Out of Work Bum

First things first. I am unemployed but I am not a bum (though my wife may not share that opinion.) I have worked in high tech for over 25 years doing everything from engineering  to running a $100M business unit.  In the last five years I have been laid off three times.  Two were start-up companies that that didn’t fare so well.  The last was from a privately held company that had one bad quarter and got rid of about 25% of their employees.

I started this blog for a couple of reasons.  First, over the last several layoffs I discovered that in the internet age job hunting has become a numbers game.  Sure, many of us get a job because we know someone who knows someone – networking.  But with the advent of sites like monster and careerbuilder it is clearly a volume business. It is fairly inexpensive for employers and headhunters( more on headhunters later) to post a job and get hundreds of responses. The second  is that it is all about timing.  The only way you will get a call is if you happen to match what someone is looking for right now.  You really didn’t think that hiring managers and HR departments read the hundreds of resumes they get, did you?

If you are like me at some point you have gotten a call from someone saying that they are looking to fill a position and do you know someone.  I still get those calls.  I don’t always know someone that fits but thought if I post it here then maybe someone knows someone that fits.  I have found that a referral candidate always has an advantage over a blind submission.  Well let’s see if this works.