Status Report

33 total applications or contacts made

9 either turned me down or I elected not to pursue

24 still active, though some are more active than others

7 interviews

1 offer

1 meeting scheduled (Thursday 8/30)

Fret Factor: Moderate to High

Motivation Factor: Fairly high at the moment, varies daily

Drinking Factor: Pinot Grigio

Game Factor: Wii!

Choices

Since I have been vaguely dissatisfied (will that be on my tombstone? “Here lies Wayne, who was vaguely dissatisfied”) with what I’ve been doing professionally for some time, over the past few years I have considered a number of career changes. I worked part-time for a relative, selling office furniture. I almost got into a position with a software company in Herndon. I went a fair amount down the road toward working with someone I knew in his company, a digital communications startup. As it turned out, both companies folded, so maybe I made the right decisions. I thought about teaching. I took several classes in nonprofit management, and I’m still interested in that field.

There are several other examples of situations I looked at, but the point is, I’m not one of those people who lives their life with a clear idea of what they want to do and why. I like to try different things, and even though I’ve stayed in my current job for 13 years, for much of that time I’ve been poking around, looking for my next situation. None of the possibilities I’ve examined are directly in my current field.

Why this gets interesting (to me, anyway) is because of what happened when I got the word that the Exit door was looming.

I immediately started sending resumes and applications out. Did I send them to new and unusual career choices? No. I’ve sent them for jobs where I thought I could get hired. All the dreaming about new and fun places has gone out the window, because of two reasons, really.

One, the time crunch. It’s one thing to dream about a change when you have a paycheck coming in, and it’s something entirely different when you face the loss of that paycheck in a matter of weeks.

Two, I have two kids who will be in college very soon. Way too soon for comfort. So, any break in the income will affect how much I can put away. I’ve already stopped the automatic withdrawal of a little extra I was putting away for retirement, but kept up the college withdrawals. I have to stop that soon as well.

Now, all this doesn’t mean I’m not still looking for or won’t still apply for something that is out of the ordinary or just looks fun to me. But I do have to be practical and look for jobs that I can get more readily, and that will pay me enough. I was offered one job, teaching computer technology to middle schoolers, which I think would be great fun. But I can’t take that pay cut. Yet. Maybe someday.

I did get a positive communication today, which I won’t write about until I know more.

Fret factor: Rising

Sleep factor: Erratic

Me and Ted Forth

A couple of weeks ago, there was very little activity happening on the job front, and I was getting a bit nervous. I decided to make an appointment to see Bonnie Miller, a career counselor that I had visited about five years ago, when I was thinking of changing careers. I remembered her as very helpful and encouraging then, and I thought she might have some good suggestions to help me pump up my numbers a little. Job searching is a numbers game. I met with her Thursday.

My goals for this meeting were to:
Get some feedback on what I had done so far (the system I had set up for tracking, the web sites I was visiting, etc).
Ask her to take a look at my resume and make suggestions for improvements
Find out her thoughts on how to push my networking a little.
Anything other suggestions for how I could improve my search.

It was an excellent meeting, and I got exactly what I wanted out of it.

She made several suggestions about my resume, and how to make it more focused so that it could grab someone’s attention. She also had a couple of great ideas for ways I could adjust it depending on the job at hand...mostly just by changing the order of things around. She gave me some ideas about how to increase and make better use of my network.

She was very positive about the work I had done so far, and she really liked my tracking documents, and the list of web sites that I visit for opportunities.

In general, I’m very happy I went back to see her, and I’m feeling newly revitalized about my search.

I had three interviews this past week. I had a very short-notice interview with a lady from Company F, a large financial organization. It went OK...not great. I felt very unfocused, which I can only blame partially on the short notice. It seems like a great job and a great company. I hope I get a chance for a second interview to redeem myself.

I had a phone interview with College U, and as I expected, I do NOT have the technical chops for that job. They’re looking for “faculty liaisons”, but the specs are very technical. They want programmers to develop tools, and that’s not me.

Wednesday I met with folks from the VA Dept. of X, and it went very well. While I’m not that enthusiastic about working downtown (a block from my current spot) for a state agency, I could definitely do worse than this one.

I also left a voice mail for the lady from Company H, but haven’t heard anything back yet.

PostSecret Video

Progress Report

23 total applications sent

3 turndowns

1 offer

5 interviews

2 interviews scheduled (Had one today, plus one each on Tuesday and Wednesday this week!)

Beach or mountains?

We’re back from our brief trip to North Carolina. It was fine, but too short and too hot. There was some discussion about whether we were “beach people” or “mountain people”. Why not both? My spouse doesn’t like to spend all day on the beach. She usually wants to bail after three hours or so. I think it’s a combination of fear of overexposure to the sun and the fact that she can’t sit still for any length of time without doing SOMETHING. So, I usually go along and leave, because I could go either way. This time, I probably would have tried to stay longer, but it was so darn hot, it was kind of a relief to leave.

I can be either a beach person or a mountain person. I love them both, for different reasons. Being at the ocean is very cathartic. Whenever I spend time there, even very briefly, I leave feeling cleansed, like I’ve left some baggage behind. On the other hand, when I need a mental health day (which I need far more often than I get to actually take one) I go to the mountains and walk around for a day. This kind of day is also cleansing, but somehow leaves me more peaceful.

Yesterday, after several weeks of absolutely no activity, I had two possibilities start to pop. One is something I applied for a long time ago, at a local university. It’s a faculty liaison type of position, where I would be working with teaching faculty to help them incorporate technology into the classroom.

The other one is with a large financial organization, which I found out through a friend from church. She asked me to keep details quiet, as the information I was given is “internal only”, and as such is confidential, so I will respect that. The HR recruiter there called me yesterday, but we never connected, so I will hope to hear more on Monday.

The good news about both of these is that I have inside connections, which may not give me a huge edge, but should provide some insight into what they’re looking for, which is sometimes tricky.

I also made an appointment for Thursday with a career counselor I met with a few years ago. I want to show her my resume, and go over my strategies so far, so that I can get some suggestions and see what I’ve neglected to do that might be helpful.

This is her company, if any of my three readers thinks they might benefit from this kind of service:

http://brownmiller.com/

Post a comment and tell me whether you're a beach person, mountain person, or both?

Fret factor: Less volatile than the Dow

Vacation factor: Mountain high, beach low

Movie factor: Stardust