Job Front: Treat your search like it's work
By Darrell Smith
This isn’t work for the faint-hearted. You need perseverance and patience.You need backbone and a cast-iron psyche.
And you need to sell yourself.
You can make your own hours, but you’d better seek opportunity in every one. The pay? Your next lead, that follow-up interview.
Welcome to your job search. It’s work that’s as tough as any out there.
“If you’re looking for a job, you’ve got to treat it like work,” said Jasen Williams, director of career fairs for Ohio-based RecruitMilitary, which connects military veterans and employers. “You’ve got to be a good steward of the time you have.”
Job Front visited the RecruitMilitary Career Fair at University of Phoenix’s Rancho Cordova Learning Center last week to talk with job seekers on the work they do to land their next job.
Look for work. Walk the dog. Then look for work again.
James Statham, is a tall, stocky aircraft sheet metal worker and former Air Force sergeant who followed the job: Sacramento, Chico, then, last July, tiny Oscoda, Mich., a one-time military town on the shore of Lake Huron off Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
Four months later, he and 300 other contract employees were laid off. He returned to Sacramento, where he’s been jobless since.
Here’s his daily routine: Walk the dog. Hit the online job boards for two hours. Drive his wife to work. Then it’s back to the Web and the phones to work follow-up calls and send e-mails.
“I keep track with who I talked to in the past 90 days. If I have an interview, I prep for that and make sure I have my clothes ready to go,” he said.
“CalJOBS, sologig.com, USAJOBS – that’s pretty much my day,” he said, referring to Web sites that list work for the state of California, contract-for-hire employers and the federal government.
“I go to fairs like these. I always make sure I have a list of résumés and references at all times – phone numbers and addresses in my hands.”
This isn’t a part-time gig. After four months, Statham, 44, knows all too well.
“I’m constantly looking for work. If you’re not out there looking, you’re not going to find it,” he said. “It’s tough, you have to seek and network to find the job that’s open.”
Together in tech, now
together in a quest for jobs
Susan and John Ridilla won’t soon forget the day: Jan. 28 – the day John, 51, and Susan, 54, lost their jobs after six years at the Silicon Valley offices of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc.
“It’s a new phenomenon – more husband-and-wife teams are being laid off,” Susan said.
“And times aren’t going to get any better soon,” John said. “It’s scary.”
The couple, a pair of former Army majors, made the trip from Gilroy to Rancho Cordova for the job fair.
“When we got laid off, the bad news was that we got laid off and the good news was that we got laid off,” John Ridilla said. “You make lemonade.”
Since February, the two have been attending job fairs, combing through Web sites, drafting dozens of letters tailoring their skills in information technology and supply chain to specific openings.
The challenge is that “every day is Saturday,” John said. But they have a routine.
“We check our e-mail in the morning. You get up, work out, then do your job search – two, three hours a day,” he said.
They break up the Web searches by networking with old colleagues and attending free and low-cost job seminars.
“You find ways to network – there is time to contact people. We spend more time with (networking Web site) LinkedIn,” he said.
Most important, both said, is mapping out short- and long-term needs….
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