Gratitude Monday: reciprocal thanks

My vast experience with the job search has taught me many strategies for getting through the soul-sucking esteem-smashing slog. Beyond optimizing your LinkedIn profile and spiffing up your résumé—and there are as many definitions of optimal and spiffed as there are subject matter experts (SMEs) ready to sell you their guaranteed Nirvana—and the dreaded networking.

(It’s interesting: networking one’s way into jobs is by far the most successful methodology, as agreed by researchers, hiring managers and SMEs alike. And yet the vast preponderance of job seekers I’ve met would much rather—and do—repeatedly revise their LinkedIn profiles and submit online applications for jobs they find on job boards, and waiting like the refugees in Casablanca to be contacted by recruiters…anything but suit up, get out to Meetups and industry events, ask connections to coffee and rinse and repeat.)

One of the strategies that I personally found helpful was regular sessions with other job seekers—either weekly or bi-weekly—to encourage one another, but also to be accountable. If you don’t have to report on progress against your stated goals and tasks on a regular basis, it’s way too easy to just…not. And I know this because I’m guilty of it.

Under the aegis of one of the Valley They Call Silicon job search support groups, run by a church as one of its ministries, I used to participate in a couple of what were called “success teams”—weekly meetings of about five to eight people looking for work, where we’d go around the table, reporting on what we’d done over the last week, and list what we planned to do in the coming week. People gave encouragement and made suggestions. But importantly, someone took notes and disseminated them, so everyone knew what we would have to report on.

The problem with such groups is that you always have members who are basically phoning it in, for one reason or another. One of them, in Mountain View, was a surgical nurse who’d been fired for some reason and was in the process of a union claim. She had no intention of actually looking for a job; she was merely riding things out until the claim was resolved and she could return to the hospital that had fired her. She’d show up week after week, take up time talking about what she hadn’t done, listen to suggestions the other members would make, write nothing down, parry ideas, and make no contribution to anyone else’s report.

At another group, in Cupertino, the dead weight was a Drama Queen of a self-described entrepreneur-engineer (and expert in everything from baking to economic theory). He’d show up every week with a long list of everything that had prevented him from doing anything, declaimed with full histrionics; his greatest skill, as far as I could see, was his ability to explain (as though to children, with slowed speech, careful enunciation and bugged eyes) why any and all of our suggestions just wouldn’t work in his very special case. He once handed round his résumé; it went back to 1973. And he assured me that he could not possibly cut one single bullet point, because everything on it was incredibly important.

Well—but aside from clangers like those, accountability partners are a good thing. So, back in the day when I was looking fulltime, and a couple of friends were also looking (one in North Carolina and one in England), I’d Skype with each of them every fortnight, just to give support, encouragement and reality checks.

Okay—all this is by way of introduction to my actual Gratitude Monday post. Because one of my colleagues from my stint at Monolithic Networking Corporation seven years ago reached out to me a month or so ago to ask for some advice in his latest job hunt. He was treated shabbily by MNC—a not extraordinary thing for that outfit—but always maintained a positive demeanor, and helped me get a much-needed mouse, which enabled me to do my job. Since then he went to work for Phillips in IoT technology, and when his division was basically shut down, he thought he might like to see if he could marry his experience with IoT to his passion for wineries; we’d once talked about analytics and such, so he thought I might have some suggestions.

Well, I Googled “IoT and wineries”, “AI and wineries”, and “data science and wineries” on my hour-long Metro ride home, and there’s some interesting stuff going on. We had a good long chat, I made some suggestions, I asked if he’d like to go the bi-weekly check-in route, and that’s what we’ve been doing. It’s a bold thing to pivot one’s career in this way, and I really admire him for stepping back to look at the possibilities and work toward them. He’s making great progress with his mother-of-all-spreadsheets to wrangle all his research and his conversations with people on the winery side and on the tech side, and I look forward to our calls.

Well—as you know, last week was a bummer for me, and on Wednesday I was feeling well and truly discouraged over the realization that I just can’t count on my current employment to last. But then an email from my friend appeared in my queue:

“[Bas Bleu],

“I hope that you are having a great day. This morning, after my workout in the gym, I was going through my list of things and people that I am grateful for.

“You were on the top of the list this morning. I really do appreciate your support in getting on solid ground in my career transition. I am very fortunate to have your help in this journey. Thank you.”

Well, that just brought me up short. He’s grateful for me. He’s grateful for me. Huh.

What a wonderful thing to read, on any day, but especially last Wednesday. I am so grateful that he took the time to write it. (And also, kudos for keeping a list of gratitudes!)

But I’m also grateful for our calls, that I can give support and encouragement, and also that my experiences can be turned to something valuable for someone else. It is truly a blessing to be able to help. And I give heartfelt thanks for this reminder.