Time management for job hunters is tricky. On the one hand, many career counselors will tell you that finding a job is now your full-time job you should be spending 40 hours a week on. On the other hand, once you’ve exhausted the low-hanging fruit, you’ll be hard-pressed to find 8 hours of productive activities a day. It goes without saying that trying to do nothing else all day would lead most people to deep depression and/or anxiety Imagine spending 40 hours a week trying to find a date. Finding a balance and prioritizing are the key.
Working on your job search is great, but not if you’re really doing busy work. Focus on high-value activities when you’re working, focus on high-fun activities when you’re playing, and you’ll be much happier. And above all else, be honest with yourself which one you’re doing 
It’s essential to plan relaxation time in the day, because depressed interviewees don’t become employees.
Read on…
I am starting a new series of posts on news and advice for both job seekers and employers. This has been a hot topic for me for a long time, and my continued unemployment has made it even hotter. I am involved with several unemployment support and networking groups, most notably WIND Networking (who I highly recommend). I have studied job hunting like a science, and have learned many lessons from my own process, and from listening to others. I don’t claim any special training in this area, but I have studied it for a long time, and what I do works well for me. I have also been on both sides of the fence (interviewing and hiring others as well). Since this topic is important to me, I added a new category (Employment) for these articles. You can read all posts related to employment at this URL.
Years ago I had a series of pages on my old website about job hunting, but when I started porting it over to my new website, I found some of the information dated. I will certainly copy over some of the content, but I think posting articles on topics will be more helpful than creating static pages again. Please send me any and all comments and ideas for future articles. Some articles I have already planned are preparing for a technical interview. time management, and establishing a presence online.
This article is on starting your job hunt. There are several steps you should take once you “have gained increased daytime freedom”. I cannot stress enough, though, that much of this you should be thinking about before you lose your job. I will be driving that point on several of these suggestions.
Read on…
Just a link to a nice article on the subject. I know we can be pretty hard to figure out, but geeks need love too 
Here’s the article on DZone, a technology publishing company that produces valuable content for software architects and developers worldwide.
As a Software Engineer, I normally think of Agile in terms of software development. As someone who has rolled out Agile practices at several companies, I also think of it in terms of how Agile software development affects the rest of the company. The last company I worked for (yes, I’m still looking for work!) implemented full Scrum, including pair programming, TDD (as in, insufficient code coverage had a direct effect on your bonus), retrospectives, standups, etc.
I came across an interesting blog post, The Smart Entrepreneur’s Guide to Finishing What You Started, on Scott Ginsberg‘s blog that suggests entrepreneurs learn lessons from Agile, too. Scott bills himself as “The Authority on Approachability”, but most of his blog posts seem to be aimed at high-level business and marketing people. He also claims to wear a nametag 24/7, with a tattoo of a nametag sufficing for certain occasions. Everyone needs a shtick, though, and this is what us geeks call “mostly harmless“.
This post proposes favoring action over inaction, moving at a sustainable rate, making sure you’re focused on the customer’s needs, limiting scope to enable completion of a phase/project, and [post="Done Means Done Done Done" text="making sure done means done done done"]. Sound familiar?
I also liked his post 6 Ways to Rally without Being Ready, reminding us that you’re never 100% ready, but that’s not actually required to start.
I am a Knowledge Geek. I like collecting knowledge, searching knowledge, and organizing knowledge. If you read my post on my recent cellphone research, you know what I mean. I take notes at most meetings and conference I go to. That often turns out to be very advantageous, especially on longer-term projects where it could be important to find out when a particular decision was made, by who, and why. I’ve always named the files staring with the group/project/company name, followed by a YYYYMMDD timestamp, and optionally a topic after that, so finding things isn’t too hard. The larger problem I started facing recently though, is I have been taking notes on multiple computers. I needed a way of making sure I had access to at least some of these notes when and where I need them.
Up until fairly recently, I had my server and my laptop. All notes were taken on the laptop (and backed up to external USB drive). Then I got an iPhone, and found note-taking on that quite practical (using QuickOffice). Then I got a netbook (Dell Mini 10), and started using that for meetings (after I got the netbook, I didn’t use the iPhone for note-taking very much). The end result was these meeting notes were not where I needed them. I needed a way of synchronizing these notes between computers.
Read on…
There are many types of people out there. People love to categorize people, and I’m no exception. The human brain likes categorizing things, becaus it stores much of it’s data in a hierarchy. To be clear, I’m not talking a bout stereotyping, which applies attributes to anyone who exhibits other attributes (“anyone living in a trailer park is white trash”).
I was talking to a friend about other friends we have, and how some of them seem to actively seek out situations that invite chaos. I mean personal relationships, jobs, and housing situations that they know from the start, or soon after, will offer conflict, incompatibilities, or ethical quandries. Sometimes this happens due to lack of planning or insufficient research, but many times it seems to be intentional.
Other people trend toward more stable employers, more compatible partners, more trouble-free neighborhoods. It doesn’t seem to directly correlate to risk averseness. There’s something else. This is what I came up with.
Unicycle people go through life, often very successfully, always on the verge of tipping over. They don’t, because all these sources of conflict are pushing from different directions, somehow keeping the unicycle upright, but with great effort on their part. They often see it as the natural order of things
Car People are very stable. They take the time to find compatible, stable, supportive partners. They often stay at the same job (or at least the same industry) for a long time. Their lives are, in general, not necessarily more successful, but less stressful.
You might think that I am knocking the Unicycle People here, and praising the Car People, but that’s not the case. Car People have their own issues. For instance, cars are great at going straight, but it takes them a while to turn and adapt to changes in their environment. Cars must also stay on the beaten path, while the chaos of the Unicycle People may lead them to many rich, unusual, and life-changing experiences.
Bicycle people have found a way to strike a balance between chaos and stagnation. They go off-road and have rich experiences and relationships without too many flat tires and scrapes.
As with most things in life, its best to strike a balance. Even with chocolate
PS: This was my first blog post composed on my iPhone. Isn’t modern science wonderful?