Blog Post: What I learned after 6 months of being unemployed...

After ending a pretty exciting commercial real estate career path and being "Pink Slipped" for six months or so, I was complacent, bored and starting to get a little worried. The severance pay was starting to dwindle away. I started eying the 20%-of-take-home-pay I stashed away into the rainy-day savings account. I knew that the $450 weekly unemployment benefits were going to end at some point.

I needed a job.

I went to my first job fair sometime in May 2008. I remember I was dressed for the multiple field interviews and my resume was ready to kill the head hunters. As I parked the car, I was kind of excited because I was going to woo-over the recruiters. I was positive and said in my head "Commercial Real Estate recruiter here I come".

As I walked into the convention room, there were tons of fresh out of college grads and depressed looking experienced workers.  I stopped at the door, looked around and read the list of hiring companies. All of the companies were either financial/insurance commission only jobs, retail or public service workers, which were not my industries. The real disappointment was that the energy of everyone there drained me as I stood in line to talk to my first hiring manager, which was actually a temp agency.

I couldn't handle the vibe and left after a few minutes in line. I had a great attitude going in but after five minutes I just wanted to shoot myself.

In retrospect, I should have used this to my advantage instead of giving up the cattle call resume collection fest.

I should have realized that everyone there had resources that I didn't have. Everyone in the room either knew someone that I needed to talk to or introduce me to someone who knew someone else who could help me find a job. I should have used that opportunity to network with the person to the front of me, to the back of me and even to the people drinking the free water.

I should have kept the positive attitude even when the hiring companies were not right for me.

Take away this... use every opportunity to your benefit. If you are at a function that on the surface wont serve your needs, look around and try to salvage what you can to make it a positive experience. In this economy, everything is going to be difficult. Do your best to uncover any opportunity you can take advantage of.  Talk to everyone and get some value of what people are telling you.

In the next blog, I want to share with you what I learned at a Los Angeles economic conference and why it was important to develop a community to help job seekers find jobs before a potential economic crisis.