Like millions of people I had a daily work routine. I started each morning checking my emails. Reading each one, responding to some, and filing all of them to specific folders. Then I’d jump on the phone for several hours. After a brutally exhausting day on the computer and making dozens of phone calls, I closed my office door and walked downstairs to dinner. No, I didn’t have a work-from-home job, my job was finding a job.
In 2011 at age 46 I was unemployed. It was bad enough to be unemployed in my 40’s but we were still coming out of the 2007 Mortgage Meltdown followed by the Great Recession of 2008. With the unemployment rate at 8.9% it was an employers market. Every day I searched job sites for relevant positions. Every day I wrote a dozen cover pages, and modified copies of my resume to tailor them for the job I was applying to. I had been the president of a small company previously but management positions were in short supply and there was a lot of competition.
I started to get interview requests, some were over the phone, several were Skype calls. I researched how to angle the camera and set up the wall behind me for optimum effect. I also got a few in-person interviews. After nervously waiting in a reception area I would be called in for my turn with the hiring manager. I was always comfortable in my interviews. I did my research on each company in advance, answer questions with a confident voice, and then I always asked my own questions at the end. Then I got a thank you and a handshake and was led out with the standard promise that they’d call me. They never did.
Days turned into weeks, then months. Hope turned to despair, then to depression. I thought we’d have to sell the house. As time went by and rejections, and the bills, kept piling up I continued to lower my sights. From executive and director positions, to manager roles, to supervisory positions. I started looking at jobs further away from home with longer commutes, I even considered taking an out-of-town job and living in my RV and let my family stay in the house. Eventually I started to apply for hourly administrative roles trading on my computer and office skills. I signed up with several staffing firms – temp agencies – and started taking assessment tests. I wasn’t getting paid yet but taking the tests buoyed my spirits, made me feel like I was getting close. But several months in I was still unemployed, until one day in February.
I got a call from a staffing firm I’d been working with. They said I’d be receiving a call from a real estate firm. They told me about the company, the position, and the kinds of questions to expect. They were looking for someone for their accounting department and I had some 20 years experience in that. I was excited, nervous, almost to the point of panic. I’d been job hunting for six months. A few minutes after hanging up the phone rang again. I somehow composed myself, picked up the receiver, and calmly said hello.
We talked about the position and my experience, he thanked me for my prior military service. Then I asked a few questions and made some notes. He then said that he’d like me to come in the next day at 7am. I thought he was scheduling me for an interview and asked what I should bring and if I needed to wear a tie. He said “oh, no, it’s not an interview, you start tomorrow. I’d already decided to go with you, I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes.” In a calm and professional voice I said thank you. I waited to shout “ya-hoooo” until after I hung up!
At age 46 I was starting over, in a low-level accounting temp-job. The pay was just $15 an hour ($21.64 today) and I was sitting in a cube-farm. A far cry from where I had been previously, but it was a paycheck. Within a few months the company hired me directly and bumped my pay up to $18. By the end of my first year I was promoted into a new position, and a year after that another promotion to another new position. I kept adding to my skills and even got my real estate license. After five years I was running a department with 20 staff.
It didn’t make me rich, but it was steady. It was enough to pay our bills and helped save the house. And the experience helped prepare me for my return to the executive suite.
About two months before I left this company I got a call from an executive head hunter. They were looking for a Chief-of-Staff to the CEO. Several interviews and quite a bit of work later I got the job and was off on another adventure and a new challenge. None of it would have happened had swallowed my pride and taken that temp-job.