The following is from frequent contributor Kosmo

Three years ago, I was in the middle of a job hunt.  I took you along for the journey.  I eventually landed a position about a month before my old job ended.  For those of you who weren’t along on that journey, the company decided to get rid of remote workers, and I was one of hundreds affected.

I’ve been in my current role since March of 2018, and it has been an enjoyable experience.  The work has been interesting, and I’ve worked with great people – both my co-workers and the business partners we create systems for.  I’ve even interviewed for some manager positions.  It has been pretty awesome.

A reorganization was announced a couple of months ago.  One hundred and fifty people in our IT department were laid off.  The programmer who sat next to me was one of the people affected.  I was moved to a new team and immediately went from being the top expert on my old systems to a complete novice on the new ones.  Even the potential of a manager role became less interesting as a result of the changes.  This isn’t the first reorg in recent years, but it’s the first one that has had a direct impact on me.

In the coming weeks, I lost much of the fire that had made me a dynamic employee.  The effort to handle the fallout of multiple recent reorgs is taking time away from more productive work.  It’s frustrating.  I want to do work that is difficult and challenging.  Many of my recent tasks fall short of that bar.  Eventually, I made the decision to begin a new job search.  This job search is different than the previous one in a lot of ways.

1. Urgency

My previous job search was driven by the fact that I would be losing my job on a particular date.  I left no stone unturned in an effort to make sure I had a new job by the time the old one ended.  I ended up in one of the best possible jobs.  A lot of the jobs I applied for had some serious warts. Many weren’t a great fit for my skills or had long commutes.

There is no urgency in my current job search.  Although my new area doesn’t see me as quite the rock star that my old area did (and still does – as I’m still pulled in when needed), I’m relatively safe in my position.  I can afford to take my time and wait for the right position.

2. Preparation

When I kicked off my last job search, I had been caught completely off guard.  My resume was outdated and I hadn’t done even casual job hunting in a decade.  I wasn’t even sure how the industry even referred to someone with my skill set.  It took quite a bit of time to get my resume squared away and to get my job search focused on jobs that would be a good fit.  I needed to figure out a new-fangled thing called LinkedIn.

I have made an effort to keep my resume updated recently.  Every couple of months, I pull up my resume and make relevant changes – adding recent accomplishments, new responsibilities, and any recently acquired skills.  At the same time, I also removed aspects that are no longer relevant.

3. Location

My last job search was limited to companies within an hour drive of my home.  We have roots in this area – my wife’s career is with a local organization, and we have two kids in school.  Relocating for a new job was a last resort.

As a result of COVID-19, A lot of companies have become more accepting of remote workers.  Some even advertise themselves as “remote first” organizations.  This means that geography is no longer a limiting factor.  If I can work from my dungeon basement, it doesn’t matter if the team is located in New York City, Miami, or Topeka.

The flip side of this is that the companies are also able to cast a wider net.  They aren’t limited to employees in their geographical area.  So, while there might be more potential jobs for me, there are also more potential applicants.

Overall, I see this as a net gain.  I should be able to focus on the jobs that are the best fit for my skills, instead of simply looking at the jobs that are nearby.  Being located in Iowa also gives me a cost-of-living advantage over applicants from large metro areas.

The search begins

I’m writing this on Christmas Eve.  I kicked off my job search on December 12.  How’s it going?  Well, it’s definitely starting off better than the last one.

A friend and former colleague works at a company about an hour south of where I live.  It’s a considerably smaller company than the one I currently work for, but still a company that does more than a billion dollars of business every year.  The upside of a smaller company is that there’s considerably more autonomy and not as much red tape.  In other words, more time spent on productive work.  It’s a similar position to my friend’s, but with a bit more focus on technical skills, such as a bit of minor data wrangling.

My friend – let’s call him Bryan, because that’s his name – has mentioned the position to me multiple times in the past few months.  It has always sounded like a great fit.  The reason for my lack of interest has always been the same – the commute.  A commute of an hour each way isn’t the greatest sacrifice in the world, but it’s simply not something I’m interested in doing.

I pinged Bryan a few days ago to ask if there was any chance his company was considering 100% remote candidates for this position.  No, but they were looking at 2-3 remote workdays per week.  I spent a weekend thinking about this and decided that a split of 2 days in the office and 3 days remote would be acceptable.

Bryan put my resume in front of his boss on Monday.  His boss reached out via email and we set up a call from Tuesday afternoon.  I wasn’t technically a candidate at this point – I hadn’t formally applied through the standard process.  This was probably the first time in my life where I had used my social network to gain an inside track for a position.

Interview

Tuesday’s call went well.  The position seems interesting.  I would basically be coordinating a multi-year implementation of a new HRIS (human resources information system) system.  I’ve taken a look at the vendor solution and it looks like an interesting and complex system to implement.  Lots of moving pieces.

The manager is a little bit on the fence about whether the position will require two days in the office per week, or three.  I’m pretty confident that if everything else aligns, I can convince him to do two.  The company’s location works against them in attracting candidates.  They’re located in a small city (those of you from large urban areas would call it a town), and it’s a fairly long commute from any of the surrounding metro areas.  They’re growing and want to attract high-quality candidates.  To do that, they’re most likely going to have to be more flexible on work from home.  Management is slowly coming around to this idea.  Their employees have been working from home for about nine months now, and they’re realizing that an employee who’s working from home is actually working – they aren’t just playing Mario all day.

At the end of Tuesday’s call, the manager asked me to formally apply for the position, so that we could move forward with the process.  On Wednesday, HR contacted me to set up a panel interview for the first week of January.  Things are moving about as fast as possible, considering the fact that it’s impossible to arrange interviews during the holidays, due to too many key players being out of the office.

The future

My friend won’t be a part of the interview panel.  This makes sense, as including him would compromise the integrity of the process.  He has, however, been able to give me good insight into the different roles within the company.  I’ve also asked him questions about how the company approaches certain problems.  At this point, I’m getting a lot of good answers.  Although it’s a smaller company than my current one, it seems to be well-managed.

I’ll spend a lot of time in the next week preparing for the interview – and watching football.

This is a continuation of Kosmo’s Job Search Journey, but you can read it as a standalone article.

The Whole Job Search Series:
1. You’re Fired
2. Assessing the Situation
3. Networking
4. Learn
5. The Interview
6. Frustration
7. Success
8. Sink or Swim
9. Search for Stability
10. Job Search Journey: The Interview the Lasted for Seven Months
11. Advice

Two years ago, I was facing the impending loss of my job.  I was nearly three months into my job search, and barely three months from the point where I would no longer have a job.  Panic had begun to set in – I was wondering how long we might have to survive on one salary, and how I would avoid getting bored while unemployed.  For that matter, what was the process for filing unemployment?

Happily, it never came to that.  I ended up finding a job about six weeks before the clocked stopped.  I coordinated my start date with the termination date for my old job, so that I’d qualify for my severance. After eight months as a contract employee, I transitioned to permanent employee status.  My employer is one of the most prestigious companies in the area.  Overall, things worked out really well.

Now, I’m looking to take the next step in my career.  My boss left for another job.  I applied for his job, interviewed for the position, and am awaiting the decision.  My interview wasn’t perfect, but went well.  I was able to make most of my key points.  I think I have a decent shot at the job.  If not now, I think it’s just a matter of time.

Why become a manager?

I was a regular employee at my previous job for more than twenty years.  During that time, I never had an interest in becoming a manager.  Why not?  Mostly because I was always surrounded by very experienced teams members on autonomous teams.  Honestly, as a manager, if you have a twenty year employee with a track record of success, you should have a fairly hands-off approach.  Be available for guidance, make them aware of any new information (changes in policy, etc), help remove roadblocks, but don’t micro-manage.  Stay out of their way and let them get work done.

At my current company, there are a lot of people who are less experienced.  Many of these people are bright, but they simply don’t have the experience to have learned some life lessons.  You learn a lot by making mistakes – and often times, they haven’t yet made those mistakes.  They may need explanations of why things are done one way and not another.  Many times, the answer is that the approved way has more safeguards and exposes the company to less risk.  They may also be unsure of what their career path will be, and may need someone to show them the options, and help them take the next steps.

I’ve spent my career helping to build IT systems for people.  This work is akin to picking the fruit from a tree.  When you retire, your legacy disappears fairly quickly.  I want to become Johnny Appleseed (Johnny Careerseed), helping employees become productive and happy (akin to planting fruit trees instead of merely picking up the fruit).  The legacy of Johnny Careerseed will live on after Johnny has retired.

How to become a manager

Obviously, you can’t simply decided to become a manager and have your wish granted.  You have to take some steps to prepare.  Here are a few of those steps.

Be good at your current job

If you have a reputation as a poor performer in your current job, you’re not going to be seriously considered, even if the jobs are completely different.  If you’re a mediocre performer at your current job, focus on improving your performance, before applying for manager positions.

Initiative

The analyst I replaced wasn’t someone who showed a lot of initiative.  I was able to make an immediate positive impression by jumping in and taking some initiative to move my project forward.  At this point, I am the project lead, and I do many of the task which typically fall to a project manager.

Interpersonal skills

You don’t need to become best friends with everyone you work with, but it’s helpful to at least have a positive or neutral working relationship with everyone.  In your current role, you might be able to avoid interacting with certain co-workers.  As a manager, you won’t have that ability.  You’ll need to interact with all of your employees in a fair, non-partial way.

My boss also “volunteered” me to work on a committee for his boss.  This ended up being a good opportunity to have face time with his boss – the guy who happens to be the hiring manager for the job I applied for.

Interview experience

If you become a manager, you’ll have the opportunity to hire new employees at some point.  Interviews look very difference from the other side of the table.  If possible, gain some experience on an interview panel.  Be an active participant, but also pay attention to the other people in the interview.  If you hear an insightful question steal borrow it for future use.

In the past year, I’ve been involved in about a dozen interviews.  Recently, my project manager asked if I’d be interested in being on the panel for a position she was trying to fill.  It’s not even a position on my team, so it helps bolster my reputation as a team player, while also gaining me valuable experience.

One thing I always try to do is smile and nod a lot during the meeting, to help put the interviewee at ease.  The goal of an interview is to determine if the applicant can do the job; often, nervousness during the interview makes it more difficult to determine how well the person can do the job.

Fun fact: the project manager was initially interested in poaching me for the position, until it became apparent that she couldn’t afford me.  That made me feel better about my negotiating skills – I’m apparently doing quite compared to others in my role.

Training

Take advantage of any training your company offers.  I was able to take a course on “difficult conversations” that I found useful.  Historically, I haven’t been great at confrontation, but I’ve improved pretty dramatically in recent years.

Advice

Finally, look around you and get advice from family or friends.  I have several friends who are IT managers, serving in similar roles to the position I’m seeking.  I’ve reached out for them for their thoughts and advice, and I’ll continue to do that in the future.  Shared information makes everyone stronger.

This is a continuation of Kosmo’s Job Search Journey.

The Whole Job Search Series:
1. You’re Fired
2. Assessing the Situation
3. Networking
4. Learn
5. The Interview
6. Frustration
7. Success
8. Sink or Swim
9. Search for Stability
10. Job Search Journey: The Interview the Lasted for Seven Months

The timing of this update is particularly helpful as I’ve been extremely sick the last couple of days and all my other responsibilities have been piling up.

Now that I have arrived at the successful conclusion of my job search, it’s time for me to turn my experiences into advice for other job seekers.

Get started immediately

If you’re getting a severance payment, it can be tempting to take a few months off and live off the severance.  I know several people from my previous job who did this.  I’d caution against doing this.  Get started with the job search immediately, because you never know how long it will take you to find a job.  If you get an offer, you can always negotiate a start date with the new employer.  Most employers won’t mind delaying the start date a week or two if you want to take some time off.  I found out that I would be losing my job a full six months before the termination date.  Despite having this much notice – and a healthy severance – I started the search immediately.  I applied for a job that night.

What did I do with that severance payment?  Invested it in an index fund, where I’m not tempted to spend it.

Explore all your options

At first, I was only looking for permanent positions.  It hadn’t even occurred to me to consider contract work until a staffing company happened to email my wife, asking if she knew anyone interested in a business analyst position.

I also left no stone unturned when it came to submitting resumes.  I submitted resumes for nearly every opening within a 70 mile radius.  (Note that I live in Iowa, so 70 miles is roughly a 70 minute drive).  I submitted resumes at companies that employed thousands, as well as companies that employed dozens.  I submitted resumes to companies hiring teleworkers.  I did avoid a handful of companies that had incredibly toxic reputations, but only a few.

Look at all the benefits

Salary is the thing that most people focus on.  Let’s compare two hypothetical job offers.

• Employer A offers a salary of $100,000, 2% 401(k) matching, and two weeks of PTO.
• Employer B offers a salary of $95,000, 5% 401(k) matching, defined contribution pension (5% of salary), and four weeks of PTO.

Which of these benefit packages is better?  It’s B.  The 401(k) matching, pension, and extra PTO easily offset the $5000 difference in salary.

Often, it’s not as clear cut.  You might need to choose between a higher salary and a more flexible schedule or choose between a nonprofit and a large multinational corporation.  In the end, you need to determine what is important to you.

Focus on your strengths

If you’re like most people, not all of your responsibilities fit nicely into a specific role.  In my case, I had begun my career as a business analyst, but had taken programming classes and had done coding work on large projects that deployed enterprise level tools.  For much of my career, I had functioned in a hybrid role, doing whichever tasks were needed at the moment.  Most companies aren’t looking to hire hybrids, though.  They’re looking to fill a specific role.

I had to decide whether to advertise myself as a programmer or a business analyst.  In my case, it wasn’t particular difficult.  My somewhat limited experience and background as a programmer meant that I was was somewhat weaker on those skills than I was as a business analyst.  So I pitched myself as a business analyst who had some bonus technical skills.

Interview often

If you have the opportunity to partake in mock interviews, do it.  I didn’t do this (despite having ample opportunity), and wish I had.  Interviewing is a nerve-wracking experience, but it gets easier with repetition.  It helps you get prepared for certain types of questions, as well as getting comfortable with the interview process itself.

Remember that the process is just as difficult for the hiring manager as it is for you.  They aren’t trying to trip you up; they’re just trying to get a good feel for your skills.  I’ve been on a few interview panels at my current job, and it’s very difficult to determine if someone is a good fit based on a short interview.  Getting an insight into the person’s thought process is often more important than the specific answer.

Be positive

Always be positive in an interview.  When asked why you’re leaving an employer, put a positive spin on it.  In my case, I said that my company was consolidating its IT workforce into four locations, and that I preferred not to move because of my strong roots to the local area.

Enter the interview with a smile, exit it with a smile, and try to keep a positive demeanor during the interview, even if the interview is stressing you out.  A key thing to remember is that the interviewer wants you to do well.  They want you to be the candidate they hire, so that they can wrap up the expensive and time consuming search process.

The positivity shouldn’t stop when you get the job, especially if it’s a contract position or the job has a probationary challenge.  See obstacles as challenges to solve rather than negative aspects of you job.  How someone fits into a team is very important.  We recently lobbied our boss to have a new team member assigned to a solo project.  The team member wasn’t much of a team player and was killing morale and productivity.  The boss agreed, moved some people around, and productivity skyrocketed.

Help others

So you found a job?  Maybe you leveraged some connections to get a leg up.  Remember that this is a two way street.  If you become aware of former colleagues who are looking for a job, reach out to them.  Offer to be a reference, a sound board, a resume reviewer, anything.  Not only will this produce good karma, but you never know when you might need help from that person.

Final Personal Thoughts

It’s Lazy Man back for this section.

I think Kosmo hit on many things that were important for my job search journey. There was a big tech layoff in 2001 and the whole department was let go. I got a sizable severance, but I still did everything I could to find a new job. Unfortunately at the time, there were so many programmers and no one was hiring. That’s what happens when there is a technology bubble bust. The supply and demand was simply not on my side.

This experience played directly into me creating Lazy Man and Money with the idea of exploring financial independence and alternative income streams. It wasn’t like I could live at the time on just my dog sitting income, but it definitely extends your emergency fund.

Unfortunately for me, perhaps the advice that hit home the hardest was to focus on strengths. Though I have a background as a software engineer, I get bored doing one thing and got bored doing that. I started the blog and that has been good for awhile. However, I’m midway through year 12 and it’s getting more and more difficult to find interesting topics to write about.

Dog sitting isn’t a skill that’s in high demand. One of my other new gigs is being a blog editor. That’s interesting, because it’s a little different than writing personal all the time. Another gig is customer service for a cloud company. I don’t know too many people who love customer service jobs. However, they are necessary and the one I have is some people I like, which is good.

At the end of the day, my strength is almost like not having one. I am kind of good at blogging, very good in personal finance, below average in programming (I’ve forgotten a lot and technology has changed), good at dog sitting and customer service, and very good at reading legal briefs on defamation. Only a small company is looking for that kind of diverse skill set.

In the short term, I’ll probably just keep juggling the same hodge-podge of stuff. Financially, it’s been working for us and it gives us the flexibility we need with two very young kids and my wife’s demanding military job and college career.

This is a continuation of Kosmo’s Job Search Journey.

The Whole Job Search Series:
1. You’re Fired
2. Assessing the Situation
3. Networking
4. Learn
5. The Interview
6. Frustration
7. Success
8. Sink or Swim
9. Search for Stability

Interviews are of varying lengths.  Some are thirty minutes long, some are an hour or two.  Some interviews last an entire day.

I recently finished an interview that lasted for seven months!

Ok, it wasn’t exactly technically an interview.  It was a contract position, and my goal was to get hired as a permanent employee.  In my opinion, the best way to do this was to perform at a high level for the duration of my time as a contract employee.

It was sink or swim from day one, and I swam.  I’ve been in the industry for two decades, so not very much fazes me at this point.  It was interesting to be thrown into the action with barely any background on my project, but it wasn’t insurmountable.  I read documentation, combed through the existing code, and asked enough questions to learn what I needed, without asking so many that I was annoying.

Before long, I had righted the ship, gotten the train back on the rails, and utilized several other idioms.  Once my primary project was humming right along, I got pulled into another project to back-fill for someone who had left.

I had even less background for the second project than I did the first.  At least the first project dealt with some accounting concepts, which allowed my to utilized my dusty accounting degree.  The new project was all data and reporting.  To make it even worse, there were multiple sub-systems, and it wasn’t very clear how they interacted.

I jumped in and began to work on testing.  This presented a huge challenge.  Most of the requirements had been written months ago, by people who were no longer on the project.  Many of them were very vague, and I had to lean on the veteran technical analyst to even understand what functionality was being added.

Eventually, the other business analyst (also new) and I were able to get things on track.  We tested eight months worth of new functionality and regression tested the entire application.  We had to restart regression testing a couple of times due to new bugs.

At this point, we’ve pushed that block of code to production and are ready to tackle the next big block of testing.

Originally, the idea was to loan me to the project for two months, until a new person could be hired to fill the position.  That was five months ago.  I don’t think the project is going to let me leave any time soon.  I always come to work with a smile on my face, and it’s apparent that I care a lot about the quality of the code that gets implemented.

Finally, HR contacted me about converting to permanent employee status.  I tried to push for 25 days of PTO, but they have a hard limit of 20 for new employees.  That was a a bit of a letdown, since I had worked myself up to 30 days at my previous job.

Money, of course, would be the main point of negotiation.  I knew that the local market for someone with my qualifications and experience was about 7-8% below what I had been making in my previous job.  A friend of had been forced to take a pay cut when he switched job.  I knew a pay cut was a distinct possibility and was bracing for them to make a low offer.

What did they offer?  Well, they really didn’t.  They asked my what I was looking for.  I asked for a number that was 3% above what I was making at my previous position.  This was the midpoint for someone in the lead business analyst role, and was, according to my information, about 10% above the market rate for someone in my position.  It was a significant amount about what a friend of mine in a similar position recently got from his new employer.

I felt like I had a good chance I’d get what I had asked for.  Although I was asking for a premium over what they were likely to offer another candidate, I had something the other candidates didn’t.  I have seven months of experience in the exact role.  I had clearly exceeded their expectations, and they knew what they were getting, both in terms of ability and temperament.  I had essentially been on a seven month interview.

Finally, after being approved by three levels of management, HR was able to make me a formal offer.  The offer was for the exact amount I requested.  A small part of me regretted not asking for more, but all in all, it was a very fair offer.  I’m relieved to finally be an employer rather than a contractor.