It seems like forever since I’ve written but looking at the time line, it hasn’t been that long.  Much has gone on in the last month though which makes it seem like a lot of time.  My department at the bank was disbanded and before my layoff was official, they took my job description and posted it as a SharePoint Architect.  I notified the SharePoint users group that such a position was available and received a round of laughter.

Needless to say I spent most of April talking to people, doing informational interviews, prepping my resume and updating my portfolio.  In addition, I had some family drama going on (when don’t I?) and I felt that I wasn’t putting in the proper time for my job search.

Since I learned last time around that the key to my successful job search is to get in front of as many people as possible, I decided to practice informational interviews.  (The best prep for informational interviews I’ve seen is at Careerealism.)  I wanted to do some practice interviews before I went after my favorite target companies and it was one of the practice ones that led to my job.  Basically the more I learned about the company, the more I wanted to work there and the more people I met, the more they wanted me too.

I’m really glad that they had me wait a week between signing the offer and starting work.  It gave me time to decompress and clean some stuff around the house.  Although there is still much cleaning to be done.

So here is where the part of my unnecessary guilt comes into play – I have a good friend, a co-worker and a neighbor who are all still looking for work.  Frankly, I feel in some ways they are are more trained and more qualified than I am in the IT field.  So why is it that I’ve found something and they’re still looking?