291 Days Between Jobs, a Few Things I Learned

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The common wisdom is to make looking for a job a full time job. In today’s world it’s more than endlessly checking job boards and sending out resumes. That’s something I couldn’t do eight hours a day and stay sane.

Leaving my fate to resume review software that seems focused on eliminating anyone that doesn’t fit a narrowly defined experience set also didn’t make sense. In today’s socially interconnected world there are a lot of ways to connect and be visible. I chose to add a twist to my search.

So I started writing.

I don’t claim to be a skilled writer, I mostly wrote about what I knew and about what I wanted to do again. I put myself out there on Medium, Amazon’s Kindle and LinkedIn.

At first it was hard to make myself put letters and words on a screen. It was and is work. Like physical exercize, putting in the effort started to pay off. Some of my work was no longer terrible. Whatever athlete said “it never gets easier you just get better” was right.

So what happened?

When I started posting regularly strangers, former colleagues, even some colleagues from years ago connected. Sometimes just an encouraging note, sometimes for free advice, which I freely gave. My connections grew, but still the job was slow coming.