Day of thanks has special meaning for job seekers -- Hire Ground

November 26, 2009

Day of thanks has special meaning for job seekers

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By Randy Woods
NWjobs

For most of my life, I've never been much of a Thanksgiving fan. It's not that I feel ungrateful for the support I've always received from friends and loved ones. But the idea of celebrating good fortune in life by spending three days to prepare an enormous meal that takes no more than 15 minutes to eat, followed by three more days of enduring increasingly dehydrated leftovers, somehow never appealed to me.

This year, however, Thanksgiving has a deeper meaning. For much of 2009, it didn't look like I had much to be thankful for. I got laid off from my business magazine job in January, at a time when the bleakness of the Great Recession was really starting to hit home. In an instant, my grand plans for getting out of debt and scraping together a down payment on a house to get the first-time home-buyer credit had evaporated.

The first couple of weeks were especially tough as I tried to get over the shock. With several nightmare scenarios of bankruptcy, fruitless job searches and eviction running through my head, I filed for unemployment and tried to imagine how I was going to pay the next few credit card bills. Normally, I tend to withdraw in times of crisis and try to solve problems on my own, but this was my first experience with leaving a job involuntarily. With seemingly no other place to turn, I started e-mailing and calling everybody I knew--friends, colleagues and acquaintances--about my situation and asked for advice.

That's when I got my next shock, albeit a much more pleasant one. The outpouring of support and empathy I received from everyone I contacted was truly humbling. People I hadn't spoken to in years e-mailed back with encouragement, advice and job leads. While not every lead panned out, the positive feedback I received from writers, editors and public relations contacts I had worked with helped buoy me through those dark days.

Eventually, this support system I never really knew I had began to pay dividends. Job openings that were not publicly advertised began showing up in my in-box, forwarded from helpful contacts. With my schedule suddenly free to pursue part-time projects during my job search, I was able to land a dream of an editing gig at the Seattle International Film Festival, writing and editing movie descriptions for the annual festival catalog. I even connected with a former colleague at The Seattle Times, who told me about a new job-search blog they were working on, called "Hire Ground." (Gee, I wonder how that ever turned out.)

After building a list of networking contacts and collecting recommendations for the next eight months, I finally landed another full-time job in September at iSixSigma Magazine, which covers continuous process improvement efforts at companies worldwide. And just last week, after pooling my resources with my wife and her mother, the three of us were able to pay off our debt and buy our first house together. Much of this long holiday weekend will be spent moving into our new digs.

Ten months ago, if you asked me whether I would be a gainfully employed homeowner by Thanksgiving I would have called you a hopelessly unrealistic dreamer. But looking back on 2009 from this point, I feel like George Bailey after Clarence returned him to the original Bedford Falls. While I would never say "it's a wonderful year," I feel like 2009 has taught me that a successful job search can almost never be done alone. Without the support of my network, I'd still be sitting shell-shocked in front of my computer, wondering what to do.

Now more than ever, it's imperative that job seekers reach out to everyone they can to develop their networks and discover hidden job leads before they are publicized. The same is true for those who are currently employed. As everyone has learned during this recession, no job is ever safe and no single employer can be relied upon to provide for you. Networking is not just for job seekers anymore, it's just a way to do business.

To all the friends, acquaintances and colleagues who have lent a hand during my difficult journey this year, thank you from bottom of my heart for cheering me on. I hope to continue paying this message forward with this blog and helping out other job seekers in any way that I can. Happy Thanksgiving to all for now, and let's get right back to work next week on that job search--together.