Always Be Job Hunting

Where Can You Buy “Always Be Job Hunting”

Posted on July 30, 2012 by John N. Frank

While you can buy Always Be Job Hunting on Amazon.com, other outlets also are carrying my new book that will help you get a job and plan your career moves. If you are in the Chicago area, you can pick up a copy at Jay’s Barber Shop , 1579 Maple St. in Evanston. You may even see me there getting a haircut some Saturday soon, they do great work.

Victor, who now runs the shop, has been kind enough to display my books for the scores of men who walk in for haircuts there. Some of them must be job-hunting, I would think.

Amazon isn’t the only place you can buy my new book.

If you’re a Barnes & Noble fan, its online store also now has Always Be Job Hunting. I was surprised to see it there, since I had published it through an affiliate of Amazon, but apparently that affiliate also sells it to other bookstores and libraries, so let me know if you see the book elsewhere.

I also found it on a site called alibris.

Wherever you decide to buy it, I know you’ll learn important lessons from it and I look forward to discussing those with you here.
-John N. Frank

Posted in job hunting | Tagged Always Be Job Hunting, job hunting | Leave a comment

Why Should You Always Be Job Hunting?

Posted on July 27, 2012 by John N. Frank

Finding a job, especially a first job, can be such an ordeal that, once you have it, you’re likely thinking “I’m all set now, no more worrying about a job.”

I’d say that’s exactly the wrong way to think. In today’s work world, you need to always be job hunting, always thinking about what your next career move will be and how you’ll get there.

No one is guaranteeing you a set number of years at a new job. In public relations, for example, work at agencies is dependent on the volume of client work. Big clients walk away and staff can be let go. In corporate PR, the public relations department is often one of the first to be trimmed in tough times.

Buy “Always Be Job Hunting” today.

So what does always be job hunting mean? The five basics of my job-hunting philosophy are:

* Start building a wide assortment of skills from the first day you start a job – the more skills, the more attractive you are to a next employer and the more jobs you can search for.

* Join groups, associations and organizations that get you known – networking is too important to leave for when you’re out of work. Do it constantly and do it by showing your competency in volunteer endeavors, not just by glad-handing at industry events.

* Volunteer for pro-bono work and for assignments that no one else wants – this builds your personal brand; show what you’re capable of, don’t just talk about it.

* Build a life outside work; join community and social organizations – job leads come from all sources. The more people who know you, the more who are likely to tell you about a job.

* Become a student of your local professional scene – know who’s expanding, who is contracting, who has the best workplace reputation, a creative reputation, who pays the highest salaries. That way, you can pick your next job rather than passively waiting for one to come along.
John.N. Frank

This post originally ran as a guest post on Culpwrit.com, a blog for PR students

Posted in finding a first job, job hunting, Job search tips | Tagged Always Be Job Hunting, job hunting, search tips | Leave a comment

Guest Post Part III: What is a ‘Job’ Today?

Posted on July 26, 2012 by John N. Frank

Tom McDermott got in touch with me through LinkedIn after seeing a post about my book in a business group made up of alumni from my high school, Xavier, in New York City. He and I had a discussion about what “working” means in today’s no-job-security world and he mentioned he had done a guest piece for the New York Post, there titled Land of the Free Agents, on his own odyssey from white-collar professional to freelancing entrepreneur. With his permission, I’m reprinting his story here, this is the second of three parts.

In the months and years that followed, career consultants continued to advise that people like me needed 200 great contacts, 20 or so hot prospects, and meeting after meeting with hiring managers in order to generate two or three fantastic offers. Meanwhile, I and others like me — the other displaced workers I met in networking groups — seemed to be living on another planet. No matter how hard we applied ourselves, few of us generated real offers. Many could not generate any response at all from their inquiries.

I began to feel like all of us were caught up in a tectonic shift in the American economy and culture, running even deeper than the recession. The old world of jobs — by which I mean full-time employment at a growing enterprise run by reasonably honest people, where we work alongside others and receive a regular paycheck and benefits including health insurance — seems to be disappearing for many of us.
Instead, we’re living in a DIY world where everybody is building a Web site, branding themselves, looking inward for an identity or a service or a product to sell, rather than outward for a “job” to perform. Some 42 million Americans are now independent workers of some sort, according to the ever-growing Freelancers Union, whose president, Sara Horowitz, has called this shift toward free agents — many of whom work a hodgepodge of jobs across different sectors — the biggest change in the workforce since the Industrial Revolution.

Those of us who are searching, reinventing and transitioning in the elusive New New Economy are working harder than ever — just not necessarily at a single job. Or one that comes with steady pay.

In other words, a lot of people like me have begun to fundamentally change the way we think of a “job.” Continue reading →

Posted in career switch, job hunting, Job search tips, unemployment | Tagged career changes, frustration, job hunting, search tips | Leave a comment

Guest Post, Part II: What Does a Job Mean Today?

Posted on July 25, 2012 by John N. Frank

I arrived here by a familiar route. One morning in 2007, I boarded a commuter train in Westchester to my job as an administrative executive at a Manhattan-based media company, where I’d worked for 18 years. I was 58 at the time, and had been promoted to director of operations and corporate services four years previously, after many years of managing corporate travel services and sourcing.

But by the time I returned home late that night, my life and those of about 1,000 of my former colleagues had been dramatically altered. Our company had eliminated our jobs.

T.W. McDermott

As my then 15-year-old daughter so succinctly put it: “Dad, you got fired? Will we have enough money? Will we need to sell the house?” As it turned out: yes, barely and yes. Leave it to a teenager to cut right to the truth in under 140 characters, with no adult-speak about “early retirement” or “job elimination.” Continue reading →

Posted in career switch, job hunting, Job search tips, unemployment | Tagged Always Be Job Hunting, career changes, frustration, job hunting, transition nation | Leave a comment

Guest Post: Welcome to Transition Nation or What Does Working Mean Today?

Posted on July 24, 2012 by John N. Frank

Tom McDermott got in touch with me through LinkedIn after seeing a post about my book in a business group made up of alumni from my high school, Xavier, in New York City. He and I had a discussion about what “working” means in today’s no-job-security world and he mentioned he had done a guest piece for the New York Post, there titled Land of the Free Agents, on his own odyssey from white-collar professional to entrepreneur. With his permission, I’m reprinting his story here over the next three days.

It was early on a raw winter morning, as I passed through Stamford, Conn., on my way to interview someone for a $100 freelance story, when I realized my work life had probably changed forever. As I passed the UBS building, I thought about traders who’d been checking the global markets for hours already; same at a dozen nearby hedge funds and cap management firms, a virtual ground zero of the 2008 financial crisis.

T.W. McDermott

Across from all that, literally on the other side of the tracks, a few dozen guys were lined up along a service road, waiting for the pickup trucks that cruise by looking for day workers, like rough-and-tumble models on an urban catwalk. Continue reading →

Posted in career switch, job hunting, unemployment | Tagged free agent, getting fired, job hunting, middle manager, transition nation | 1 Comment

Should Marissa Mayer Have Been Job Hunting While Pregnant?

Posted on July 23, 2012 by John N. Frank

The news that Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!’s newly hired CEO, is pregnant and was pregnant as Yahoo courted her away from Google has raised all sorts of discussions in the blogosphere and traditional media about the challenges of being a working mother and about whether she should have been job hunting while pregnant to begin with.

My answer is she definitely should have been job hunting. My book is called Always Be Job Hunting, after all, not Be Job Hunting Except When Life Events Get in the Way.

Marissa Mayer

Pregnancy is a major life-altering event for women, of course, but so are many others, for both men and women. The care of a sick parent comes to mind as a situation that may require tremendous commitments of time and energy, for example. I changed jobs in 2005 as my mother’s health was deteriorating and I eventually needed to secure live-in caregivers for her. It was a strain but it was something I managed.

Life doesn’t make it easy for us to advance our careers or to stay employed. I recently saw a poster on a friend’s Facebook page that says: “If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done.”

I echo that when it comes to job hunting, there is no perfect time to do it. The perfect time is every day, even if you only spend 10-15 minutes scanning ads, answering one ad or networking with one potential employer.
John N. Frank

Posted in job hunting, management issues | Tagged Always Be Job Hunting, coping with a new job, job hunting, Marissa Mayer, new job | Leave a comment

Guest Post: Don’t Be Thrown By a Career Setback

Posted on July 19, 2012 by John N. Frank

Tony and I do the blog GuysandGoodHealth.com, writing about men, health and eating there. This post ran on that blog but is relevant to AlwaysBeJobHunting.com too and so we are rerunning it here.

At the beginning of my career I worked for men’s magazines. They were the kind considered sexy at the time, but by current internet standards they would be described as quaint at best. At the time I was married and my first wife was pregnant with our son.

The tool of my trade

It was a small publishing house with about 30 people working in editorial, art, production, sales and distribution. We produced several trade magazines on other subjects, too.

Our publisher, Felix, (not his real name), was in his late 50’s and from time to time would take advantage of attractive females who worked for him. This was before such things as sexual harassment suits so he operated with impunity. Felix also had a personality on the unpleasant side and had few friends, so he would often have office lunches and hold court with us over lunch. He paid the bill, but we paid more heavily in boredom.

Ginny was an attractive woman who edited one of his trade magazines. Ginny and I became friends and conspired with another of the writers to leave for lunch early to avoid several of Felix’s lunches.

Felix pressured Ginny as he had other women, but she just laughed at him. She was happily married to a successful businessman and didn’t need the job. She knew that Felix had no leverage over her.

Because he had seen Ginny leaving with me and the other editor, Felix tried to start office gossip about ‘Tony and Ginny.’ The staff knew better, so no real harm was done other than to diminish him further in the eyes of his employees.

My son was born on April 15 of that year. Again, this was long before paternal leaves. I asked to talk with Felix because I wanted to take a couple of days off to help my wife with our newborn son and our 5-year old daughter.

Felix called me into his office and told me (after 18 months), “It isn’t working out.” He gave me a check for two weeks severance pay and fired me.

I was devastated by this act. I had never been fired from anything in my life. I knew I was good at my job, but also realized that was irrelevant in this situation. I was driving to the hospital to visit my wife and new baby trying to decide whether or not I should tell her what had happened. This was a blow. We had only been married six years and had the usual mortgage, car loans, etc. and not a lot of savings.

Finally, I decided to tell her about it, thinking that it would be more stressful for her to find out later. Also, I really didn’t like the idea of lying to her no matter what the situation. As it turned out, she took it well and we decided I just needed to get a resume together and check out the want ads on Sunday. This was in the days before the internet and Monster.com. Also, we did have two weeks covered before we had to start worrying about finances.

That Sunday I answered a number of ads including one for an international wire service. I got an interview with them, spent two weeks taking care of my son and daughter with my wife and – got the job.

I started working for Reuters two weeks to the day after I was fired. So, the financial deathblow attempted by Felix turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me career-wise. I worked for Reuters for 20 years, setting up their coverage of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in the heyday of pork bellies and live cattle. I got a magnificent economic education covering the markets. After a tennis injury I moved over to the Chicago Board of Trade and learned the grains and soybean complex markets. In 1977 I was the first American transferred from the U.S. to London to work in the Reuter office on Fleet St. An unparalleled learning and personal growth experience for me.

I wanted to mention some highlights of my career at Reuters because they were a direct result of the firing by Felix whose intentions had only been to cause me harm.

I love the irony of the fact that his diabolical act of treachery turned out to be the springboard for a wonderful new career as a successful professional journalist on an international stage.

Not incidentally, John and I met during my tenure at Reuters, so this blog would not be in existence if it weren’t for my firing by Felix.

You can read Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Anatomy of an Act of Kindness by clicking the links.

No matter how bleak things look for you remember how this worked out for me. I know it’s a cliche but when one door closes another door opens. Be on the lookout for it.
Tony

Posted in career switch, management issues, unemployment | Tagged bosses, career changes, fighting with the boss, getting fired | Leave a comment

When is it Time to Walk Away from a Job?

Posted on July 18, 2012 by John N. Frank

Most people are so happy to find a job, especially in this horrible economy, that they don’t give much thought to knowing when it’s time to walk away from a job. But it’s important to know when to do that, for your health and peace of mind, and often for your wallet as well.

A controversy has flared in Chicago recently about a news service the Chicago Tribune was using that was caught plagiarizing and making things up in reports it supplied.

Would you work for a knowingly unethical organization or company?

This is reportedly the Twitter avatar for the controversial news service Journatic, recently dropped by the Chicago Tribune

Continue reading →

Posted in career switch, management issues | Tagged Always Be Job Hunting, coping with a new job, fighting with the boss, time to leave | Leave a comment

The Budget Challenge Once You Have a New Job

Posted on July 17, 2012 by John N. Frank

Why is it that every time I start a new job, budgets are soon slashed?

I asked that question recently on my Facebook page and received the following reply from a college classmate who is in the public relations field. His name is Kevin McCarthy, originally form Milwaukee where he and I went to Marquette University together when it still had a journalism school (now it’s a college of communications). I’ve removed the company name he used on Facebook.

With his permission, I’m reprinting his comments here. The lesson for others: getting a job is a battle. As a manager, functioning in a new job also is a battle.

College classmate Kevin McCarthy…and so it goes…

Kevin writes in response to my question:
“Reminds me when I went to [unnamed oil company]. Three weeks after I started, the company began offering voluntary severance packages. My new co-workers assumed I knew someone at the company, because they figured that was the only way someone could be hired in that environment. Within three months, I had reactivated my job search.

It took me a year and eight months to extricate myself from that. Returned to Milwaukee for a job…that was eliminated three years later. Moved to Charlotte for a job…that was eliminated five years later. And so it goes.”

Posted in career switch, management issues | Tagged coping with a new job, frustration, job hunting, new job, new job stress, time to leave | Leave a comment

AlwaysbeJobHunting.com is Expanding to Include Job Leads

Posted on July 16, 2012 by John N. Frank

AlwaysBeJobHunting.com, like a career itself, is an ever-expanding endeavor. We’ve now added a jobs page where we’ll post leads for jobs we hear about. If you have leads, please let us know.

Finding a job is like fighting a war, the more weapons you have, the better.

The page also will serve as a networking tool. If you’re searching for a contact at a company, let us know and perhaps another visitor to the site will have the information you need. We want this site to grow into a true job-hunting community.

I’ve also added a bio/media contact page so you all can read a little more about my career. It’s also for media types who stop by looking for comments on careers, the job market and other related topics. I’m here to be a resource for you.
John N. Frank