I got the job! and, How I got the job

We are moving imminently to Palo Alto, California on a new adventure.  WOW! If you had told me this even 3 months ago, I would have responded with an incredulous Nuh-uh! Just goes to show you, what can happen when you remain open to new opportunities and are willing to go with the flow.

Truth is, I did not initially consider leaving Austin (or Texas).  I, like so many, have fallen in love with Austin.  Many of my fellow laid-off-from-the-same-company colleagues adamantly refuse even to contemplate any other option.   However, I’m not the type to wait around collecting unemployment (which does not even cover health insurance, let alone food or mortgage), hoping the economy will recover.  I don’t have enough patience for that.  I also think I can be happy in many places, as long as I have my family with me.

In addition, I already took time off to adopt my daughter, hence, that restless desire to vacate the corporate world was out of my system.  At that time, I thought I was going to retire and dedicate myself to full time Momhood.  But after awhile, I discovered that I enjoyed working, and though I delight in my role as Mom, it’s not enough for me.   And hubby Ronny was willing (itching?) to try the “Chief Home Officer” role for awhile (he’s very good at it, by the way).  Thus the role switcheroo.  I think it’s an arrangement that works well for us, apparently it’s even stylish these days.

Finally, I came to appreciate the value of working (call me crazy!).  It’s full of opportunities: for growth, for fulfillment, to interact with others and build meaningful relationships, to team together to build something, to strive for a goal and savor the satisfaction of achieving it (and yes, the challenge and excitement of competition and “the thrill of the chase”).  Of course, it’s also a way to provide for my family, and Ronny’s golf addiction 😉

I thus was happy and grateful to accept an exciting Industry Marketing position with a financially solid, established smallish company (~$600M revenues),  in the bay area.  It took 14 weeks from the time I was officially informed that my services were no longer needed, to accepting the offer.

How did I do this? I learned to execute a job search; I’d never needed to before!  Realizing everyone’s situation is unique, I thought it might still help others trying to land a job in this challenging job market if I gave the detail.  Here is the formula that worked for me:

• Reactivated my network by sending personalized, not blanket, emails to folks in my network asking for help, references, and introductions.  Luckily, I already had a good 300+ documented in linkedin.
• Networked my way to interviews by first finding a posting, then identifying someone in my network who worked at that company, contacting then for intelligence, and asking them to call/send an email of recommendation and my resume directly to the hiring manager.  This was the singlemost effective action to acquiring the position.
• Spent ~ 4 hours a day on average a lot of time on my job search.
• Focused my search – Started a broad job search, but realizing that hiring managers who get 50 (or 500!) resumes for an opening can afford to be very picky, I focused in on jobs and companies where I would be as exact a match as possible.  (Unemployment stat says 6.3 people per job – huh!  I heard anecdotes more like the above numbers).  I identified about 10 companies that I felt would be the best fit, and visited their job webpages at least weekly (and actually identified my current position this way).
• Linkedin was a wonderful tool for managing my connections.  Also, I used it to find colleagues-of-colleagues, and do research on individuals.  I also reworked my profile.
• Broadened my search geographically – Started looking only in Austin, but about 8 weeks in, decided to broaden to US wide, as Austin alone was not producing for me (news about Austin being less affected by the recession notwithstanding), and I suspected it was very competitive for marketing positions.
• Studied diligently for any interview – easily spending days prior, to understand as best I could the company, market, and specific position requirements.  I trolled the company website, downloaded and read their whitepapers and case studies, studied the competition, googled industry opinion, read analyst articles, practiced whiteboards of their products, watched webinars and listened to podcasts.  I created a “notes” file where I summarized the relevant information, and studied that.  I also got the names of the interviewers ahead of time if I could and investigated them, to try to glean a sense of their background/motivations/interests/personal brand.
• Created, practiced, and memorized a personal elevator pitch.  Who am I?  What are my strengths?  What are the top benefits I bring to an organization?
• Paid CareerBuilder to modify my resume, then took the results and punched it up even more to tailor to industry and role.  It took many iterations to get to “ready”.
• Created different “flavors” of my resume (one for sales, one for marketing, etc), as I have different skillsets, and then, when applying to a job posting, adjusted it further to match the requirements in the job posting.
• My resume, elevator pitch, and Linkedin efforts helped me become succinct about my capabilities and helped me clarify what I wanted as well.
• Started this blog!  Not sure it helped secure a job, but it has been fun, helped keep my sanity, and and advanced my understanding of social media.  Also utilized twitter, RSS feeds, google reader, and linkedin groups to learn about social media.
• Aggregators simplyhired and indeed became my job boards of choice, as they provided more useful results/better matches.  I started out paying for TheLadders but did not feel it yielded as good results.  Eventually, I set up alerts for my areas of interest/skills ie. “BPM Marketing in Atlanta”, for automatic delivery via RSS or email.  While I did not get my job via these mechanisms, they were still useful, as over time, as I got a sense of what types of jobs were out there, what was popular, who was hiring, how quickly posts would come and go, what key words to put on my resume, and how to better position myself.

Also,

• Ran a lot, nearly every day, as a therapeutic outlet and because I love to (even ran 4 5K races!).  I even managed to lose the 5-7 pounds that I’d gained in the last years of a sit-down-for-8-hours job.
• Kept my conscious contact with my Higher Power (HP) frequent and strong.  I kept in the forefront of my attention that 1) I don’t have the big picture, I just need to remain open 2) I have a unique destiny 3) my HP is looking out for me and my family 4) I have faith in my HP to show me the right path 5) I have so many blessings.  I tried not to insert my will, but just do my part as best I could, take action, and leave the results up to my HP.

I hope this helps others who are still looking.  I also want to thank EVERYONE who helped and supported me.  There’s too many to name, but YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!  My musical pick for this blog post is: Roll with It Baby, by Steve Winwood