By now, you should know that I am one of the million Americans unemployed as a consequence of COVID-19. If you didn’t know or you are new to my blog, I became unemployed in May; so, looking for a job became my new job all of the sudden.
I want to share with you everything I have learned, encountered, read and heard during my job search, from dealing with FL DEO, job posts to interview questions I was not prepared for. Let’s begin.
Do it every single day: job searching has to be a daily activity in your routine, if you want to get back to the workforce. From Monday through Friday, I choose two hours of my day for this. It really helped me that one of the unemployment benefits requisites in the state of Florida to receive the funds, was to at least, do five job searches and record them in the website. This requisite was canceled in March 15th 2020 through September 5th 2020, I have noticed that every month they extent the cancelation period, which I supposed it’s because the pandemic has hit very bad companies, businesses and jobs in general.
Report job searches: even though the requisite was suspended, I did the job searches and sticked to five weekly job searches. I also reported them to the DEO system, just in case, there have been so many complaints and issues for unemployed people to get their benefits that I didn’t want to risk it. If you are not receiving unemployment benefits, five weekly job searches can be a number to start your job hunt, just make sure to keep track of the positions you have applied for. I always write down in my planner the jobs I have applied to, date, company, job tittle, website, and if it is full-time or part-time.
Job searching websites: the main two websites I use to search for jobs have been Indeed.com and linkedin.com – those two are completely different though. Indeed, is like the Google for jobs; you type the job tittle or a keyword, select the location, press enter and BOOM, you get a list with all the jobs related to that search. Make sure to sort the list by date, it will display the latest job postings instead of the oldest ones. Linkedin is more of a social network for your resume; you gotta create your profile, add your work information, experienice, skills, education, etc. It offers a “Jobs” section where you can see job postings in a similar way as Indeed. I use both pages because some jobs’ posts on Linkedin don’t come up on Indeed.
By the way this is my Linkedin profile:
Take your time to do it right: this is another reason why five weekly job applications have seemed a decent number to me; I feel like I am in control, I am not applying to everything I find, but I am not slacking neither. I take my time to go through every job post that catches my attention, I read it and re-read it. I look into the company’s website, their reputation, and social media. I see if I can perform the duties listed in the description, and if I would feel comfortable doing them. I also look at the salary, if it is full-time, part-time or seasonal. I have been flexible in those aspects because the situation we are living. I have got to the point that it doesn’t matter if it is not a job in my field (radio, TV, production) as long as I can have a honest job and get remunerated.
Apply with confidence: if you are sure that you can perform the job, apply right away with your recently designed and updated resume AND a cover letter. A cover letter can make the difference when applying to a job. Sometimes, employers don’t even look at your resume or application if there is not a cover letter in the attachments. In the letter it’s important to introduce yourself briefly, and explain in one or two paragraphs why it is worthy for the employer to look at your resume and consider you for an interview and a potential hire. I am gonna be honest, I don’t add a cover letter to every job I apply, some of them do not require it. If I really, really liked the job, I take the extra time to write a cover letter.
Be prepared for some questions: one thing to know about Indeed is that employers can also require you to take assessments once you submit an application. Assessments can be questions about your experience and background; the type of questions you get asked in a formal face-to-face interview. Also, the assessment can be kind of a quiz or test about the job you applied to; they do this to see if you are really knowledgable in the matter, and to pick the candidates to proceed for an interview. I have taken assessments about looking at graphics to answer simple questions, and assessments where they recorded my answer speaking to the computer.
One of my favorite questions in the audio recording assessment was: “if you had to sell a notebook, what would be your pitch?” OMG, I kinda laugh, but I came up with my selling pitch in seconds. Thank God, I had a notebook on my desk, so I grabbed it to make it seem more real, and I even added a sound effect of the cover of the notebook to my sale’s pitch.
Go to your local Career Source office: going for the first time to a career source office was an eye-opening experience to me for two reasons. Number one: I realized that there are more jobs available that I imagined even in this pandemic situation. There are jobs in transportation, sales, administration, etc. Jobs I haven’t seen on the web, and that is why these offices exist; to help people find jobs with this big corporations. They take your info, they look at your resume and skills, and they make the arraignments for your interview with the companies. The other reason that shocked me was the amount of people in the line (including myself). People from all backgrounds and ages with the same urge: to get a back to work. Men and women willing to perform and learn new things to get hired, and in some cases, willing to make less money than before. I guess we all gotta make these sacrifices to get through this pandemic.
Contact your colleagues, former bosses, supervisors, co-workers: I hope you still have in your contact list people you have worked with in other jobs, people that you have got along with in a job environment and people that know you professionally. I called and texted all the people that could help me or recommend me for a job. I explained to them my situation and that I am open to work. Most of them said that they felt sorry and that they will let me know. One particular contact helped me in getting a response email from a job I had applied months ago. Even though, I didn’t get the job, I was able to show what I can do; so, they saw me, and maaaaybe in the future they will think of me when another position opens up. You never know.
In all these months of job search, I have had six job interviews, two resulting in job offers that for private reasons I had to decline. I continue my job search with my head up high and very optimistic that I will find and get the job I want. Feel free to share with me your tips aaaand let me know if you have applied or if you are going to apply one or some in this blog article.
Hello, I am Vanessa Brito 
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