John was a rising young star until his job disappeared. He’s worked in financial services, so there will be lots of people like him flooding into the job market. Here are some thoughts for John and the rest of you who are suddenly jobless.

Yes, it’s unfair. But nobody makes it through a career without some bad luck. Sometimes it’s not your fault, it’s just your turn.

You’ve got two choices about how to spend your time. You can brood about what happened. Or you can start working on what will happen next. I suggest the latter.

Take stock. What are your strengths and weaknesses, personally, professionally and financially? What opportunities are out there for you? What major threats could make things worse?

Prepare for the long haul. Cut back your spending. Pull together your professional accomplishments, with proof, so you can stand out from the crowd of other job seekers.

Study up on best practices in job search. If you haven’t been in the job-hunting game for a while, or even if you have, read up on the job search process and tactics. A good place to start is right here.

Every week, I select the best career posts and give you pointers to them. Those posts are a rich source of advice about how to do the best job possible of finding your next job.

Talk to people. Get advice from knowledgeable people you trust. Let people know what’s happened to you and that you’re back in the job search game. Don’t neglect alerting your online networks.

Start now. It’s tempting to sit in the ashes of your bad luck and dwell on it. Don’t do that. It’s tempting to “take some time off.” Don’t do that either.

Your job now is to make the next stage of your life happen. So plan your days and weeks the way you would on the job. Set some short term objectives. Measure your progress.

When bad things happen to good people, the good people need to get to work and make good things happen.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 7:21 am and is filed under Tools and Strategies for Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.