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Online Job Hunting
There was a time when a person who wanted to find work had to
buy newspaper and look through the classified ads section. The
advent of the internet has changed that by creating
opportunities for people to work either in a different state or
in...
The Best Defense - Difficult Interview Questions
In an interview, worrying about your perceived inadequacies, or what can be viewed as negative items on your history of employment, will get you nowhere. In fact, having a negative focus on things often comes through in the way you answer....
The Top 10 Reasons Your Staff Wants to Quit
From an employee’s perspective, management often conducts itself in ways that make no sense. When the economy is slow, jobs are few and far in between or people are fearful, staff will tolerate management behaviors and policies that are nonsensical...
Touching On Telecommuting
I have exciting news if you want to stay home with your precious
babies, but still need a weekly paycheck. If you think you can't
do both, I'm here to tell you that you can! The official word
for what I'm talking about it "Telecommuting", but...
Zudora.com Launches IT Job Search Engine Indexing Over 20,000 New IT Jobs Per Day
Zudora allows job seekers to search IT jobs across the web, with unprecedented levels of ease, accuracy and relevancy (PRWEB) March 9, 2005 -- New IT job search allows job seekers to search all major IT related job web sites in the USA with one...
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Unemployment Blues: Life Changing Events
If we are unlucky enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong
time, we experience a personal tsunami - a misfortune of
devastating proportions that sweeps away our routine lifestyle
and forever changes the world we know.
Yet despite the frequency of such events - the tidal waves of
Asia, the hurricanes of the Gulf Coast, the loss of life in the
Middle East, the wildfires and mudslides of California - most of
us are only indirectly affected. We bleed for those who have
lost everything, give what we can out of our pocketbooks and our
hearts, but our world is essentially unchanged and we move along
in our personal life journey relatively unscathed.
The vast majority of us will never undergo the wrenching jolt of
a major disaster, natural or man-made. The sheer size of the
human race insulates millions of us from the floods, the bombs,
and the mayhem. For us, the life-changing events we experience
never hit the front page. Personal, quiet disasters - divorce,
death, bankruptcy, or unemployment - change our lives forever
but remain unnoticed by all but our closest friends and family.
We pick up the pieces and try to get it together without
government or private succor and support.
It is the isolation of personal loss that is so emotional
destructive. We struggle alone to try to make sense of what went
wrong and how we can recover our equilibrium.
Others are sympathetic and wish us well but there is an abyss
between those who have a job and those who cannot find one. The
longer we are out of work, the more alienated we become. Even
those who love us start to worry that there's something wrong
with us. They start to suspect that we're not as motivated as we
say we are. Everyone has plenty of glib advice: "Have you tried
. . . ?" Of course we have -many times and always without
success. We become more disheartened as we analyze everything
we've done and realize we have tried every trick in the book and
still cannot find anything suitable.
Some of us get stuck in depression, anger, or paralyzing
anxiety. Our energy drains away and even the smallest action
becomes more and more difficult. As frustration and financial
pressures mount, we wallow in the unfairness of it all and
reminisce about how perfect everything was when we had a job and
a future and hope, wondering why all this had to happen.
As with hurricanes and tsunamis and terrorism, the victims are
not responsible for the catastrophe they face. Life-changing
events do just that - change our lives, sometimes forever.
Change can be negative, fear-provoking, and desperately
uncomfortable. But, if we look closer,
we'll see it also has a
positive face. Without change, our modern world wouldn't exist.
We would be living the way our ancestors did. And while olden
times may sound attractive in their pristine simplicity, such
times were filled with disease, inequality and a raw brutality
we could not stomach today. We need to embrace change and,
despite the turmoil it brings, look for the silver lining hidden
within the storm clouds.
Although you now remember your job with nostalgic affection,
there were undoubtedly times that you wished you could quit.
Even if you loved what you were doing, any single job position
only taps into a small part of your potential. Being forced to
make a change allows you to develop other domains of your
personal character.
Try to analyze your interests and preferences and identify
things you would like to do which have not been utilized by your
prior jobs. Can you think of an industry or a particular job
title that might allow you to move in a new direction? Think
about, and complete some preliminary research on, jobs in new
industries that you might be able to do. You may not have
directly related experience but there are common themes that
permeate every kind of work: the ability to communicate, to work
as part of a team, to learn rapidly, to be aware of details, to
organize and prioritize. If you pick an area of genuine personal
interest, you enthusiasm will clearly and naturally emerge and
that is something all employers seek.
The job hunting you have been doing may, without your realizing
it, have become routine and uninspired. The experience of
failure and the frustration of never receiving positive feedback
may have led to your merely "going through the motions," already
convinced, in your own mind, of the futility of your efforts.
Taking a new direction can open up your job search tunnel.
Instead of beating your head against the wall and revisiting
every technique and lead you've tried before, moving into a
different environment may give you a new sense of purpose and
appreciation of your own potential. That is when the positive
effects of forced change can become a new source of pleasure and
satisfaction.
About the author:
Virginia Bola operated a rehabilitation company for 20 years,
developing innovative job search techniques for disabled
workers, while serving as a Vocational Expert in Administrative,
Civil and Workers' Compensation Courts. Author of an interactive
and supportive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment
Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker's Edge, she can
be reached at http://www.unemploymentblues.com
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