There's a new Dirty Word in my vocabulary this week: Unemployed. In cruising through my mental thesaurus, this word is synonymous with: eager, involved, driven, motivated, downtrodden, dejected, and frustrated. Sadly, neither the negative nor the affirmative connotations are deemed correct for use in one's resume, LinkedIn profile, or any other social networking/ career building tool.
But they're real words connected to the Dirty Word. I find, as I go through my personal inventories and professional goals, that my emotions about job searching do in fact range from eager and driven to dejected and downtrodden. How can they not? We're at an 8% unemployment rate in the country which means there are a Whole Lot of People sailing along on this discovery cruise with me.
On the days when I read a job description that sounds as though the writer had opened my professional soul and poured it onto a keyboard, I am elated and driven to reach out and dazzle with my savvy. I research the company a bit, get a handle on who they are, why they are, what they do and how they do it. Then I dust off the old Cover Letter in my documents folder and try to bedazzle it with the appropriate key words and phrases that convey my abilities without making me sound like am insufferable braggart. I pop into my resume and shuffle around past job responsibilities so that the most pertinent skills are at the top of the list. I submit the online application, and then I wait.
Waiting sucks. It's the pits when you're in line for a killer roller coaster on a muggy summer day, and it's the pits when you're looking for a job. How often do I quell the desire to drive to the office in question and perform amazing feats of persuasion and self-salesmanship? Oh, often. Too often probably. What stops me from doing just that? Well, KC is a big town, but it can also be quite small socially and, let's face it, "devoted stalker" is simply not the branding one should go for during a job search. Or, really, any time.
Instead, while I wait I spend time on LinkedIn. I reach out to new connections who are either in the field I'm trying to enter or who have experience or connections of some kind that I want to explore. I've found that reaching out to new connections and letting them know I'm looking for a specific type of job results in my gaining new insights and helpful tips from people I wouldn't otherwise encounter on a daily basis. Research has become another new hobby. It has, happily, replaced my Facebook trolling. Now I read articles about recruiting. I search out information on how to be successful in a job interview as well as how to conduct a successful interview. I find that knowing how to "put my best foot forward" is only going to help me if I know which foot the interviewer is really looking at.
I also try to avoid becoming stale. I believe that eventually we all hit ruts. Some of us get sucked into 6-seasons of Nip/Tuck. Some of us make the same meals for our families over and over and over again. And some of us manage to lose sight of how our world is evolving. This is especially pertinent to job seekers. I've found myself asking my husband advice on items in my resume, but he hasn't had to look for a job in over 10 years. To him, LinkedIn is just Facebook without the Happy Hour photos. I am trying to stay on top of the technology that is required in my job search as well as in the industry I'm trying to enter. I want to read what The Experts are saying, but I also want to read what Yolanda Pascagoulis from Ypsilanti, MI has to say about her experience in the job seeking world. (Yolanda is not a real person, as far as I know. If she is, my apologies for using her name without express written permission)
As far as I'm concerned, everyone has something to say about this experience and everyone has the ability to provide me with an insight I'd never even considered. So, as I continue with my job search, I promise to try to avoid allowing the negatives into my mindset. I say "try" because I think that occasional negative thoughts make the positive ones feel even better.
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