ASK THE HEADHUNTER Mom wants a new career

[deanwebb]

Mom wants a new career

In the October 17, 2017 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, a successful mom wants to be a successful job seeker. Question I’m a mature woman and I have to reinvent myself after a midlife divorce. I spent my prime years raising seven wonderful children. I home schooled my children over 20 years. I developed many skills that cross over into the work force: Organization, Punctuality, Customer Service, Training/Teaching, Computer Skills, Microsoft Word and Outlook, and more. I have worked in a research analyst job for almost two years now and have gained vast office skills. The company I work for has

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Source: Mom wants a new career

[icecream-guy]

the other way (not splattering one's resume across the job boards) seems like alot of work.  I think it'd be touch to find a company one wants to work for, identify the manager, the manager needs.... etc. one would need to have major (non-it) networking skills.

[deanwebb]

I think that's the point, though... job hunting should be a lot of work, and the job hunter is the one to do it. Let me look over my full employment history:

Jobs right out of high school, telemarketing and door to door knife sales, crappy as hell jobs, got them out of a newspaper want ad.

Job in college to work for school newspaper, walked in, got to know the editors, had a probationary period, made the cut, got on staff.

First job out of college, delivery driver for pizza place... want ad, crappy as hell job. No other want ads responded.

To leave that job, I went into local school districts and filled out sub. teacher applications. Crappy jobs, yes, but not as crappy as pizza delivery.

First job teaching I got because the previous guy in the position just left one day. As in bye-bye, never seen again as he rolled out of the city limits. I walked in to get that job.

Same on the next job. I didn't just drop off resumes, I went in and talked to principals.

Newspaper ad for my first IT job, Win95 tech support. Referral for my next role, a 3-month contract. Newspaper ad for the one after that. And then, no more newspapers... it was 1997, and a new era was upon us. That's right... TECH JOB FAIRS!

Got my sysadmin job that way. When I had worked there long enough, I went to Microsoft and asked if they wanted a guy like me to work for them. They did.

When I went back to teaching, I applied at *one* district, because I didn't want to work anywhere else. Got the job.

When I left teaching, I found a job via Internet, but I did a full-court press on my cover letter. *That's* what got me the interview, and the interview is how I got hired.

Multinational Megacorp hired me after my LinkedIn status changed. That was a dedicated HR person for that company, reaching out to me. Palo Alto also made a reach, along with a contracting firm. I didn't ask for any of those, they just turned up.

And for my current role with $VENDOR, I had already read a few of these articles and decided to walk in and talk with the manager in charge of the role I was interested in. After that discussion, I applied for the job.

The less we use the Internet for things like this, the better. Or, put another way, if you're looking for another job, leaving it all to the Internet makes no sense. Forget self-driving cars, we don't even have efficient job skills matching programs for computers.