(DIY -> Do It Yourself)

When I first got laid off I knew exactly what to do.  So do you.  So just get down to it and within a short period of time you’ll start to get interviews lined up.  Here’s what I did:

First, I got my resume ready.  I spent about a week creating my resume from scratch.  I got my brother’s resume so I didn’t have to play with the format and adjusted the information.  Unfortunately I had to spend some time chasing facts - like my calls to the university to ask “what date did I get my CIS degree, what is the exact name of the degree I got, what was my GPA… ” stuff like that.  And I had a few friends and family check it out to see if it was ready for production! Alas, 5 days later I had a resume that was ready to post on job boards.  (note: 5 days isn’t much time… unless you are unemployed)!

Second (during that 5 days of resume creation), I got accounts on CareerBuilder, Monster and Dice.  The local job boards just didn’t have enough postings yet and so I didn’t spend much time on those.  I created little “agents” or whatever they are called so that I could get specific opportunities e-mailed to me each morning.  Oh yeah, Jobs.com has a cool name so I got an account there also.

Third, I looked up and met with some headhunters and recruiters.  Actually, I had to do some research on the issue - it seems a few years ago I heard there were different types of headhunters and I wanted to make sure I got the best one.  My research taught me that indeed there were different types of headhunters - that research ended up not helping because the headhunters I met with all seemed to be the same type.

Fourth, I identified some local companies that I was interested in - the big ones like American Express, eBay, Franklin Covey and others.  I found their job postings (some were not too easy to find - hidden somewhere on their websites) and spent a few hours creating accounts.  By this time I was wishing that all the job boards would have some consistent technology to them - at least let me upload my resume, parse out the data, and then I could just verify that they imported it correctly.  That’s okay, it only took about an hour or so on each on.  Well, except Intel’s site - they were having technical difficulties at the time and I spent about 8 hours there, since I would get most of the way through and then it would delete my entry.  Try again.  But I was sure that Intel may have held the pot at the end of the rainbow.

Fifth, I started applying to jobs.  Got a good cover letter and had a good resume, and I was off!  It felt good to have accomplished so much in so little time.

I should mention that I got input and advice from family - but I didn’t need input and advice from a counselor.  I didn’t have time for that.

And I was off.  I sent out resume after resume, and it was awesome.  Each week I sent out dozens of resumes.  Even though I was down on my luck I knew that I was doing my best, doing the right thing, and that if I got enough resumes sent out I’d eventually land a job.

But it wasn’t working!!! I only got 2 interviews in the first 2 months.  No one was calling back.  What was wrong?  What was the problem with my tactics?  My DIY tactics were not working.

Well, for the sake of not writing a novel, I’ll save my analysis for next week.  Have a great weekend!