“When I have the time…”  These words are often spoken wistfully by employees attempting to balance a busy work, family and social life. For displaced workers, it can be disorienting to transition from a schedule jam-packed with meetings, appointments and clients to an unplanned existence of job searches and networking events. Finding a job requires work and creativity. We’ve all heard the old adage, “treat finding a job like it is a job,” but few job seekers develop their job search the way they’ve cultivated their professions.

Don’t rely solely on the Internet

Too often our perception of what a well-rounded job search is begins and ends with the Internet. It’s counter-intuitive that a tool that has brought so much efficiency to our lives can also be the proverbial anchor around the neck of the unemployed. However, think of how many people are currently unemployed. Where do you think most people are looking for jobs? If you are one of thousands of people searching the web for job opportunities, how will you stand out from the rest of the crowd?

To truly capitalize and shorten your time between jobs, get away from the computer. Perusing employment sites can be a part of your job search strategy, but it cannot be the entirety of your job search strategy. Remember that only a fraction of positions are ever advertised. While you’re surfing the Internet, pushing your resume out to every position that’s posted, opportunities might be passing you by. You have to get away from the computer to tap into the jobs that never get advertised online.

Keep your skills fresh

Do you know what potential employers are afraid of when they see an application from a candidate who has been out of work for an extended period of time? They are usually afraid that candidate’s skill set has gone stale. People don’t want to hire someone that they feel has too much catching up to do to be a viable member of the team. Avoid letting your skills go out of date by pursuing volunteer opportunities in your career field or in a field you have been considering transitioning into.

Search sites like volunteermatch.org to find non-profits who need professionals with your qualifications.  Instead of offering to serve food at the local soup kitchen, find out if they need help with accounting, fundraising or project management. You will be able to keep your skills fresh, enhance your resume and may even find some great networking opportunities. Volunteer experience is still experience, and it’s better than sitting in your pajamas all day.

Network, network, network

In addition to keeping your skills current, use your time in between jobs to join professional groups and keep your network current. Networking workshops and events can be found in your local newspaper or business journal. You might be surprised at how many groups are available. Contacts are vital for employment opportunities, so work these events with your long-term future in mind.

Seek out any training that would be marketable to employers in the future, keeping in mind that businesses are looking for employees with more diverse skills than ever. Classes and other training programs can help introduce you to new people in your field. Use these people to find out about job openings.

Time between jobs can be daunting, but it can also be productive. Sitting around and complaining about the job market isn’t going to help. Using this time to grow your skills, strengthen your network and clarify your long-term goals can be time well-spent.

Out of high school, my Dad and I marched down to the recruitment office and we signed up together. Six months later, I was a certified United States Marine and for the first time – my dad shook my hand. That was one of the most important moments in my life – up there with my wedding day and the birth of my beautiful daughter.

Once I entered the fleet, I advanced fairly quickly. Having a drill instructor for a father, I had practically been training for it my whole life. After eight years, I had reached the rank of gunnery sergeant and I returned from my third tour of duty. My second term of service was coming to a close and now I had a wife and an adorable 5-year-old daughter. I came to the decision (with a little urging from the ladies in my life) not to reenlist.

It’s difficult for a somebody without some sort of military history to understand the culture shock that comes with adjusting back to civilian life. It had been 8 years since I had tried a new haircut. I was 26 years old and my only job experience was in military communications and a paper route from my early teen years. I became quickly overwhelmed and discouraged because I was struggling with finding a direction to go in with my career. What would my drill instructor say?

• Rule #1 – Applying for jobs is like going on patrol. It may be repetitive, boring and often uneventful – but it is extremely important! When you least expect it, the time to take action will pass you by. If you get side-tracked, discouraged or lackadaisical, you’ll miss your opportunity strike.
• Rule #2 – Keep up your morale. When you get discouraged or frustrated take a step back, stop thinking about how much job hunting sucks and take a little recreational time to get your spirits up. Nobody wants to hire a Debbie-downer!
• Rule #2.5 – Don’t go A.W.O.L.! Keep in mind that every moment you’re not hitting the pavement, other people are out getting jobs.
• Rule #3 – Do your reconnaissance. The more you know, the better you’ll do. Having a good amount of knowledge about the company you’re applying for can help you buffer your resume and also looks really good in an interview.
• Rule #4 – Never ever run out of ammo! When you’re hitting the city for jobs, bring extra resumes, more than you think you’ll need. If you’re forced to retreat because you run out of resumes, you miss out on job hunting time and potential employment opportunities.
• Rule #5 – Watch out for the ambush! You may find job opportunities in unexpected places, don’t miss them. Practice interviewing so you’ll be ready for one on a moment’s notice.

Before I knew it, I landed a job as a marketing manager in an emerging business. The job was a piece of cake. As a long-time NCO in the military (remember, that counts as management experience on a resume!), I held command above some of the most difficult people on the planet. With a trained staff of civilians under my command, I was in a position to really help that company fly, and fly it did. To this day, my military training helps me stand head and shoulders above the competition in the corporate world and I hope my brothers and sisters in arms find this article well and that it helps them thrive after enlistment.

John Durfee works for Airsplat, the largest retail dealer of Airsoft Guns and Airsoft Green Gas. John is an Operation Freedom War veteran.

He has had a broad career in HR and his early involvement in social media has led him to be an influencing voice in our community. But let’s start at the beginning.

Getting Started in HR

Jorgensen wasn’t always in HR. In between his undergraduate and masters degree, he did all kinds of work. “I spent time in retail management, not-for-profit management (including fund raising, event management and PR), insurance investigator, various factory gigs and a stint as a miner, certified by MSHA and everything,” he said. But a chance encounter with the head of HR at the University of Iowa business school led him to learn more about the field.

After graduation he spent more than two decades working (often the lead HR person) for medium sized manufacturing firms. If you want to talk about HR in the trenches, this is it. Working with a blue collar workforce can be great and being part of a great manufactured product has some intrinsic rewards but it is also challenging HR work.

In my brief conversations with him, it is obvious how much this experience has influenced his view of HR. He’s always seeking realistic solutions to real workplace issues. Grounding people like myself who say, want to eliminate formal performance reviews, is a useful function even if I don’t think so.

Consulting, Educating and Volunteering (Not Always in That Order)

For the last couple of years, Jorgensen has been focused on independent HR consulting. “While I enjoy some aspects of it, I have discovered that I really miss the day-to-day interaction that being in an organization brings so I am planning my next career move,” he said. And it may be a good time to be on the move as I’ve seen quite a few people making that change recently.

He has also worked at both DePaul University and Northern Illinois University primarily as an instructor for HRCI certification. Now you may have a certain opinion of HR certifications but Jorgensen invests in his students and the education there. While I can’t respect that I’ve known more than a handful of people who have crammed a couple of days before their exam and passed, I can respect those who make the honest educational effort and pass certification the way he teaches.

He has also been a state leader for the Illinois State Council of SHRM. “One of the things I have tried to do in my tenure is to have the State Council begin to look at serving members and chapters in new ways,” he said. “We have expanded our state leadership conference to include new items such as strategic planning and communications.” He also points to the state conference Illinois puts on every year where he is keeping up with trends of much larger conferences in impressive fashion.

Passion and Social Media

Jorgensen has a true passion for the profession and it shows. “[HR] can be a great force in the organization by contributing to strategic planning, silo busting, inter-departmental communication, and leadership development,” he told me. “It can have direct effect on the employee through engagement, motivation, career and job development.”

That passion shows through on his blog HR Tailgate where he talked about workplace safety recently. That subject in particular was always hard to get excited about but he offers a reality check that there are real human lives at stake in the decisions we make.

He also has a fantastic Twitter account and is one of the most conversation focused folks out there. If you send him a message, he’ll typically respond back (unless you razz him about Arizona beating Iowa this year, just a word of warning).

The HR Stars Series is sponsored by Rypple, social software that makes feedback easy and fun. Our software is built around people, not process, which means teams actually get things done. Managers don’t waste time. People get the useful feedback that they want. Teams stay on track, learn and adapt faster, and get recognized for great work. Learn more at http://rypple.com.

Hustle to me is a state of mind. It is a combination of working hard and working quickly. You make mistakes quicker, you make adjustments quicker and you have success quicker. Not only that but once you find success, you sustain that success through continuing the cycle.

Hustle doesn’t take a college degree or pedigree. You don’t have to be privileged to hustle. In fact, those with lesser talent, education or advantage can put hustle to better use and see a greater increase in results.

Why do I believe in hustle?

We talk about talent all day in HR and recruiting. Who has the most talent? Why does “B” or “C” level talent drag organizations down? How can you get rock star talent?

Early in my career, I was not talented though. I don’t think I was any company’s ideal candidate for any job. So how did an average student from a state school eventually get to where I am today?

Hustle.

I worked 40+ hours a week during school in management roles. When I went from management into HR, I didn’t have the skills I needed so I networked, researched and read everything about HR. When I started my blog, I tried to learn everything I could about the technology, how to attract readers and what to write about. When HR kicked me to the curb, I tried my hand at something completely different. I sent speaker proposals out even though I had very little real experience and had success booking them. Now again, I am doing something different and seeing some of the fruits of labor coming out.

I get both excited and anxious about the unknown. I know what a HR generalist does on any given day but I don’t know what a Community Director is supposed to do. Am I missing things? Should I be spending more time reaching out? Should I be spending less time moderating online message boards? Yet as I’ve continued to live in this hustle world, I’ve quickly found out that I will learn it quickly (and relearn it, and relearn it again).

In the end, this singular focus on identifying and cultivating “A” talent has driven me insane but I haven’t been able to put my finger on it until now. If everyone had a singular focus on talent, I wouldn’t have got my first management position at 19, I wouldn’t have gotten a break into full time HR at 23 and I wouldn’t have what I do today. I can say with certainty that I wasn’t “A” talent for any of those positions.

Finding talented people is important. There is no doubt about that. But how do you factor in other pieces of the puzzle that will impact performance (like hustle or passion for the job)? Pieces of the puzzle that might be more important to your organization than just the talent level.

• I started off the year gainfully employed
• I was let go unexpectedly mid-year
• I was picked up a couple of weeks later and worked as a contractor
• At the end of the year, I was told I needed to find steady income
• In between all of that, I did consulting, web work, writing and sold a social network on eBay

Where have I ended up? At a great company, with great people, doing amazing, challenging things.

My cool little HR career track was derailed and I’m now pursuing another career altogether. What’s that career called? I call it marketing for my parent’s understanding but it is obviously very different than a traditional role. How’d I get here?

1. I started doing what I wanted to do

I know I wanted to write more about HR but I didn’t wait for someone to tell me to start blogging. When I was interested in collaborating with other likeminded HR folks, nobody told me to start a social network. When I started building relationships and communities around ideas and people that I knew, nobody told me to do that. I just started doing it. And I kept doing it. And then I asked internally what I wanted to do next. The skills that I work with today are ones I developed on my own outside of the clock.

2. I didn’t limit my choices

Losing my HR job in the middle of last year was like getting thrown off a lifeboat during a rainstorm. Swimming with unemployment is difficult enough but with the economic conditions last year, I didn’t know what would be available for my niche. Whenever I threw my name out there, talked to people or asked for introductions, I was clear that I was open to alternatives outside of my seven year career path. This allowed the MeritBuilder opportunity to come at me. It was far from my career path but it was one where I had skills and contributions I could bring to the table.

3. I had enough budget to take risk

The opportunity to make the jump to a new career is a risk. Even riskier when it is an early stage startup. We looked at our financial situation and decided to make the jump. We didn’t ever resort to ramen noodles or anything like that. Some months were uncomfortable. We never got a second car. And when word came down that I’d have to find an alternative to working for MeritBuilder, we were comfortable taking some time and working on a couple of projects for companies that I had put off and then continuing my career journey.

4. I outworked and out-networked everyone

When you don’t have the skills that years of experience brings you, it means you get to work twice as hard until you figure things out. I’ve gone over my ridiculous minute limit on my cell phone twice and it was when I was unemployed. And it wasn’t even that long of a period either (three weeks total) but I was on the phone a lot. I e-mailed almost everyone I had a tight connection with and followed up with a phone call. When I got jobs, I e-mailed and called people who were doing the jobs to get help and ask questions.

5. I changed my own mindset

The hardest part for me is this whole idea that I am no longer taking a break from HR or trying something else out because of the recession. Everyone always asks me if I ever miss HR or if I ever want to go back. Of course I miss it (I miss parts of it I should say) but I don’t know if I’ll be back. If you would have asked me a few years ago if I would leave HR, I don’t think I would have thought so. I’m enjoying what I am doing right now. I’m used to have a most of the answers at my finger tips and now I have to research or call people.

I don’t know how this would have turned out if I had actually been more thoughtful but I do think following this method ended up helping me significantly shorten the process.

What’s your take? How have you weathered career transformation?

What was my connection to the area? Well, my dad lived there. I had friends close by and I went to college fairly close too. So when I was looking for my first real world HR position, it was on the table as an option. When I was offered the position, it was accepted with ease.

Now I was the recruiter/HR person (or HR/recruiter depending on the day) so when it came to recruiting high level candidates, it came down to three options:

1. Getting lucky – We made our own luck of course too but when you’re talking that small of an employment base, it often comes down to timing and luck that there is an available candidate.
2. Poaching other high level people – There were only a couple of businesses in town we could poach talent from and you can’t go to that well too often for political reasons.
3. Relocating candidates – Moving people from Seattle, Portland or Spokane typically.

Relocating people to our town (especially from a big town) always made me nervous. Like biting my fingernails, tapping my foot, sweating in my office before I made the call nervous. Starting a new job is life changing on its own. Starting a new job in a new city with no established support group outside of work? You’re stacking the cards against them.

Now that I live in Portland Oregon, I’ve heard stories of many people relocating here without a job. That’s nuts to me. Oregon’s unemployment rate is over 10% (worse than the national average). As far as an industrial base, Portland has very little to offer (we have two companies in the Fortune 500 that are based in Portland). People that come without a job come because they want to live here. When I get asked about companies relocating candidates to Portland, I ask two questions:

1. Do you have an incredibly unique skill set that can’t be filled by the talent in Portland already?
2. Are you a director level or higher in your organization right now?

Companies that aren’t looking for either one of these have a hard time relocating a person (or even hiring a person who wants to relocate on their own dime). So if you’re a web designer or marketer or green energy fanatic or whatever, it is going to be a tough road especially when there are a glut of candidates out there.

Of course, most candidates don’t understand the hesitation (or severely underestimate it) but really is a shared risk factor. It is risky for you to move someplace for a job. It is risky for someone to move you out there for a job. Logical jumps for high level talent still will happen (as an example, a VP from a Fortune 100 company moved to Portland to take a COO gig at a mid-sized company) but some of the stretch relocations I’ve seen done when unemployment was hovering around 5% probably aren’t going to be done now.

Still want to relocate but want to reduce some of the gamble? Here are a couple hints:

• Spouse has a job there – If you are married and your spouse has a job in your relocation target already, this is a huge risk reducer. It may be the most effective way to reduce risk out of anything.
• You’ve been there before – If you’ve lived in a place for a significant time before and are relocating back, you have another big in too (and probably a network in place already).
• You have big time connections there – I’m talking a dozen or so connections already in place before talking relocation. If you have people in your target city on the look for you, this can help dig out unlisted or lightly listed jobs.
• You make big time connections there – Social media is a great place to start the search for relocation connections. If you are establishing contacts from scratch via social media, more effort to reach out by telephone or email is necessary.

For those who have relocated candidates before, what do you think? Has it become harder to relocate candidates in this environment?

Are you ready to prepare for your career change?

Given the lack of resources for people going through this (especially updated resources since the job market has changed so drastically in the last few years), I was pleased when I heard that Alexandra Levit was tackling the subject in her new book New Job, New You: A Guide to Reinventing Yourself in a Bright New Career. I’ve gotten to know Alexandra through the power of social media (though we did meet in person in November) and I’ve been big fans of her previous books (I wrote a review for Success For Hire and I even wrote a tweet sized recommendation for #Millennialtweet).

I thought the book was not only packed full of great information but also extremely readable. Alexandra does this through interspersing interesting stories throughout the seven life altering situations and considerations that drive every career changes:

• Family
• Independence
• Learning
• Money
• Passion
• Setback
• Talent

While I am always a fan of a great story, this book is also full of considerations from Alexandra herself along with some really great resources (even though I didn’t catch my blog in there). She lays the groundwork for a person at almost any level to use what experience they do have and apply it to their new career choice. The inspiring, true life stories consistently push the idea that it is possible to successfully change careers no matter what circumstances have nudged you into that space.

What in this book could have been improved? I honestly couldn’t find much. I think the message of the book is solid because the real heavy lifting is in self-exploration and being honest about your motivations and circumstances. I don’t know if there is a way to prod people into doing more exercises to get them to understand what they want to do with their career.

New Job, New You is a quality guide for doing a career transition the right way. It is the most up-to-date and complete resources available. I’d encourage you to check it out (it is about $10 on Amazon right now).

Conan: Super Rock Star Talent

Conan O’Brien isn’t just rock star talent, he is super rock star talent. Even by the network he parted ways with, he was considered a rock star as they tried to prevent him from going to another network by giving him a mega-deal to keep him at the 12:30am spot for five freaking years. Five years! For a time slot that most networks use to run the latest (and extremely creepy) Billy Mays infomercials or repeat number three of Sportscenter.

Has that ever happened to you at your job? Has anyone ever thrown you that kind of coin to keep you from a competitor?

Here’s my guess: probably not. Conan had talent that was worth that ridiculous money. He had a skill set that only a couple of people in the world have: a TV friendly formula, an of audience and over a decade of successfully running a talk show on the same network.

We talk about shifts in power all of the time on this blog. Conan had the power to essentially write his own exit even after the network had chosen this other guy (who is fairly well regarded as well).

Do you think your company is going to do that for you when you decide you want to move on?

Conan And Your Career Path

And I guess that’s part of my problem with applying anything but the most general advice to the late night TV situations. Conan has a special talent and your company isn’t going to kiss your ass on the way out the door after you make a big stink. I think that is a fairly unrealistic scenario. So is getting a Twitter hashtag. I wouldn’t count on that either.

Now do I think the executives at NBC are a bunch of idiots for the way they handled this whole thing? Of course I do. Especially you Dick Ebersol. He has single handedly demolished NBC Sports into one of the most pathetic properties in NBC’s portfolio (ESPN the Ocho has better sports coverage). His Winter Olympics coverage is going to lose more money than Conan and Leno will when it is all said and done. And it still cracks me up that NBC Universal is the number one Gen Y company to work for according to Brazen Careerist (not that I didn’t call that). Keeping on ass kissers like Ebersol, who isn’t losing his job even though NBC is going to lose a couple hundred million dollars over a two week broadcast, certainly has to give hope to Gen Y. Pucker up well enough and you’ll not only get to keep your job, you’ll be able to lob bombs at a 20+ year employee as he is getting pushed out the door.

Ebersol also deprived us of this fantastic tune (Warning: John Tesh) that opened up every NBA on NBC game. So yeah, I may not be over that either.

All of that aside, my guess is that your career arc isn’t going to look like Conan’s. It probably isn’t going to look too many other people. So if someone says you should be like Conan and you should throw some gasoline and a match on the place as you walk away or if they say you should be like Leno and be a company man through and through, even if it means screwing over a coworker, take a step back for a second.

You are not Conan O’Brien. You are not Jay Leno. Take your own path. You’ll be glad you did.

Here’s a reality check for the new year: there are still quite a few out of work people in HR. And these aren’t just leftovers and scabs, these are real talents with no home. Do you have a HR opening? I encourage you to reach out to these folks. Both of them are out in the great frozen land between the coasts in an area the locals call “Minnesota” but someone hinted that they may be up for a change of scenery if it comes up. First up?

Shauna Moerke, Master of Getting It Done

You may know Shauna as the affable HR Minion, the co-host of the HR Happy Hour and leader of the HR Carnival. That’s a full time job in and of itself but she somehow manages to work full time in addition to these duties. She has a diverse background working in almost all areas of HR. Recruiting, employee relations, the dreaded generalist spot… Need someone to lead your next training session? How about keeping your recruiters producing? What if you wanted to be more proactive in employee relations?

Boom. Shauna gets it done. With a smile and sense of humor to boot.

I’ve had the opportunity to get to know Shauna both online and offline through various events. She has been working on some contracts and while I am certain that she would be thrilled with doing that again, I know there is a full time position with her name written on it. She is a fantastic addition to any HR team and she has enough experience and flexibility to move into many of the openings I am starting to see. Check out Shauna’s resume and LinkedIn profile. Feel free to contact her directly (and feel free to name drop me) and let me know if you have any questions.

Jim D’Amico, Modern Recruiting Leadership

Think I can’t sympathize with a guy who has to recruit people to Marshall, Minnesota? When I did recruiting in Walla Walla, Washington, I learned the difficult job of simply getting a person on the phone once they figured out where you were calling from. And while Jim was the leader of the recruitment group, he also kept an open desk and had positions he was assigned to fill as well. That’s one hell of a skill set.

Remember that post Laurie did about how to work yourself out of a job in HR? I believe strongly in that because even if your company isn’t willing to live without a HR department, you should at least operate like your managers can depend on their knowledge to make a majority of the decisions they need to make. Stay there for the hard stuff. Jim has done just that at his last position, making sure that as his recruiting team was being embedded with the operations group, they were prepared to serve their needs.

You can check out his profile on his entertaining blog. Seriously. Do it.

Got any leads for these folks somewhere in the US? Lay them down in the comments or hit up these folks individually.

My wife Jen, who got home from work at 10:00pm, went to bed two hours ago. She thinks I am nuts.

My office desk is littered with scribbled notes, various forms of caffeine delivery and a CD I finally took out of the player because it had repeated five times.

I’ve been sending and responding to e-mails all day, on and off the phone and just popped out a guest post for another blog.

This is what I do now and I love it. It has been a crazy couple of months.

The most frequent questions I’ve gotten since I started my new job are what is MeritBuilder, what am I doing for them and how hard was it to abandon day to day HR work? I am putting it all out there. Full disclosure, right?

What is MeritBuilder?

MeritBuilder is a personal branding platform that anyone can use to collect accolades and achievements. Sound simplified? Good.

So imagine for a second that you are a career professional and you hear the hype about building your personal brand (especially online) so that you can actually be recognized for the work you do. Smart move. Time to do something. But get this:

1. You don’t want to blog about work. Maybe you don’t like blogging or you’d rather write about kittens or football.
2. You want to use your Facebook to communicate with your friends. You’d rather not open it up and try to build your brand that way.
3. Twitter is cool but it is hard to get a feel for a brand 140 characters at a time.
4. Setting up a personal website? Sure. As long as you don’t have a popular name and you want to maintain it and keep it up to date (look at mine, it is destitute).
5. One of those online resume services might work but you’re not necessarily looking for a job.

So you can build a profile at MeritBuilder and have people give you feedback in an environment that specifically designed for the purpose of building a positive profile about yourself. And the best part (at least to me) is that companies can incorporate this technology to build an effective employee recognition program that helps employees and enhances the company’s brand organically through the praises of co-workers, managers, customers and vendors.

Okay, Okay, We Get It. So What Do You Do?

So I head up outreach for MeritBuilder. That means I get to talk to people about our product. A lot. Social media? Check. E-mailing? Check. On the phone? Check. In person? Check. I talk to our development team about what potential clients are dying for and what they aren’t so hot on. I work on the way the company presents itself to all of you. So I get to talk about employee engagement, employee incentives and company culture all day.

What does that mean for the audience here? Not much. Except you get a post like this once a blue moon and I probably won’t be talking about competitors (just makes things easier). This isn’t turning into an employee engagement and personal branding blog though. Look at the last few posts. That’s what this blog does best.

People have also asked me how they can help me in my new postion. I’ve got to admit, these people rock. So what can you do?

1. Try out the product and give me honest feedback about it. I can hook you up with the paid standard edition just for giving it a try (just contact me after you sign up for the free version).
2. If you are a company that is intrigued, I can get you a better look at what the corporate product looks like. No hard sell or anything like that. We’re looking for companies to partner up with that make sense while we continue to gather feedback from our corporate customers.
3. If you like the product and you have a blog, Facebook, Twitter or whatever word of mouth reach you can muster, spread the good word and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Going from a startup with little brand awareness to something that people start recognizing becomes less about me and more about how we can spread the word organically through our fans.

Moving On From Day-To-Day HR

I’ve got a post I am working on that I don’t want to spoil about this topic but I wanted to throw this out there. Moving on from day-to-day HR was actually an incredibly difficult decision. I know the work is difficult but it is also incredibly rewarding when done right. And taking myself out of the mode that I’ve been in for the last five to six years? I’m still working on it and it isn’t easy.

That being said, it is an awesome change of pace. And there is a reason I am staying close to HR people. You all rock and I want to continue to be a part of the grand conversation.