Preoccupations: Finding a Job of His Own Dreaming
July 17, 2009 by admin
Filed under Career News and Advice
LAST November, I was laid off from a database marketing company in Louisville, Colo., a Denver suburb, for economic reasons. Six months later, I found another position, at Kutenda, a provider of online marketing tools for small businesses, in Broomfield, Colo., also near Denver.
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
After a six-month job search — and some soul-searching — Joe Kroog, 36, is senior director of product management for Kutenda in Broomfield, Colo.
Several things about my job hunt surprised me, including its length. I thought it would only take a couple of weeks to find a new job, or at most two months. I never expected to be out of work six months.
Other people would probably say that six months doesn’t sound bad at all, but it was to me. Even though the news media played up the job losses and how bad the economy was, I wasn’t worried. I had been a technical product manager, and I thought I had good qualifications.
My wife, Jill, was supportive of my job hunt. She’s a stay-at-home mom and entrepreneur who gives seminars to new mothers on achieving balance in their lives. She kept reassuring me that something would come along and that I shouldn’t feel overwhelmed as the main provider.
We have two boys under the age of 6, and I wasn’t financially prepared for such a long layoff. We were going through our savings, and we started discussing whether Jill should go back to work full time, or perhaps find a part-time job with benefits. We decided that she’d need a salary of at least $50,000 if we were to put the boys in day care. She took a full-time job until I was hired and now works as a marketing consultant.
Now that I’ve settled into my new company, I’m of two minds about that period of unemployment. On one hand, I still think that my expectation wasn’t unrealistic. I honestly felt that I stood a better chance than many other candidates. It’s my competitive nature…
Read the original article at NYTimes