April fools! Hahaha I couldn’t resist.
My full-time job is to look for a job. I’m finishing up a month and a half in this position. Frankly, I’m not seeing the results I promised myself when I hired myself for this job. Unfortunately, based on what I’ve seen, and the competitiveness of the market, I’m going to have to let myself go. I wish me luck at my next endeavor.
I don’t believe in mistakes. Everything I’ve done has been instrumental in getting me here. Sometimes you have to take a step backwards, sideways, and then diagonal before you can step forward. I do, however, believe in learning from previous experience. Hind sight is 200:20. I have microscope eyes when I look behind me. If I could do this all again, starting from when I quit my life insurance job. I would start by applying with every recruiter in town. I talked to about one a week. This gave each successive recruiter that much less time to find me a job. When I started, I had more confidence in my ability to find a job on my own.
From now on, I want to think about my career two steps at a time. There’s a balance between over-planning and going with the flow. Since being burned from not planning enough, it’s time to shift the balance to planning more. Something needs to be lined up before I leave the previous job. Selling life insurance was a step backwards. Moving to Chicago happened abruptly. It worked out. It wasn’t a catastrophic failure, but it’s still a failure.
My life has been generously sprinkled with excellent career luck:
- GKN Driveline
- Career fair in college
- Chrysler
- Recruiter
- Brainchild Engineering
- Friend and co-intern from GKN hired me
- NCL America
- One interview
- Symmetry
- Found them online. No application or interview.
All of those happened with minimal prep, research, interview practice, or networking. Any skills I had in the “Getting a job” field had atrophied by the time I needed them. Now I need them more than ever. I’m working three times as hard and not getting nearly the results I was before. Oh well. I just have to work harder and smarter.
As of today, I have submitted my novel, “Waking From Reality” to the Kindle self-publishing AI to be reviewed. I’ll keep you posted when it gets approved.
- Books
- Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling
- Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
- Paper Towns by John Green
- Your Career Game by Nathan Bennet & Stephen A. Miles
- Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore
- All You Need Is Kill by Nick Mamatus & Lee Ferguson …(Graphic Novel)
- Movies
- Atlantis: The Lost Empire
- Song of the month
- My Trigger by Miike Snow
- Blog posts published
- 1!
- Gym
- 0
- Diet
- Disastrous
- Wrong turns on the crazy Chicago Loop
- Ended
- None
- Started
- None
- Join Toastmasters. I went to one recently and it was a ton of fun. I don’t know why I waited so long to join one. The benefits of speaking well are innumerable!
- There’s no such thing as mistakes. Everything is practice for the next time.
- Once is a mistake, twice is a choice, three times is a habit. I was two hours late to an interview. Yikes. Let it be known that I’ll never make that mistake again.
- I need to learn to lead from my core. The idea of leaning back, away from risk, away from change, away from challenge, is so detestible that I lean all the way forward. I over correct. I’m over eagar and aggressive. On the whole, it’s better to lean forward than backwards, but even better to be centered. Leaning forward has burned me a bit. Not only do I paint myself into corners, I can come off as desperate. When searching for a job, it’s not a huge deal since it’s entirely expected that unemployed people are eagar for a job. It’s less attractive when searching for friends or girlfriends. I have this habit of always keeping my eye on “What’s next?” It’s a good habit for the early stage of my career. At some point in the next two to three years, I’ll need to give that up. I don’t need “an opportunity,” I need “the opportunity.” At that point I don’t need to keep searching, I’ll be able to be satisfied because I’m where I want to be. I’ll get there. One day.
Prediction review
I will go to 10 networking events this month- I went to 13 if you don’t count “fun” events like philosophy meet ups, though all the events I got to are fun
- I will start my new job
- I will go to Toastmasters 3 times
Way to go. So proud of you !!!!