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Diary of a Job SeekerBy: Mike Burks
Summary:
After being involved in a layoff as a result of consolidation in the telephone industry, I've been keeping a journal about maintaining my confidence, developing my resumes, handling negotiations, and building my networks -- all part of my job search. 
Introduction
The Two-page Challenge Networking, Resumes and Unemployment Developing my Functional Resume, Professional Statement Three Types of Job-hunting Statements Productivity My Functional Resume Using Training Courses to Network and Research Lessons in Negotiating Using my Two-second Infomercial for the First Time Networking at the CSUN Conference "Things Are a Bit Tense" Expanding my Horizons My Range of Contacts Introduction  You can learn more about me at http://www.esight.org/View.cfm?x=1759 I'm also one of eight professionals featured in the article, "Blind & Visually Impaired Tech Pros See the Way." Go to Top of Page The Two-page Challenge February 23, 2005 I attended the electronic resume class that I was supposed to take and also took a class on regular resumes. I went and got the book Resumes that Knock 'em Dead by Martin Yates, and I have to say both the courses and the book have really given me a chance to take a good look at myself. Going over my career and redoing my resume has given me a much better idea of myself and what I can do. Getting my resume into shape is going to be quite a task. It is nine pages long and it needs to be two pages. That is the bad news; the good news is I am reading it and re-reading it and getting a much better idea of who I am and what I can do. I have worked in the Information Technology (IT) arena for a very long time and have been on the leading edge of things like PDAs, the Internet, VoIP, and the accessibility of electronic and information technology for people with disabilities. I have done a lot; now the challenge is going to be two fold:
Well, I had best get on to doing it because, if I think about it too much, it might overwhelm me! Go to Top of Page Networking, Resumes and Unemployment February 24, 2005 Due to the merger with SBC, my position with my former employer (AT&T) has been elimintated. I have been doing a lot of networking with friends and business associates. This is important as I am coming to realize that this is probably how I will get a new position. I highly recommend this to anyone. Even if you are not looking for a position, it is a good idea. And, if you can help someone else, who knows? It may help you in the future! I have the first draft of my functional resume ready. It was quite difficult for me to put this together; the chronological one was easy. I met with my counselor from lhh.com, and she helped me clean up the chronological one. I started to put the functional one together to highlight my work in the area of accessibility of web sites. I wanted to have two so I can use one to concentrate in the general area of telecom and information technology and use the other to talk about my work with web site accessibility for people with disabilities. I'm going to meet with my counselor tomorrow, and we will see what she says about the functional resume. Once we get done with it, then I can start posting it and looking around. I'm also looking into unemployment. I have a lot of work to do in this area, and it is very confusing. Each state is different, but there is a site that gives you a look at all of them. It is at salary.com. It highlights the North Carolina issues but has links to all other states. I will also be working on my professional statement shortly, and that should help me to put together my plan. Once I have that, I should have a bit more direction. More tomorrow after the meeting! Mike Burks For background about the issues Mike is facing as he prepares his resumes, see these three eSight articles: Chronological vs. Functional Resume My Critical First Steps in Building a Resume: List Accomplishments, Key Success Factors How You Can Use Key Success Factors to Build Your Resume Jim Hasse Hi, Sorry to hear about your situation. I am a recent graduate in Masters (EE) from State University of New York at Buffalo. I worked for Lucent as a software engineer in India. I would like to know who is the counselor you met for resume development so that I could also improve on my resume. Thanks, Suchita Go to Top of Page Developing my Functional Resume, Professional Statement February 25, 2005 Well, I had a meeting with my advisor, and we finalized the functional resume to which I have to add one more piece of information. That should be done by late Monday. I am also taking a course about making professional statements, which should help me immensely. They have told me this is just as important as the resume. The course is today. More about that later. My former employer has been very generous with offering us the opportunity to take the courses offered by Lee Hecht Harrison. I find them to be outstanding, and they are giving me a good sense of what I want to do in the way of my next job. Each of the courses I have taken so far have been terrific. Mike Go to Top of Page Three Types of Job-hunting Statements February 28, 2005 Today I worked on my professional statements after I took a course on the subject. While this can be hard, it does help me to get in touch with my feelings and have a better understanding of how I feel about myself, my career and where I want to go. It also helps me to prepare for interviews. I'm preparing three types of statements: 1. Professional Objective This one has helped me to define where I want to go. The old statement, "If you don't know where you're going, any place will do," came into my thoughts when I was doing this one. Since I really want to work where my telecom and accessibility experience will be put to the best use, I'm going to use something like this: A management position in the corporate, government, non-profit, or educational sector dealing with disability issues, in particular the accessibility of electronic and information technology for people with disabilities. 2. Exit Statement This one is hard, but, since I was downsized as the result of a merger, I began to realize that is what I should tell people. No reason to be shy about it. So I just state it as it is below: Due to the merger with SBC, my position with my former employer (AT&T) has been eliminated. I am now exploring opportunities to use my extensive experience in the telecom industry as well as my knowledge of the accessibility of electronic and information technology for people with disabilities to make products based on Internet technology accessible to the widest audience possible, disabled or not. 3. Positioning Statement or 90-second Ad This is supposed to be what you use in conversations about yourself when you are talking about what you have done and what you can do. It includes qualifications and other things about your professional life. Basically it is the answer to the question: "Tell me about yourself." You use it in interviews, cover letters and almost anything else to communicate who you are and what you want to do. It should be strong and show you believe in yourself and what you do. I'm still working on this one. I have to think about it and make sure I state it right. I will put it up when I get it done. Feel free to comment on it or any of the other statements, please! Tomorrow I take the productivity course, which is going to help us get organized in the job search and make sure we are doing things so we can track our progress. I have applied for some jobs, but no one has contacted me as yet. Hopefully soon! Mike Burks Mike, you may find the profile of The Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) that was written by Allan Hoffman, a Monster Tech Jobs Expert (from Monster.com) of interest. You can read it at http://technology.monster.com/articles/profaitp/ You can also explore what this association has to offer at http://www.aitp.org/index.jsp and investigate if there is a local chapter near you at http://www.aitp.org/organization/chapters/chapters.jsp Nancy The work you're currently going through, Mike, involves defining who you are so you can build opportunities for yourself in choosing the employer and the job that are right for you. That's not easy for anybody. It's hard work but worthwhile. Here are three eSight articles about the prep work job seekers need to do before they start marketing themselves: Articulating Your Life's Purpose Ride Only One Horse How to Match Your Work With Your Governing Values Jim Hasse Go to Top of Page Productivity March 1, 2005 This was a good course. It teaches you that your new job is to find a job. Get organized and work at it! Set up a schedule of real and productive things to do in your job search and stick to it! We went over various things to put in the schedule and how to build it. The key is to build a realistic schedule and keep to it. Below are some of the things I am using to build my overall plan. 1. I'm taking a good, hard look at the job market and my professional environment. I come out of the telecom industry, so one of the things I am doing is figuring out what skills I have that can be applied outside of telecom. 2. I have determined my objective as stated earlier in this blog: A management position in the corporate, government, non-profit, or educational sector dealing with disability issues, in particular the accessibility of electronic and information technology for people with disabilities. 3. I'm working on my communications strategy; I have my chronological and functional resumes done. I'm refining my statements and my cover letters and looking at what I have accomplished in the appropriate areas. 4. I'm gathering the companies in my target market. They are going to include the names of companies I have determined are hiring in areas that meet my professional objective. I will gather their names from trade shows and job fairs and research them on the Internet. These four tasks are going to take me a while, and I'm still reworking my professional statement. Even though it will probably not be used in a written format, I feel it is important that I have it well understood so I can communicate it to those who would be interested in hiring me. I'm thinking: If I cannot communicate that information, why would they wish to hire me in the first place? More is coming tomorrow on the professional statement. At least I should have a good outline that matches my professional objective. One of most important things I'm learning is to work hard at finding a job, be organized and have a plan. I suspect that not doing these things has been the downfall of many job seekers. So get organized, have a plan and work on the items in the plan every day. About five hours or more a day is what I am hearing, and I am finding that to be pretty easy. A follow up to one of the comments I've received. I am attending a meeting of the Association of Information Technology Professionals in my area. This looks like a great opportunity to network, and I am going to take advantage of it. If you're looking for a job, find out if there is a professional organization in your field and attend the meetings if you can. What a great networking opportunity! Mike Burks Go to Top of Page My Functional Resume I now have my functional resume down to about a page and half. I started out with nine pages. Mike Go to Top of Page Using Training Courses to Network and Research March 3, 2005 Today I updated my resume on several electronic sites. I fully realize that these are a long shot, and the best chances are from networking with others. I also signed up for some courses at techengage.org that will help me update skills needed to build accessible web sites. I strongly recommend that you contact local professional groups in your area of expertise and see what these groups can do to help you with networking in your job search. I found these courses as result of contacting people at the Association of Information Technology Professionals in my area, and they made me aware of the courses. These courses last all week and include networking sessions and a job fair. This will be quite helpful. I'm looking forward to next week and the networking sessions. I'm also looking forward to the job fair! If nothing else, I'll be gathering the names of some companies at both events to put on my list of 50 companies to research for my marketing plan. I am going to have to get my business cards printed and print out my resume for next week. I have a lot to do this weekend! Mike I have been enrolled as a student at The Hadley School for the Blind here in Illinois for a few years, and I am finding them to be an excellent resource. For one thing, one of Hadley's instructors used to be a counselor for the Bureau of Blind Services, and she was very helpful to me and my mom a few years ago. We called this instructor to sort of vent our frustrations with getting absolutely nowhere with VR. She fully understood and did offer us a few suggestions which we followed up on. Although no job ever came out of it, I believe this is just one example of networking. This instructor happens to be visually impaired. I have also checked out Hadley's course, "Principles of Job Acquisition." This course will not place me in a job, and it says so in the course description. However, I will soon be enrolling in this course. Jake Joehl Go to Top of Page Lessons in Negotiating March 4, 2005 This was the day I took the course about negotiating. We discussed all the items you can negotiate when you get a job offer. Some of these are start date for health insurance, number of weeks of vacation, and, of course, salary. We also discussed how you handle competing offers for jobs and do it in a fair and equitable way for yourself and for the prospective employer. This includes such things as: 1. Telling them that you really would like to work for them but that there are some things you would really like in a job. 2. Or letting them know you have an offer and would like to know if a prospective employer is going to make you an offer so you can wait for that offer. All of this can be done in ways that are fair and even-handed. I really enjoyed the course and the idea of being able to negotiate various aspects of a job offer. One thing to keep in mind: You may not want to jump too quickly on an offer. It might show that you are too anxious, and that may cost you down the road. For example, maybe they cannot give you the exact salary you would like, but they may be able to offer you a review and a chance at an increase in three or six months. These are all things to take into account. Mike To all: There are quite a few things to consider at the negotiation stage of landing a job. Take a look at the eSight article, How to Negotiate Salary and Benefits When Job Hunting Jim Mike, Today I was at the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy website: They have a section called "Job Links" that lists employers by state that have indicated "interest in recruiting and hiring qualified individuals with disabilities for open positions within their company or organization." Each company that is listed also lists a link to their current job openings, which are published on the individual web sites. Here is the list of companies from NORTH CAROLINA: ALLTEL Corporation 10100 Sardis Crossing Dr. Charlotte, NC 28212 www.alltel.com/careers Cross Sales & Engineering Company P. O. Box 18508 Greensboro, NC 27419-8508 www.crossco.com First Citizens Bank PO Box 27131 Raleigh NC, 27611 www.firstcitizens.com/careers GlaxoWellcome, Inc. Five Moore Drive PO Box 13398 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3398 www.gsk.com/careers/joinus.htm Lord Corporation 111 Lord Drive P.O. Box 8012 Cary, NC 27512-8012 www.lordcorp.com/CareerOpp.html Lucent Technologies Mt Hope/I85 P.O. Box 20046 Greensboro, NC 27420 www.lucent.com/work North Carolina State University Office for Equal Opportunity Box 7530 North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC 27965-7530 www.ncsu.edu/jobs/ Research and Evaluation Associates, Inc. 6320 Quadrangle Dr., Suite 180 Chapel Hill, NC 27514 www.rea-inc.com/Employment.html SAS Institute, Inc. SAS Campus Drive Cary, NC 27513 www.sas.com/jobs/intro.html State of the Art, Inc. 56 Technology Cary, NC 27513 www.sota.com/company/hr_overview.cfm Wachovia Corporation Staffing Services 401 Linden Street, NC30014 Winston-Salem, NC 27101 www.wachovia.com/careers You may want to check them out and see if they have any openings that would be of interest to you. Nancy Go to Top of Page Using my Two-second Infomercial for the First Time Week of March 7, 2005 I have been attending a Visual Basic and .Net course all week and have attended some networking sessions and a job fair. The course is put on by a group called Techengage, and it's terrific. I'm impressed with what they are offering. They also had a job fair, and, while there were not a huge number of employers there, the ones who were there appeared to be very interested. I have honed up my two-second infomercial about myself, and the three people I talked to seemed to be impressed. In fact, one of them knows some folks I know, and I told her to feel free to talk to them about me. I took a networking course on Monday that is associated with this week's work, and it gave me a number of local contacts from good employers who are hiring. If you can find a job fair or networking event in your area, it would be a good idea to attend. I found out about this week's networking opportunities from the local chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals. All in all, a good week! Mike Hi, Mike: Here's another opportunity to use your two-second informercial -- or to set up an informational interview. You may want to check out Lift, Inc. and start networking with one of the key staff members about what you have to offer. You could find some important business contacts in your geographical area who need to know about your availability. Here's how Lift, Inc., describes itself and its services on its web site: "Lift, Inc. is a nonprofit corporation that qualifies, trains, hires, and places information technology professionals who have physical disabilities through contracts with major corporations who eventually hire them directly. Lift combines specialized business experience in information technology with expertise at recruitment, assessment, and accommodation to give men and women who have disabilities a vocational lift. "Lift is seeking candidates who have both excellent analytical ability and a strong desire to establish, or resume, careers in information technology or information management. For qualified candidates without experience, Lift offers a comprehensive training program. Graduates are hired to work for Lift and are assigned to large corporations who are invited to hire the specialists directly after a one-year apprenticeship period. "To be considered a qualified candidate for Lift's program, an applicant should be capable of working full-time (the hours can be flexible), and able to commute to the work place at least once or twice a week. Aptitude must be demonstrated by successful performance on one or more tests as well as evaluation through personal interviews which we can arrange." Jim Hasse Go to Top of Page Networking at the CSUN Conference March 22, 2005 Sorry to have been out of touch. I was at the CSUN Conference. My laptop went down on Wednesday morning just before my presentation, and I did not get it fixed till March 21. The conference was excellent, and it offered me good opportunities to network and talk to old friends. As a matter of fact, I made some connections with folks who are looking for consultants. While this would not be regular work, it would help. The conference is the best one around, if you have an interest in people with disabilities and technology. There are a massive number of vendors who come to the conference, and I talked to a few of them about employment. All showed some interest -- which is good! Good thing I brought my resume! I'm following up this week with some of the folks I met at the conference and the job fair. I'll be posting the results of those calls here during the week. Mike Hi Mike. I've never been to the CSUN conference, but I've heard it live on ACB Radio. It would be very interesting to go out there sometime. One of my interests is technology, and I think it would be cool to see all that they have. Jake Joehl Go to Top of Page "Things Are a Bit Tense" This week I have been cleaning up everything after CSUN. It takes a bit of time. I have talked to at least one vendor who is interested in hiring me for some consulting work. I also put my resume up in CAREERS & disABLED Magazine's database, which is a good place to look for folks actively recruiting people with disabilities. I will be attending CAREERS & disABLED Magazine's Career Expo in New York City on April 8. I am looking forward to it! The people at CAREERS & disABLED Magazine are giving me an "Employee of the Year" award on April 7. That's kind of neat. So I have to figure out what to say! I have applied for a few jobs and have been searching the databases online. I'm also waiting on a couple of other contracts for consulting work. So things are a bit tense! More about what is going on later in the week! Mike Go to Top of Page Expanding my Horizons I attended the New York City ceremony by Equal Opportunity Publications (EOP) Inc. for the Disabled Employee of the Year award. It was a wonderful ceremony, and, to tell the truth, I was in pretty good company and was quite proud to be associated with the other folks. I was impressed, that is for sure. The wards ceremony was part of the New York City Job Fair, where I got some wonderful contacts. There will be other job fairs, particularly in Boston on May 6. The high point of my New York visit was meeting eSight's Nancy O'Connell and Marten Tegnestam. I spent part of the morning with them and learned a great deal. The job fair gave me some good tips. I was most impressed by the EPA, Raytheon and Lockheed Marten. All of these folks were courteous and helpful to me. I appreciate it and say thank you to them all. I highly recommend the EOP job fairs. If you're looking for a job, try to attend one of them. I then went on vacation to New Mexico. I have forgotten how much I love that place and am going to expand my job search to see what I can find out there. I'm now back and applying to as many companies as I can that have appropriate job openings. I am going to work with the vocational rehab folks and intend to take some course work at some of the colleges here in North Carolina. This will help me refresh some of my skills and pick up some new ones! I'll keep everyone informed about the process at vocational rehab and other job-related searches. One thing I'm told over and over again is to keep applying and be persistent. So I will keep that in mind. Mike Go to Top of Page My Range of Contacts It has been a frenetic time since the last entry. I have done the following: Visited Vocational Rehab. This was an interesting visit. Anyone who has a disability should visit them, if they are looking for work. I have to follow up tomorrow and see what the status is. I do want them to help me get some training, and I want them to help me find some work. I also visited JobLink, which helps people find jobs in general. I registered with them and will be investigating their resources tomorrow as well. I'm getting registered with the Workforce Investment Act people, and hopefully they can help me get some training as well. I have registered for several classes in web-based technology, and those should be interesting. We will see; they start this week. I have a hot prospect for a job that I got through my network of friends and co workers. Networking is very important, and I suggest we all do a better job with building our networks. When folks need help, give them as much as you can. You never know when you'll need it. Tomorrow morning I have a meeting with my job counselor to update my marketing plan. I will be working on that and my resume in the early morning. This is good because it keeps me focused, and I have a deliverable. My son is home from college, and, for the first time, he has a job and I do not! WOW! Mike Go to Top of Page Bookmark this article to: 
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Hey Mike,
Sounds like you have quite a career. Something you might want to consider is building your resume around the highlights (the top three to five accomplishments). Then, if there are specific accomplishments that might appeal to certain employers, have those available to insert them into your resume when needed for those jobs.
The process of paring your information down might be easier if you ask yourself: What information does an employer absolutely need to know about me in order to hire me? That is the information to keep and build on while letting the other information go.
BMayse