Six Weeks Later...

Six weeks after getting laid off, I went to my first Career Transition workshop. One of the first things we did was a 30-Second commercial about ourselves. I found myself struggling to find the words to describe my job for the past 2 years... It's hard to believe after giving countless tours, I completely forgot the script!

What is it I did again? No worries, after brainstorming a bit, it all came back like riding a bike. The workshop was really helpful, is was a relief to learn there is a plethora of resources, tools and sites to help people find a new job and career. Of course, one of the first things to do is the all important resume.  Boy, do I love resumes, how do you put on 2-pages your entire professional career? What is my career objective? How has my past experiences equipped me for my next opportunity? In other words, what do I want to do? And why would someone want to hire me?

My entire working life, I have been conflicted between my social responsibility (doing something for the greater good) and surviving financially (the almighty dollar). Of course, it would be wonderful if I could apply my degrees of Sociology and Asian American Studies. The more I ponder what I want as a career, the more I think I would like to continue what I did for the past 2 years.

I find it fulfilling working with people and helping others. My last job was helping people connect with other people. Over half the company worked from home at least a couple days a week. My job was to gather feedback and find tools to enable them to work more effectively. Enable employees to work as efficiently with their peers in the office next door as their peers half-way across the world timezones away. We connect people through Social Networking tools and Collaborative Technology.

In my view, using Social Networking tools and Collaborative Technology is a win-win for both employers and employees. Employers save money from not traveling and therefore gain competitive advantage. Meeting planning and deliverable cycles would decrease due to travel schedules. Travel time and recovery time would be spent doing actual work. Employees would be connected more through tools like Instant Messenger (IM) that enable them to have immediate synchronous and unplanned meetings. Collaborative tools also allow non-synchronous meetings avoiding those awful 6am and midnight meetings to accommodate participants in different timezones. The planet also wins with less airplane travel and driving to meetings that could be done virtually through video conferencing.