My Time Unemployed, This Time: Part 2. How the Rollercoaster Starts | |
(Going up) | |
Friday Apr 18 12:28:11 2014 | |
So, you are home. There's a hastily thrown-together box of office | |
stuff in the trunk of your car that you left there because you don't | |
feel like getting it right now. It will wait. You already dismissed as | |
a little too TV-drama-y the idea of going to the nearest bar on the | |
way home and drinking yourself into oblivion, so pretty soon you are | |
going to have to start telling people you got laid off. You will start | |
with your significant other, and then things get a bit more | |
complicated. You obviously should tell your best friends, first | |
because they're your best friends, and second, they may be the most | |
motivated and potentially best-positioned to perhaps help you out. And | |
your siblings. And... Your. Parents. Yeesh. They are worried for you, | |
and they will tell you so, and spin all kinds of not-good scenarios | |
that you weren't really to the point of thinking about yet. You knew | |
they would do this, but even if you waited a couple days to tell them, | |
you didn't wait long enough. So that's around time you start to panic | |
a bit, as you realize it's true, and it happened again. You are | |
unemployed. | |
So you register for unemployment. Because really, that's something | |
that you should do AS SOON AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN. Seriously. Why would | |
you wait? You don't deserve it? They've been taking it out of your | |
check all this time, just for this potential occurrence! So after the | |
first time you are unemployed, you definitely prioritize this. It's a | |
lot easier now that it's all a few clicks away, anyway. | |
Also, you update your resume on the job websites. You will not be sure | |
later if this was or was not a good idea, but that's a topic of | |
another post. | |
You now, quickly, have gotten yourself two sources of job leads: one, | |
the lower-volume, high quality stream of jobs that apparently is | |
always flowing around your circle of friends and coworkers, that | |
everyone is normally ignoring, but now that you need a job, people are | |
looking at for you; and the other, the firehose of contract jobs you | |
probably don't want, that all these agencies seem to be falling all | |
over themselves to jam you into. | |
This is the first "up" part of the rollercoaster, with buddies giving | |
you leads and passing your resume to their various HR departments for | |
you, with the double incentive of helping you, their friend get a job, | |
and maybe pulling themselves a nice referral bonus(!). At the same | |
time, these contract agency recruiters keep calling you, telling you | |
how good your resume looks and how they have these contracts they want | |
to put you up for. From your initial despondence, you transition to | |
really starting to think *you won't even have enough time* to enjoy | |
these unemployment days off! Time to make a list of all the home tasks | |
and hobby things that you really, really want to get done in the next | |
few days, before you end up starting a new job! | |
At this point, one of two things will happen. In the first scenario, | |
one of your friends' leads pans out, you get an in-person interview | |
and a job offer, and you really are back to work before you know | |
it--this really does happen, not even half the time, but it happens. | |
In the more-likely scenario two, you maybe get the in-person | |
interview--or don't--but you don't end up with that first quick job. | |
And after that initial rush of sending off resumes and chatting with | |
these contract recruiters (you don't even *want* a contract job!), | |
those end up feeling like black holes, because they may hound you for | |
your resume and right to represent you on this job, but then you hear | |
crickets from them. | |
So this is then where the next phase starts, which is actually the | |
*real* part of finding a new job. The slog. This is the part of the | |
roller coaster ride where you wish you hadn't gotten on. |