How to Move Forward When You're Out of Work and Feeling Lost

a post by Tazeem Weljie for the Tiny Buddha blog



“My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.” ~Richard Branson

Let’s face it, losing a job sucks! Over the last couple of months, I have been chatting with friends who have recently been affected by organizational changes resulting in being out of work involuntarily. This is a situation all too familiar to millions of people, frequently through no fault of their own. Often it’s a result of an economic downturn, restructuring, acquisitions, and cost savings.

A couple of years ago, while I was on a business trip, I found out my role would be coming to an end. It wasn’t completely unexpected, and I was actually relieved. However, as an expat it was overwhelming.

Would I have to move back to my home country? Would I have to leave the place where I’d started to build a life? What about my volunteer commitments? This and so much more spun around my head.

Thank goodness for re-runs of How I Met Your Mother. Upon finding out the news, I spent hours obsessed with the saga of Ted and Robin while indulging in cookies and ice cream. After a few days, (and before my jeans got too tight), I picked myself up and started moving forward. I was reminded of some valuable lessons along the way.

Continue reading to find out about those lessons and whether you can apply them to your life situation.
As an ex employment adviser I found a couple of new ideas which I think, however, probably only apply to more professional roles.

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Slate: Being Bad at the Internet Shouldn’t Disqualify Job Candidates

an article by Jane C. Hu for SLATE [grateful thanks to ResearchBuzz: Firehose for this]

Why you shouldn’t discount applicants who use Comic Sans in all their professional emails.


Photo illustration by Slate. Photo Tero Vesalainen/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

Once upon a time, as many millennials have likely heard from their parents, you went into a place of business and handed the managers your résumé, applying right then and there. While a handful of jobs might still work this way, ask anyone who’s applied for a job in the past decade or so and they’ll tell you that hiring now takes place exclusively online. Sometimes jobs require emails to would-be superiors with application materials; other times, applicants send their credentials through a web form, which feels no different than throwing your résumé into a black hole.

In the U.S., students sometimes learn to write résumés and cover letters in high school. Many college campuses have career centers that teach the same skills. But few people, especially those who graduated long before applications migrated online, have been explicitly taught how to use the internet in job searches. These applications have added an unspoken requirement that candidates possess basic knowledge about how to appear professional online, making an already-difficult-to-navigate system even more opaque.

Continue reading

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Clampdown on social media snoops

Employers need a legal ground to justify vetting potential job candidates on the basis of their Facebook and Twitter profiles, the EU regulators have said.

The Article 29 Working Party gave the view in its recently released Opinion on data processing at work, which aims to provide guidance on balancing employee privacy expectations in the workplace with employers' legitimate interests in processing employee data.

The Opinion (which like other Opinions is not legally binding) is applicable to all types of employees and not just those under employment contract.

Information provided by Privacy and Data Protection Volume 127 Issue 7 (July/August 2017)

A copy of the Opinion is available at www.pdpjournals.com/docs/88772

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Vacancy Referrals, Job Search, and the Duration of Unemployment: A Randomized Experiment

an article by Per Engström, Patrik Hesselius and Bertil Holmlund (Uppsala University, Sweden) published in LABOUR Volume 26 Issue 4 (December 2012)

Abstract

One goal of the Public Employment Service is to facilitate matching between unemployed job-seekers and job vacancies; another goal is to monitor job search so as to bring search efforts among the unemployed in line with search requirements.

The referral of job-seekers to vacancies is one instrument used for these purposes.

We report results from a randomised Swedish experiment where the outcome of referrals is examined.

To what extent do unemployed individuals actually apply for the jobs they are referred to?

Does information to job-seekers about increased monitoring affect the probability of applying and the probability of leaving unemployment?

The experiment indicates that a relatively large fraction (one-third) of the referrals do not result in job applications. Information about intensified monitoring causes an increase in the probability of job application, especially among young people.

However, we find no significant impact on the duration of unemployment.

JEL classifications: C99, J64, J68

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