The Story Begins

I was enjoying my job at Lenovo the work was complex and I could use my modelling skills in Excel. I knew my time was coming up as the hyperion system was going online in the following quarter. I was sent over to Malaysia for 3 weeks, the guys over there were really nice I was able to train them and also enjoy the shopping as well. Though I was sick for the whole 3 weeks and could not enjoy the food as much as I would have liked to .

When I came back, it was nice to have a break. I had been working 60 – 70 hours a week trying to get these models out and was happy to let my brain have a rest and had not had a holiday in a long time. I don’t usually take notice of what is really happening in the economy, all I knew was we were having a mining boom and China would keep the Australian economy buoyant.

Then the GFC. I started looking for work but by that stage the market had already decided to shut down. Summer came along, nothing happens in the summer, everybody is on holidays and the feedback from recruiters now is that it was one of the quietest summer’s they have ever seen. My resume was being presented to prospective employees but that is as far as it got.

I received a break when I got through to the interview stage with a Telco company. I got excellent feedback from my recruiter, Louise Pope, and from the interviewees but realised at the end of the interview that I was not going to be offered the job. The line was “we used the agent as only a backup as we have done our own advertising internally, you will hear if you get a second interview”. I knew then that was the end of that prospect.

My recruitrer ask how all other prospects had gone so I told her my story, she told me that I should be working and it was because my resume was not “cutting it“ when it got to the managers stage. So she introduced me to a career consultant, Kim Seeling Smith, who had already seen my resume due to previous applications to the agency and her response was that my resume was “ok”. She re-did my resume and introduced me to LinkedIn, which was at the end of March.

I had never social networked before, I did not see not see the benefits of joining any social network of any sort. I am a very private person and did not want to loose my privacy into the public domain. I had not even joined Facebook even at the request of many friends. Joining LinkedIn would mean I would have to tell everybody what I did for a crust. My friends at work did not know what I did or even my education. I am not one to brag.

So I join LinkedIn. I only put a summary of my role at Lenovo and I include all my other jobs. I start inviting people who I thought knew my work and me, I was omitting people who knew me, those who knew my work and those who had been at the end of many conference calls. I invited my Mr.P and Mr.VP but then withdrew the invitations as I had not met them in person eventhough I had received many emails and pings directly from them, I don’t know what I was thinking. And even sent a couple of I don’t knows as LinkedIn said only to accept inviations from people you know.

One of my ex-managers from Lenovo did not want to join LinkedIn to give me a recommendation. I thought that only managers could give you recommendations. My career consultant came to the rescue, she told me I had to connect with everybody I knew and recommendations were only a bonus. I also had to load everything on my profile but I didn’t want everybody to know about me. She told me that everything was in the public domain anyway so I had nothing to fear. I was reluctant but agreed with her.

So off I went connecting to everybody I knew. I wrote back to my ex-Mr.P and Mr.VP apologising for withdrawal as I just didn’t know how it worked. I recieved sincere replies from both of them and invitations to their networks. I appreciated their genuine responses. And sent back invitations to the people I sent ”don’t knows” and they kindly accepted.  It is amazing to see the support network you have out there without knowing it. Just having the small network I had, made me feel that I was not alone in my quest to find my dream job.

The next thing was to get my recommendations. So I looked at how LinkedIn had setup the recommendations. I thought this is pretty easy, just choose from the list, maximum 50, and see what you get back. I received a great response from my ex-colleagues at Lenovo and the recommendations were so nice, I did not know my work had received the acknowledgment it had.

My profile is complete, I have connected to as many people as I can without having their email addresses, have recommendations and have started joining groups to connect to more people with the same interest and backgrounds. But what now?

Next post in The Story ->  Being Proactive