So you’ve lost your job because the economy tanked; now you’re beating the pavement in the clouds searching for work and discovering that the job search rules from way back in the 90’s have all changed.  It’s a whole new ballgame and no one has told you about it.  

Talk about being frustrated.  You now realize that you have to shoulder some of the blame and take responsibility for your own career.  What were you thinking-leaving your own career in the hands of an employer! 

If you are applying for a job because you need a job-what you really have is an emergency and what you really need is cash flow.  But most likely you will have to pay when YOU have the emergency. You can’t expect employers to solve your cash flow problems-they are trying to solve their own problems. 

But then again, it was the employers who gave you that false sense of job security, right?  They advertised jobs on every websites you visited; there were jobs everywhere until you applied for one, right? 

You discover that a job search has becomes similar to playing the lotto-you need to buy more than one ticket for a chance of hitting the winning numbers.  Now here you are spraying resumes everywhere like shooting a machine gun-hoping to hit something.  You’ve applied over 100 times and still don’t have a job to show for the time spent on-line-until you found out that social media is where the jobs are happening. 

But you don’t know the first thing about social media, except that you should have known about it, and have an updated profile before you really needed one.  Now you are really feeling the pressure because you’re swimming and learning how to swim at the same time.   And everyone is watching-they can see every move you make.  They call it the new networking, but it sure seems like holding up a sign on the streets saying that you will work for food. 

But you’re learning real fast-you learned that this stuff is hard work with little results.  You now need to step up your game and take this thing to a different level.  You purchased a LinkedIn premium account.  Now you’re going to show them that you mean business and you’re in it to win it-you are making moves.  You’re feeling pretty good about yourself -you’re a paying customer now, so you can just sit back and let the recruiters come to you. 

Why aren’t the headhunters contacting me, am I no longer of interest to them, you asked yourself!  You decide to do it the old school way and contact them directly.  Then you’re are shocked to realize that LinkedIn is full of headhunters, and they all have over 500 connections but most don’t even have their own contact information on their profiles.  You thought about it and remembered that the headhunters disappeared since the economy tanked.  Each time you’ve made a job change, it was through a headhunter.  You didn’t realize how difficult this job search circus was and how hard they had to work. 

Then you finally admit that you like the old way a lot better than all this technology stuff, because now it’s all on you!