The economy is falling

February 6, 2008 · Filed Under Featured, Finding Your Job 

From the mailbag:

I was recently let go from a company for not disclosing some information from my background. The company has allowed me to use them as a future reference as this job was an internship and my cut off date was approaching. Since then, I have been job searching for approximately three weeks now. With the economy going in a bleeker and scarier downard spiral…what are the chances of me getting a good job? I am searching in the Finance sector in the Washington D.C area what advice do you have on getting on feet quickly…I have bills to pay and a family to feed.

I don’t know what information you failed to disclose but I would start by probably not doing that again. If you’re looking in the finance sector, I am hoping whatever it is that you are looking for won’t look at that and disregard you.

My rules for active job searching are follows:

50% of your time devoted to job hunting

50% of your time devoted to job building activities

The first one is pretty self-explanatory, the second one isn’t. What is a job building activity?

  1. Networking in your area
  2. Networking in your industry
  3. Building your knowledge and increasing your marketability

None of these things have anything directly to do with job seeking yet every single one of them can lead to work. And in a tougher market (like we might see if things get bad in this economy), making yourself better networked and better prepared than everyone else will help you get a jump.

If you need work now, not later, you probably need to start considering agencies in addition to all of the above (temp, contract, temp to hire, etc…). The staffing folks who read are going to probably kill me at the suggestion that agencies should be your last resort but I would say that you need to find a place where you can find stability and longevity and while I have found that happens more frequently with the above combination, you can also find that working through an agency (or maybe in your case, several agencies). If you do take a temp job, you will end up having two jobs (the temp one and the job seeking one). So it gets harder before it gets easier.

I have no specific experience in DC so I can’t give you specific advice there. There may be some people who can comment more on that in the comments section.

Good luck.

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Comments

3 Responses to “The economy is falling”

  1. WebPixie on February 7th, 2008 7:14 pm

    Is it true that temp jobs often lead to permanent positions? It does in some industries but I’m not that familiar about how your field works.

    If that were true, that could be another benefit of visiting a lot of temp agencies! Some temp agencies might also be able to help you disclose that missing information to your prospective employers in its most favorable light.

    Good luck to you!

  2. Marvin Walberg on February 9th, 2008 5:43 am

    Good post. Would you give me permission to use the contents in an upcoming “Getting Hired” column?

    Reply to: mwalberg@bellsouth.net

  3. meg on February 9th, 2008 1:18 pm

    Find a headhunter. Seriously. There are many good ones in DC and they often know of jobs that don’t get advertised. They will help you with presenting your resume and will present your qualifications to prospective employers in just the right way so as to minimize whatever the previous transgression was.

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