Why would it matter? She wants to go have some fun to help take the edge off, she’s perfectly entitled to do so. A hangover is a hangover. It goes away.
Exactly. Then the job search can continue. I am hoping the new job will come along very soon.
I’m a cheap date. Two glasses of wine and I’m loopy.
I’m having problems sleeping. I normally take a sleep aid (OTC) during the week and a prescription one on the weekend. I had to take a second OTC last night to turn my brain off.
HR called me back and said 401k will come out of this check (normal payday on Friday) and the one on the 23rd (four days of pay plus my unused vacation). I have changed my contribution to the company match, which should hit the pay on the 23rd.
HR has agreed to give me my bonus on Dec 7 and my severance on Jan 18. Now all I have to do is sign the paperwork.
I went to a job fair today. I considered it practice only, to make my elevator speech and get my resume out there. I won’t get anything from it, but I think I was one of the more professionally dressed and I think that will help me stand out.
I’m an introvert, so forcing myself to walk up to someone and introduce myself takes an effort.
Do I remember correctly that you have a wage-earning partner and a non-adult child? If so, is being a SAHM an option for the remainder of this school year? Would it greatly benefit your child?
I got laid off 2.5 years ago after almost 23 years with a company.
Things that helped me:
[ul]
[li]If you can afford it, take a few weeks off before looking for work.[/li][li]Talk to a career counselor.[/li][li]Consider a career change.[/li][li]Take some classes.[/ul][/li]
Good luck and I hope something good comes your way.
My husband is disabled and retired. My children are adults. We were on track to be debt free in a couple of years and I’d like to stay on that track.
I talked to a staffing company rep that my friend recommended and he seems very helpful. I’m not in any rush or panic, so I have time to find the right fit.
Ah right.
Quite right too.
Excellent news.
Might be too late at this point, as you may have signed papers already - but can you negotiate that this is treated as retirement vs layoff for paperwork purposes?
I know that some employers (including mine!) have changed their 401(k) plans so that they only pay out their contributions for the entire year if you are there the last month of the year. Nice little scam if they lay you off before that date - but in my employer’s case, if you retire earlier in the year you get their share.
There might possibly be other benefits such as eligibility for retiree benefits of some sort.
I’m too young, according to the government, to retire. We did meet with a financial planner today to go over our goals. We’re in a place where we COULD live off Ivylad’s income (Workers Comp, military retirement, SSA) but there would be not a lot of wiggle room. We have IRAs and 401k, but we’re not ready to tap into them yet.
I am fully vested in my 401k, so it’s coming with me. I had to push back my meeting with the outplacement agency because Ivylad is having a medical procedure next week. There’s another job fair on Friday and I’m deciding if it’s worth the hassle. More practice can’t hurt, does anyone ever get a manager/director level job from a job fair?
I would doubt job fairs will be looking for those kind of higher-up positions, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use the job fair to find them. Treat the job fair as an opportunity to interview the companies and scope out which ones look like they would need your skills. Talk to the recruiters to see what kinds of people they are looking for and why they are looking to hire. They may at the job fair to find 15 low-level people because they are expanding, so you start asking about how they are going to manage that expansion. It may be that they haven’t done at the hiring at the upper levels yet, so you may find opportunities that way. The recruiters may forward your information on for those other positions. And you can also use that info if you apply to the company on your own to tailor your resume and cover letter to their needs.
I want to say generally no, but you never know. If you do, it won’t be because you put your resume in the big stack of resumes. But if you happen to make a connection with a manager or director manning the both, you may have a chance to follow up with them later on.
Generally Meetups and professional industry groups are better places to make those connections. I would also look at trade shows and industry conferences. They tend to be more geared for vendors selling products or services, but it’s useful for getting a sense of what companies are doing.
The place to get those sorts of jobs is professional group meetings. For instance, PMPs who attend all the PMP professional meetings are seldom out of work.
And if you can make it on one salary, you do have SOME wiggle room - you don’t need to take a job that pays what your old one did if you don’t really want to. You could take your skills to a lower paying non-profit you love, you could go into business for yourself or with a friend, you could start a different career in something you always thought you’d be good at. It sounds like some money coming in would be needed - you can’t afford to really retire or do just volunteer work or make a huge investment to open a restaurant. I had a spa day a few months ago and had my nails done by a sixty year old ish woman who had been an accountant her whole professional career for the same company - she’d gotten laid off and said “I just wasn’t interested in that anymore, so I got a nail technicians license and I do this.” Like you, she needed some money coming in - she couldn’t afford to retire yet, but she could afford to settle back into something with less stress.
When I got really sick it was best if I didn’t return to my career - which could be really stressful and that would make me sick again - and I started working with a contact who needed a bookkeeper. That turned into owning part of that business, which has turned into a nice ten hour a week work from home job that this year will pay me about half of what I made in my full time plus stressful job - and next year will pay me about the same as what I made when I was working. Its taken a few years to get here, and I have taken a few other odd jobs from time to time - mostly because they’ve fallen in my lap.
I think my main issue is I’ve been at the same job for 20 years and I need some help figuring out how my skills will transfer and where best to look. I mailed off the separation agreement today. I’m mostly pissed about this whole situation, not weepy. I had no clue this was coming, and apparently neither did my boss or her boss.
But I have time to figure it out, so no rush. I’m grateful for that.
I’m confused. You are looking for director-level positions but have more than two layers of bosses over you? Over here, unless you’re in media, the director of a company is one of the most senior positions.
That’s really company dependent. I’ve been director level working for a Senior Director, working for a VP, working for the Senior VP working for the CIO working for the CFO, working for the CEO.
(And that company was London and the U.S. - both with that sort of structure - if “over here” means “not in the U.S.”).
My boss is a director. Her boss is a VP. Funny enough, I did work in media. We were one of the outer offices, so there really wasn’t a lot of room for advancement unless I was willing to move to New York, which I wasn’t.
This may be just me, but I’ve never found alcohol very effective at “taking the edge off” if I felt sad, depressed, angry or whatever. i.e. getting smashed after losing a job. Usually it just makes me feel worse.
You’re thinking member of the “board of directors”, not a mid-level management position. One is a specific legal distinction. The other is just a job title.
I haven’t been super impressed with PMPs or the caliber of people at PMI (the group that issues the PMP certification in general) hosted events in general. Probably because unless you are the Director or VP of Delivery/IT/Operations, PMP project managers are not hiring managers. More often than not, they aren’t even employees. They are subcontractors who get hired and fired at the drop of a hat.
Not that you shouldn’t attend such events as the cost in terms of time and money is small. But generally speaking, most networking events are a lot like speed dating. You’re probably not going to a speed dating event if you find it relatively easy to form healthy romantic relationships. IOW, the you don’t want to go to events where it’s all vendors and job seekers. You want to go to events where the people who hire those people hang out. Of course, those events tend to be a bit more exclusive for obvious reasons.
I haven’t been impressed either, but PMPs know where the jobs are for other PMPs - and at least around here, if you are a regular PMI meeting attendee, and not an idiot or an asshole, someone will recommend you in to their hiring manager. My last two contract PMP jobs have come through other contractors recommending me in to the corporate employee - and as a hiring manager, you’d rather get someone that a PMP you like recommends that take your chances off of what the contract house sends over.
(Granted, there are lots of idiots and assholes at PMI meetings).
When I was a systems engineer, same deal. I got two jobs through the professional group - they weren’t the hiring manager - but they worked for the hiring manager, knew the job was open, and recommended me.
What a different thread this would have been, if the last word in the title had been left off.