as an ensemble, so that's yielded some satisfaction. It's also something we all see as our retirement program. And it's fun.


Thanks so much, Ron, for articulating some of the key solutions to keeping interested and open while job seeking as well as sharing a few tips for keeping sane, too.