Tom Spalding and Sylvia Halladay have put together a couple of terrific tip sheets for those looking for work - in Sylvia's case, taken from her first-hand experience.
Tom’s tipsheet
Exercise your creative muscles: You were used to a certain level of writing production in the newsroom. Find an outlet during this downtime that could include Twitter, Tumblr or other external presence. Center it on a personal hobby or even run-of-the-mill observations. You don’t need a newspaper employer as validation for maintaining external presence and the best part is there’s no naysaying editor to distort your message.
Create a “me” wall on a blog: I used a blog to “store” online what I used to keep in a box: aka your newspaper clippings. Get your best work out there in cyberspace (some you can link to, others you scan into a site like Scribd) that you can revisit (I have my stories stored on a blogspot and even created an “11 assignments in 11 years” page since they were major accomplishments).
Make sure you are up-to-date on public social media sites. Recruiters and hiring managers do keyword searches on LinkedIn, for example, when looking for qualified candidates. The site lets you highlight employment experience, achievements and awards. Wendy S. Enelow recommends that your profile includes all important keywords for your industry and profession, showcases your achievements, and is expertly written.
Join Twitter and you’ll find many free resources, as sites like the Public Relations Society of America and bloggers will promote “top 10” tips and other opportunities with frequency. Twitter can act like an automatic RSS feed for openings that require quick, “real-time” responses that you can seize on. Because they have an electronic presence, you’ll need a similar electronic presence to stay relevant to them. Employers want cutting edge, not excuses.
Learn software that you don’t already know – such as Powerpoint, which many companies use to communicate internally.
Donate your skills to help out a nonprofit or a corporation with its in-house messaging. Which is very blog-like. You do interviews and a write-up that is very much like a feature story, and can use that on your resume. Consider contacting a company’s internal communications division, which is always in need of writers and ideas for its e-mail newsletters and inhouse magazines.
SYLVIA HALLADAY’S LAYOFF TIP SHEET – an experience-based guide
Unemployment benefits: You have to take any job you’re offered. So, don’t ever ever, ever apply for jobs that you actually wouldn’t want to take. Sure, you have to take it if you’re offered it, but YOU’RE in control of what all you apply for.
Take a part-time job if you can get one that looks tolerable. No one wants to hire someone who doesn’t have a job, after all, but a part-time job allows you to claim that you’re currently working, and then when you get to the interview and they ask why you want to quit your current job, you just say, “well, it’s just part-time, and I need full-time”.
In Indiana, you can work part-time and still get partial unemployment benefits. Working part-time as an employee won’t mess up your state unemployment benefits. Freelance work, though, can mess up your benefits. Also, if you take a low-wage job that’s full-time and it pays less than what you would have gotten on unemployment, then you’ll just have the low-wage pay, and won’t have any partial unemployment benefits. So, don’t even apply for full-time jobs that would pay less than what you’d get on unemployment benefits. Do the numbers, and it doesn’t make sense.
In Indiana, 30 hours or more is considered full-time, in terms of unemployment. So, if you can get some sort of clerical job that’s 10 hours a week, then you’d have that, and partial unemployment benefits. But, if you take a waitressing job that’s 30 hours per week, then what you really did, you just took something that’s full-time and may pay less than your unemployment benefits. Don’t want to do that! This is war, and you’ve got to be shrewd.
Also, temp work can be ornery. Apply at a temp agency if you look for jobs for awhile unsuccessfully, and your unemployment benefits are running out. It can be a thing where you’re in this temp job, and can’t miss even a single day and if you do you’ll be fired, but then if you get a job interview for something more substantial, then how do you really take that interview? If you take the time off for the interview, then you’re fired from the temp job, and would no longer be eligible for unemployment benefits either, due to losing the job because of being fired.
You get state unemployment benefits if you’re laid off, but not if you’re fired. So, handle temp work with care. It’s there, and it’s an option if things ever get to that. Part-time work is good, though, or some kind of temp work with some flexibility in the schedule so that you can take job interviews as they come up.
Volunteering: Keep your eye on the prize and know exactly why you’re volunteering. If you’re doing it to be part of a fun thing, and be out among the living, and maybe you’re volunteering at an event instead of paying to go to it, then that can be good. If you’re volunteering in order to brush up on some old skills or develop new ones, and you’re doing it that way instead of paying for a class, and do some networking while you’re at it, then that’s OK. But you don’t want to get into just working at something that’s like your old job, but doing it for free, though. Volunteering is OK if it’s done in a limited and targeted way. If you’re laid off and you’re volunteering, you need to make sure to know, “what’s in it for me?” And there might be some very good things that are in it for you, but what you don’t want to do, you don’t want to volunteer all the time and that takes up all your time, and then you just kind of forget you’re out of work and badly need a paying job before the unemployment checks run out.
Health care: This link goes to federally funded free and reduced cost clinics: http://findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov/Search_HCC.aspx . The following link: https://www.ehealthinsurance.com is a great source for shopping for an individual plan. Some places offer health insurance to part-timers – Starbucks, JCPennys, and Nordstrom all do. Also, there’s an outfit called AlpineAccess, and they’re a virtual call center, and part-timers can get health insurance there. I personally think working from a call center from home would be a terrible idea, though, because you’d never have any way to be able to go home from all that. If there’s any way at all you can swing COBRA, you should do it, even just for a month or two. Then, you can go see a shrink, while you still have insurance. You’d see a doctor if you broke an arm, right? Because if you leave it all dangly and try to let it heal on its own, it would still heal, I guess, but I bet it’d heal faster with a little bit of help, so you’d see a doctor if you broke an arm, right? Well, it’s alright to think about a few sessions with a shrink post layoff, help get your head together and stuff, especially if there’s any way at all you can swing COBRA.
Bills: The cell phone bill needs to get paid first, because your cell phone number should be what goes on your resume, and should go on all job applications. If things get really bad and you have to move, you’d still want a way for employers to be able to reach you. Also, you want to do anything at all that you can to protect your credit score. Besides not wanting to hire anyone who’s unemployed, people also don’t want to hire anyone who doesn’t have any money. Credit checks are common in the hiring process these days, and in some cases, a good credit check and a stable address history is more of a qualification for a job than college degrees or any amount of skill. So, to downsize, you want to move quickly if you can, to try to get out from under payments on things, if there’s any way to get out from under some things quickly. It’s not a failure to have to downsize. It’s being smart and resourceful.
Student loans/student status: Deferment of payments may be available if you are unemployed. If you are thinking about a new career, the fall semester enrollment deadline is approaching quickly.
Computers: If you don’t have a computer at home, you need to get one, for job hunting. Get a laptop, not a desktop, because then, if you have to move, or if you ever have to turn off internet at home, then if you had a laptop, you could take it to the public library and use the wi-fi there for internet, for job hunting. I thought the book, “Living more with less”, by Doris Janzen Longacre, was an especially inspiring book to read at layoff time. You can pretend like you’re downsizing and cutting back because it’s your choice, after reading all that.
Taxes for 2012: Any severance or unemployment benefits received are considered taxable income. If you elected to have taxes automatically withheld, you will likely not have to pay more taxes, and you may even receive a refund. If you spent money while searching for a job during 2010, these costs are deductible. Examples include transportation (e.g. gasoline), phone calls, and supplies (e.g. resume printing). If your healthcare costs amounted to more than 25% of your income, these costs may be tax deductible.
Sanity: You should try to stay sane. Besides not wanting to hire poor people or unemployed people, no one wants to hire crazy people either. Going to a movie every week, or even more often than that, is NOT frivolous if it’s a little bit of an escape and helps keep you sane. Try not to turn to drink, though. My best guess is that nobody wants to hire drunks. Go to movies or concerts or try to be involved with something fun and frivolous that can take your mind off things. Also, not every single person you meet needs to know you just got the ax. It can be nice to go some place, and just be a regular person for a little bit, instead of a laid-off person. People treat laid-off people like they have the plague, even though it’s not contagious and not catching at all. Day trips are fun, too. Lots of little places within an easy drive of Indy that maybe you never had time to go to while you had a job. And, it usually costs money to stay entertained, but there are volunteer opportunities too, and that can be a way to be out among the living but not spending money.
Social services: The unemployment office in Terre Haute is better than the one I went to in Indy. The one in Terre Haute has a whole different vibe to it, a smaller-town and more personal vibe, and the people there were smarter, and could help answer your questions and stuff better than in Indy. If you made 40K or more, you’re getting the max in state unemployment benefits, and you’re not going to qualify for most other services, such as food stamps. But, if you were low wage to begin with, and you’re getting less than the max in unemployment benefits, less than $390 per week, then you just might qualify for both unemployment as well as food stamps.
“Up your’s” notes: Try not to send any “up your’s” notes as you leave, or shortly thereafter. However you leave is how people are going to remember you for a long, long time. Also, don’t send any kind of notes to the company like about how really charming they were to work for and what a privilege it was to be allowed to work there. Those kinds of notes can jump up and bite you later, if there’s ever any kind of a lawsuit or grievance or whatever. It’s OK to take a few days off or a week or so, post-layoff, if that’s what you need to clear your head.
Starvation and other worst case scenarios: You are NOT going to starve to death, not in this country you won’t, at least not here in the breadbasket of the world. It’s pretty much not even a possibility that you’ll starve to death. It IS a possibility that you might go homeless, or might end up camping out with people temporarily, things that aren’t your first pick. But seriously, if you’re ever at some kind of a shindig where it’s a bunch of dressed up people and a bunch of dinner tables and you don’t know anyone there, would you rather end up having dinner with the person who’s been laid off and been through some stuff and may have even been temporarily homeless, or would it be a more interesting dinner conversation to sit by the person who’s only ever had a comfortable life, one of these boring people with boring lives who believes they’ve had an interesting life, and goes on and on ad nauseum about it, and every little tiny molehill is a mountain, ‘cause they’ve never seen any REAL problems. I know . . . you’d rather have the comfortable and boring life, for sure, at least I know that I sure would, and as for me, I know I could have really just done without the whole layoff experience. But I think most people have more respect for someone who’s had some difficulties in their life, or at least, it makes for a more interesting perspective, for sure, better stories to tell. It’s always darkest just before it gets pitch black!
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