Gigonomics: Screen Gems

This was a big hectic week with a full slate of interviews. After weeks of resume launching, the tide turned and I was on the hot seat for hours of questions by company executives who seemed more intent on finding ways to disqualify me than reasons to bring me on board. I chalk that up to the fact that the job market is thick with fish, and any cast of the net is going to bring in some big ones, so hiring managers are especially choosy these days. Perhaps even a bit smug.

I don’t blame them in the least. When I was a corporate gatekeeper, I knew as a hiring manager that I must take advantage of the present available talent glut and work hard to winnow the field to the precious few who 1) exceeded the job requirements and 2) were grateful enough so that they would work beyond all human capacity, gain measurable efficiencies for the company, and justify the hiring manager’s decision. This makes the interview game precarious and nerve-wracking, as hiring managers now have a plethora of candidates and one wrong move, one fumbled name pronunciation or ill-timed attempt at humor on the part of the interviewee (now me) may be grounds for swift disqualification…

Gigonomics: Exquisite Reinvention

Today I am a solar installer.

After more than 20 years in the publishing business, I’ve decided to completely reinvent myself. My reasons are many. For one, I’m unemployed, so I think it would be nifty to have a job again and, from what I can tell, the solar industry is poised to take off and produce a bunch of jobs. This is especially true with the Obama administration pumping money into the economy and targeting alternative energy development. If you put two and two together (four!), you can see why it makes sense to be a solar installer. Plus, I could get a tan. After years in an interior office, I think a little vitamin D might be nice.

Of course, I don’t know much about solar installations and PV panels and grid tie-ins, but that’s beside the point. I can learn, and I’m motivated. Sure, there’s a fear factor involved, in that I need to do something for income and if I don’t my children will eat floorboards. But there’s also something marvelous occurring, something exquisite. I’m reinventing myself…

Gigonomics: The Confidence Game

Mark Twain once wrote that the only things required for success are ignorance and confidence. If we humbly assume a good measure of the former, then the only thing needed for a successful job search is confidence.

Simplistic? Perhaps. But for those of us who awake each morning to face yet another day of launching resumes into the ethers and throwing ourselves at the mercy of old cronies or long-lost college cohorts who just might provide that magical, silver-bullet nexus of our LinkedIn fantasies, it can be difficult to crank up the old confidence meter to the appropriate level of chipperness. Each non-returned inquiry and “we’re not hiring right now” response is one more pinprick in the life raft of our confidence.

But let’s get real—sinking beneath the waves simply isn’t an option. That means we must meet each pinhole in the raft with a fresh wad of Double Bubble, chewed vigorously and confidently. Sure, you can hide in the closet now and then, shut the door, cover your mouth with an unused business suit and let out a primal scream or two. But then shake off the dust bunnies and get back in the living room…

Gigonomics: Taking Inspiration

For those of us slogging through the boggy labyrinth of the job search, it can be a challenge to get out of bed and don the Wellies for yet another muck-sucking trudge. We need occasional doses of inspiration—a piece of high ground from which to draw a deep cleansing breath and make some progress.

I was lucky enough to find some inspiration at a job fair last week by running into Liz Nead, whom I mentioned in last week’s blog. Liz is heavy into inspiration as a modus operandi, and a few minutes chatting with her and you understand why.

“I never spent a day mourning for my old job,” says Nead, who was laid off from her corporate IT job seven months ago. “Instead, I asked myself where I wanted to go in life, what was my game?” …

Gigonomics: (Job) Fair Thee Well

One day I hope we’re all employed, noses happily pressed to various grindstones. Among the good things employment will bring, besides a steady paycheck and the restoration of self-esteem, is not having to attend any more job fairs. If there is a single force in the universe with the power to galvanize job-searching efforts, it is a job fair. And I don’t mean in the inspiring, Rosie the Riveter way. I mean in the screaming Edvard Munch get-me-out-of-here way.

It might have been just one of those days. But as I walked along Grand Avenue toward the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines, the world had a gauzy, surreal tint to the air, as if the buildings and the parked cars and the big steel sidewalk planters were cast onto a scrim from a rear-projection camera. I knew why, too. It was because, with all my heart and mind, I didn’t want to be here, making yet one more public confession about the sorry state of my predicament…

Gigonomics: Repositioning Your Resume

The other day I applied for a job as director of the local zoo. As a media and communications professional, it might seem I am no more qualified for that kind of job than your average running shoe sales clerk at Scheels. But times are tough for job seekers, don’t you know, and this job was just sort of sitting there looking up at me with its big brown eyes and, impulsively, I went for it.

There were pieces of my past that gave me pause. Buried in my background, if not my actual backyard, was a variety of animal care failures that included goldfish, a hamster, and that disastrous ant farm that I had set on the window sill in full sun. When I was eight my pet chameleon, Zeke, escaped and was never found. For all I know Zeke still roams the suburbs of Chicago, rummaging through garbage cans and, having grown to pony-like dimensions, has inspired an episode of Fringe.

Gigonomics: Gesture Politics

When I tentatively raised my right hand to attend to an itchy earlobe, my steely-eyed interviewer matched my movements, only with his left hand. In nonverbal parlance, I knew a left-handed gesture meant one thing: he was lying, and I was toast.

Thankfully, I was only practicing interview techniques in the mirror. If I had wanted to press it, I’m sure my two-dimensional doppelganger would have agreed to a million bucks a year salary and five days off per week. I am so worth it.

Be that as it may, you should consider practicing your interviewing chops in front of a mirror, a tolerant spouse, or a sympathetic schnauzer to be time well spent. You can edit down those “ums” and “wells” to a manageable couple of dozen, rehearse rough patches, and work through some of the heebie jeebies that attend a career-on-the-line grilling at the hands of a potential manager who no doubt is your intellectual inferior.

What’s vital, however, is to monitor body language. Most job search experts agree that nonverbal body language represents 50 to 60 percent of what we are communicating to others.…

Gigonomics: Employer Broadcasts Want You

Sometimes job searching feels like an anxiety-filled creep down an unfamiliar dark alley, but it’s important to remember that it’s a two-way street. Yes, unemployment is on the rise and competition for existing openings is keen, but there are many companies that are actively hiring, even vying with each other in an effort to attract the top talent in the marketplace. You can use this competition to your advantage.

“In some ways, the job search market is better than ever,” says Chris Russell, president and founder of AllCountyJobs.com in the Northeast and author of the book, Ultimate Job Hunting Secrets. “That’s because there are so many tools for job searching, and a vast amount of information is available. Many companies are organizing recruiting efforts around social media, using Facebook and YouTube and engaging candidates in conversation. As a result, there’s a lot of transparency about companies, what they do and what kind of people work there…

Gigonomics: Your Government-Funded New Career

As part of my campaign to reinvent myself and broaden my horizons in order to be more marketable, I have been taking on new challenges. This has become an unavoidable reality for those laid off from businesses where fundamental industry shifts have coincided with the downturn. In my industry, print publishing, the wheels came off so fast that many of my colleagues were stumbling about the countryside, bruised and dazed, before they realized they had been in a train wreck…

Gigonomics: Confessions of a Jobless Fibber

I’m the former Editorial Director for Special Interest Media. I’m currently unemployed, but I’m looking for an opportunity to use my passion for innovation and my management skills to help a company build new media products.

That’s what I should have said. But I didn’t. I chickened out. I claimed I still had my old job and because of that, I missed a golden opportunity. Let me explain…