Leaving a Job

This blog is getting to sound too diary-ish so I will begin a series on straight money matters in the next post. Please send me an email or post a comment here if you have a topic you want me to cover.

Here are the ones I have gotten so far:
1. What do you do if you are 30 and have 50 dollars in the bank and no 401k?
2. How do I prepare a budget I can keep?
3. Where should I invest my money?
4. What is Social Investing and should you do it?

Today – How I left a good job.

Leaving a job is something that is very personal. Work is someplace that we spend a great deal of time both doing work and doing life. We make friends and share meals and celebrate birthdays, marriages and babies. If you are not careful the celebratory delectables will go straight to your waistline.

It is good to always be prepared to leave a job so here is some of "my sense";

• Financial planners say that it is good to have 3-6 mths worth of cash on hand for emergencies. Leaving a job is one of those emergencies. If you have this cash-wad the transition is much less painful.
• If possible start your job search while you are still employed. It is much easier to get a job when the desperation of not having one does not exist. Be careful not to use company time or resources (no printing out your resume at work). My personal ethics says its OK to use the computer and internet during lunch but a stricter ethics radar and the fact that your current employer can monitor all network activity may preclude this as well.
• Get the support of your spouse, family or other support circle. Not only can these folks invite you over to dinner but they form the basis of your best employment agency. Networking begins with your friends and family. Don't be embarrassed people love helping you. Don't you remember Uncle Bill and Aunt Maddy trying to "HELP" you connect to their bridge partners' kid.

Unfortunately there are many times when job seeking comes after a separation from your job. That was the case when I left Enterprise Rent-A-Car. At my job I didn't have time to even think about what I wanted to do let alone look for a job. The following are the steps I took to figure it all out. Just to make it clear--at this point in my life I had no direction whatsoever. I needed to do some soul searching.

• The first thing I did was to take a rest. I had been working mad hours for a year and a half and needed to breathe again. Luckily Aud and I had saved about 7,000 and Aud was working. We kept our monthly dates and out gym memberships but didn't do any extravagant traveling.

• The next thing I did was to take a course. I forget what the course was called but it was put on by a guy at church, Jim Vorberger, who developed some career search strategies while he was in the same boat I was. The course was my first entree into the world of finding a career that lined up with who God created me to be. I still didn't find it for a while but the course started me down that path.

• Another thing I did was stay active. I went to the gym at least once a day, lost some weight, did some temp work and started a home business. The latter was both an attempt to get my feet wet in the world of entrepreneurship and to have something productive to put on my resume. What I created was the "Senior card" program. I solicited Hamburg businesses to give a 10% discount to Senior citizens and advertise that fact in my booklet. I created a advertising booklet and distributed 1000 to the Senior Center, got a press release published in the local paper and even charged $20 to people who wanted the discount card after the initial 1000 were given out. I learned a lot about sales, marketing, advertising, computers and business in general. It was a big factor in getting my next job.

• The last thing I did was read a book called What Color is Your Parachute and take action on one of the books main lessons. The book was my first introduction into the idea of informational interviews. Essentially I started asking everyone I could think of to have lunch with me. Now here I am a 23 year old kid asking every executive I could get a hold of to have lunch with me. I met with Government liaisons, non-profit executives and every relative I could find. The great thing about these interviews is that I truly was not looking for a job, just some insight into what the executive could teach me and their guidance on what kind of job I would be good for and how to get it. This is how I got my job at the United Way. After getting some advice that I would probably like working for a non-profit I asked to have lunch with the executive director of Junior Achievement who said that working at the United Way would be a good first step. I asked if she knew anyone there, she called, I followed up and I was there for five years and loving it.