The Unemployment Chronicles Chapter 2: Linking Myself In

Last week, my unemployment became official when I submitted my lay off notice to the Illinois Department of Employment Services (IDES). It felt weird waking up on a Monday and having no work junk emails to delete. It also felt weird waking up around 10-11am or so. I decided to give myself a little time to unwind following the lay off, hence the extra sleep.

That's not to say I haven't been looking for jobs - I have. But my focus in the days leading up to my last day at Tango2 and my first days/first week of unemployment were more or less about getting my cards in order. The best way to do that, I've found, is through LinkedIn.

Many of you are probably already familiar with LinkedIn, but for those who aren't, the site is a more professional version of Facebook (let's just say, you might not want to have that picture of you taking jello shots with your friends as your profile for this site). LinkedIn is basically an online resume of what you want prospective employers and networks to see.

For those of you who wish to use LinkedIn optimally, here's a few things I've found out that can help the most:

1. One of my favorite features of LinkedIn is the recommendations section. The people you add as connections and vice versa can vouch for your work history by writing up a small blurb of their interactions with you at your current or past job.
   
   One of my recommendations for the recommendations section is to initiate the recommendations yourself. Write about your colleagues who you have interacted with the most and let the world know about their professional strengths. In many cases, you'll find that these colleagues will return the favor and publicly vouch (on LinkedIn) for how great of a job you did for the company.
   
2. There's also an option on the site for you to endorse people's skills. This can work in several ways - you can add skills yourself or you can have someone endorse you for a skill. In this particular section, the skills that you have been endorsed for the most will show up towards the top of this section. Again, like the previous point, I recommend taking the first step and endorsing people's skills in hopes that they can return the favor.
   
3. While I haven't utilized these yet, I recommend joining groups in your area of employment or desired area of employment. There are groups for just about every different type of profession, and to help you further, there are a lot of groups specific to professionals in a certain city or region. This can help you connect quickly to people in your area and profession that you may have never known before. I am in a few groups myself, but have not utilized these as well as I should.
   
4. And last but not least, you can check out jobs a lot easier than you can on most of those job building sites. Most of the jobs that pop up on my page are relating to my last role as a Sales Support Specialist. My guess is that it caters to what you have mentioned in your job history in your profile, so make sure you provide up-to-date and accurate job titles for the companys you have worked.

In addition to my networking through LinkedIn, I have reached out to most of my old co-workers and friends who have jobs in similar industries to see what might be out there and hope to get a name-drop here or there. A few of my former co-workers were kind enough to write recommendation letters for me, which I will have at my disposal should potential employers ask for them.

Now's the time for me to set myself up with some hard leads and get myself some interviews. Hopefully that will be chronicled in one of the next Unemployment Chronicles.

I may need some help with my resume, so anyone who knows anyone who specializes in resumes, I'd be glad to send you mine to see what I may need to edit.

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you haven't already. I would be glad to write you a recommendation if I've worked with you in the past or endorse some skills of yours.