Thursday, June 18, 2009

Day 35: Thank Goodness for Julie!

Today I had another session with Julie, my awesome career coach. Julie is like a personal trainer for my brain: she's making me rethink the process of looking for and landing a job.

Let's face it. I've been working since 1982 (longer if you count all those summer jobs in high school and college). Wow, that's a long time: 27 years I've been gainfully employed. 27 years? Holy crap, I'm old. But I digress. In that time, I've had a total of 5 jobs, 3 of which have lasted 7 years or longer. I'm definitely not a job hopper!

For each of those jobs, I applied either through a newspaper ad or with a recruiter. I sent in a printed resume, filled with my skills, accomplishments and references. I waited, got phone calls, went on first and second interviews and got offers and accepted one. Finding a new job always seemed easy.

Today? Not so much. Yeah, I could go online and search for a job on any number of job-search websites. But what I'm learning from Julie is that it takes a lot more than that piece of paper I called a resume to land a job. It takes a lot of work! For example: I need a web presence. Not just this blog or my Creative Memories website or Facebook. I need to have a profile on LinkedIn, ZoomInfo and Ziggs so people can find me. I need to have business cards with my contact info. I need a resume that has keywords in it. I need to network!

I need to go to the gym.....

Until Next Time,

Kel

1 comment:

scrap4u said...

Wow! I had no idea of any of this. Maybe that's why I had such a hard time finding an IT job back i 2004 and 2005.

I don't even know what some of those things are like linkedin or any of that.

Times sure have changed! Thank goodness you found Julie!