Unemployment update

I know that many are interested in how I'm doing. Unemployment is kind of a slow process. And it isn't a process that I've done before, so I'm learning as I go along.

My first reaction was to sign on with an IT staffing company that was going to place me into a 6 month contract. Even though it was a contract, I was excited because it was the exact type of work I'd like to continue doing, and it was relatively close to my house, and I think salary was going to be decent. My contact said that I needed to improve my resume, which I was going to do anyway.

So I decided to have a resume work day. An old college friend saw my Facebook status, which said "resume work day", and offered to help. She had recently read a 500+ page book on resumes and had become an expert on it. She said that she felt God was calling her to help me out. She worked on it really hard, in the midst of homeschooling several children and having a trip to the beach on Labor Day weekend. And I love the final result.

By the time I got this ready, some people were already interviewing for that 6 month contract, and the IT staffing company didn't want to send any additional candidates. So this is when my "get a job quick" mentality was killed. And I started to set in for more of a longer term job search.

I met with a friend my parents' age who had helped me to find my first job. He reminded me of the power of networking, and advised me to spend most of my time on that, because it is the most effective way of finding a job.

There are a few other things I need to focus on before jumping into networking. That is, I need to sign up for some health insurance. And I need to make a variety of resumes for the different opportunities that come up. I also need to prepare some answers to standard interview questions such as "Tell me about yourself". So it's really an exercise in preparation, and I can't wait to get to the point where I'm pursuing the actual opportunities.