Looking in the Valley

I think we can all agree that finding a job in today's market has been extremely tough. I can attest to that. I spent quite some time unemployed because I did not have the resources to find a good job, and any job that I could have taken did not accommodate for travel and the cost couldn't justify the expense I'd have to incur. So needless to say, the best option was to work on school while remaining unemployed.

However, now that I've been getting good experience with both school and work, I'm looking to expand my horizons and move on to something bigger and better. Whenever I do research in regards to my life, like you, I use over 100% of my effort. This is my life we're talking about here. I've spent the past several weeks  researching some job markets and where I'd like to work. I've narrowed it down to a few big network cities. San Francisco and the Bay Area, New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego, and a few others. There is a market for everything. And one of the tools I stress with talking with friends or clients is interaction or better worded as: conversation. How can you be successful without talking with friends or colleagues? It just doesn't work.

In the past two weeks I've probably contacted and spoke with ten different company's. Out of those ten interactions, I've become accustomed to speaking with a hiring manager, learning what companies are looking for and how they expect you to act. Do I call this a failure because I've not been hired? No. I've taken away quite a bit of information from these trials. There's a famous quote by Thomas Edison, "I didn’t fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combinations which wouldn’t work." It takes a lot to read a quote, to it takes a lot more to learn from that. And that's just what I'm doing. I'm not counting my failed attempts at finding a job as a failed attempt. I'm merely spinning them so they're a lesson learned. This is what I try to get across to my fellow friends that are also looking for jobs across the nation.

Learn from your mistakes. You're not going to find a proper job that you enjoy if when you apply to a "dream job" you fail. It lowers your self-esteem and self-respect. And that's not exactly what is ideal when trying to prove to potential employers that you're a great candidate for their firm.

Keep your chin up! Keep at it, and remember to have fun while learning! If you don't, you'll never get out of your vicious circle.