How long does it take to recover from losing your job?

It has been a while since I posted to my blog. For many of you who may not have known, about 2 years ago, I was laid off. Since my last post, I had many interviews and gained employment. I am one of the lucky ones and am grateful for it. However, I left that position after a year, which made me wonder about it all and leads me to this post.

How long does it take to recover from losing your job? How long does it take to feel 'normal', again? For me, I am just starting to feel like myself, again. The past few years, I felt like I was on a heighten stage of self-preservation. My actions might have been purely to retain my job and secure my future. I worked like crazy, cutting back on time with my family to work. The rationale was that if I should lose my job, how would I support my family? So, for their sakes, I worked. Sorry, kids, no vacation this year, 'cause what if I lose my job and we have no income coming in? Yes, I had emergency funds, but what if...

I often wonder if my reason for choosing the last position was due to the shock of losing my job, that I went for a 'safe' position, with a steady company, rather than risking it on a smaller company. Would I have taken on that other position if I was not laid-off? Would I have gone a different route, taken a little more risk? Perhaps... Coming back to my initial question, for me, the answer is around 2 years. I finally am able to breathe some sighs of relief. I am able to regain back that confidence that I once had, that I am an employable individual, that I had some marketability left in me. We now take that vacation. More important, I make time for my family. In fact, I made a decision after the first year of employment post-laid-off. I will always make time for my family. I could die tomorrow and all that my kids would remember is Mom working, not spending time with them.

Sometimes I feel employers don't think about the impact they have on their employees after a lay-off. Well, I can tell you for sure that it is long-lasting and deep. It doesn't go away for quite a while. It makes me think of the song by Sheryl Crow where she sang, "the first cut is the deepest". So true! In fact, I wonder if it would ever go away. I think, in the back of my mind, it will always be there.

How's about you? If you have ever been let go from your job, how long did it take you to feel 'normal', again?

Revamping My Resume

About a year ago, I wrote a post about resumes after a conversation with two experienced hiring managers.  As I am looking for jobs again, I have received advice from a number of people to revamp my resume. I would like to pass along this information to those of you who are also searching for jobs.

The first advice came from a recruiter who told me that given what he saw on my Linked-In profile, a one-page resume would not make sense. He suggested that I add a little more "meat" to the resume. He did not really tell me how, so I turned to a friend who also was a recruiter. She took it further by pointing out a few things that I have never considered before. Thanks, Kandi! I hope you don't mind me putting your words on this blog:

1. Whether the resume is one or two pages long is irrelevant "as long as the resume is saying something meaningful. You get into 3 or 4 pages, that's too much, but if trying to squeeze everything onto one page means you leave out important stuff, then go to 2."

2. Addressing my resume with initial headings listing my best accomplishments, K believed that it might do more harm than good as it would not show a consistent history of success or accomplishments. It would be better if the hiring managers could scan down my resume and see the success or accomplishments with every position.

3. Bullet Points - These should emphasize the things that I have done, my accomplishments on the job, rather than the generic job description.

K took the liberty of transforming my resume for me so I could see what it could look like. Thank you so much for that! I very much appreciate the advice and all your suggestions.

The transformation of my resume continued as I started applying for various positions. A friend, G, made a few recommendations on my resume that I had never considered before:

4. Listing reasons for leaving a position - I have always thought that if I get a chance to speak with the hiring manager, I could explain my various reasons for leaving a company. G suggested that I make this knowledge known upfront and on my resume. Being laid-off would be understood by any future employer.

5. Consistent format - Though you might consider a minor detail, a resume could say whether you are a detail-oriented person or not. For example, sometimes I had a period and sometimes I didn't have any punctuation after a bullet point. G suggested that I make the resume consistent with no periods, as a bullet point is more a phrase than a sentence.

I would like to add one more piece of advice to this short list that has served me well over the year.

6. I would suggest having someone else look over your resume; a fresh pair of eyes can never hurt.

I would welcome other suggestions anyone would like to offer to me or my fellow readers. In this economy, we could all use a little help! Thanks, everyone, for reading and best of luck to all of us job hunters out there.

Update: 7/5/2012 - I spoke with the mysterious K and she was willing to let me post her name on here. Kandi is a biotech recruiter with her own recruiting firm. If you are looking for a position in biotech sales or marketing, Kandi would be happy to speak with you and help you with your search. http://www.isearchbio.com/about.html 

The final day

A few days before, I received an email explaining how the last day would be carried out. The employees at headquarter were told to come into a room at their appointed time to sign for their final check and severance package. As I was part of the field team, I would receive a phone call instead. That call was scheduled for 2:30 pm yesterday, with the expectation that FedEx would deliver my termination paperwork by 8:30 that morning. Somehow, the whole layoff did not seem real to me until the Last Day. 

On the morning preceding the call, I tried to busy myself with other matters. When call came, it was late and on my home number. Somehow that irked me a bit since I remembered giving my cell number. The call coming to my home number felt like an invasion of my personal life. It made all this unpleasantness downright spiteful. Of course, I don't think HR meant to do that, but it felt that my home, where my children slept and played and felt protected, was not safe from the touch of this disagreeable affair. It made me dislike the HR person and the task that she had to carry out. At the moment my husband informed me the call came on the home number, I understood why people disliked HR. 

I would like to be clear that I have nothing against this HR person at all. In fact, we spent time together at the company's sales meeting as well as during my first training session at Complete. She had told me about the elaborate surprise birthday party she had planned for a friend. I thought that was rather nice of her to do. I thought it took a great person to do so much for a friend. It was very unselfish of her to make those elaborate plans to ensure someone's happiness -- even just for those few hours.  But during the call with HR yesterday, I suppose it was because she delivered the final blow to end my employment that I developed a dislike for her. She tried to appear concerned, but somehow her efforts seem trite. Then again, she probably had been saying the same things to twenty other people throughout the day before me. 

I was wrong, however. The final blow actually came after the call when my email address was cut off. It was as if my umbilical cord to the company was cut. All the ties were severed. This was it: I was no longer part of the organization. My resources had been cut off. I could no longer feed off the knowledge of my colleagues. I could no longer go back. There was no way back. Perhaps this was a good thing after all. Every umbilical cord needs to be cut before growth or development can occur. Mine just got cut prematurely. I could survive and grow from this experience, or wither and succumb to all the negatives of the layoff. I think you will know which path I choose when I announce my next employer. 

The Weekend After

It was rumored that the executives had already decided on the lay-off the Friday before, but held off on any announcement until Tuesday. Some folks criticized them for that. As for me, I was grateful, since I was able to spend one more carefree weekend with my family. The announcement during the work week also allowed me to look at my options and to absorb the shock of it all before the next weekend came along. This past weekend, I participated in family activities; I took my children to the library, to a birthday party as well as to my parents' home for dinner. All this, I was able to do with a little less worry on my mind than when the news first hit me. So, for any employer or HR personnel out there, if you should ever consider a lay-off, please do it early in the week for the sake of your employees. I know, for sure, I would have very likely cancelled all these events if I did not have the extra time to take it all in.

I was asked several time during the course of the week by various folks, friends, customers and recruiters alike, why I was still loyal to my company and why I was not angry at my company for the lay-off. On the question of loyalty, I would say that if I did not believe in my company, in their message and service to my customers, I would not have worked there in the first place. As for resentment, what good would it do? Nothing could change what already happened. Anger would only make me lose focus on what I would need to do now, which would be to find employment and secure health care for my family. I also thought about it this way: what company would hire people and expected to let them go in such a short time. No one could have expected this.

This past week, leads came in and dropped off. One of my former managers cautioned me that it might be slow at first and to be patient and that things could come in all at once. I sure hope he is right.

Unemployment Weekly Benefits by State

Day 6: First thing I had a chance to do was research on the unemployment benefits in Arizona. Unfortunately for me, Arizona is one of the worst state when it comes to unemployment pay: $240/week maximum, topped only by Mississippi at $235. Seriously, how do they expect a family of four to live on $240 a week? Freaking out is probably an understatement. I didn't sleep a wink last night. One upside, I was able to compile this list of unemployment weekly benefits for all 50 states. My reason for doing it was because of the difficulty I had finding the information. I thought perhaps other unemployed individuals would find it useful. Just click on the state to go to the source for the numbers. Some states offer a bit more per week for dependents, but some did not. Other states did not update their information so these could be 2011's numbers. Most of the sites, I found to be difficult to navigate and to find the information one would need. Some sites had too much information and some did not have enough. There were a lot of circling back and forth between several links before I could find the information I was looking for. That said, I hope this will be helpful to other folks out there.

State	State Abbrev.	Minimum Weekly	Maximum Weekly
Alabama	AL	$45	$265
Alaska	AK	$56	$370
Arizona	AZ	$60	$240
Arkansas	AR	$82	$457
California	CA	$40	$450
Colorado	CO	$25	$454
Connecticut	CT	n/a	$573
Delaware	DE	$20	$330
Florida	FL	$32	$275
Georgia	GA	$44	$330
Hawaii	HI	$5	$549
Idaho	ID	$72	$343
Illinois	IL	$51	$385
Indiana	IN	$50	$390
Iowa	IA	n/a	$385
Kansas	KS	n/a	$436
Kentucky	KY	$39	$415
Louisiana	LA	$10	$247
Maine	ME	n/a	$372
Maryland	MD	$50	$430
Massachusetts	MA	n/a	$653
Michigan	MI	n/a	$362
Minnesota	MN	n/a	$597
Mississippi	MS	$30	$235
Missouri	MO	n/a	$320
Montana	MT	n/a	$431
Nebraska	NE	n/a	$354
Nevada	NV	n/a	$393
New Hampshire	NH	$32	$427
New Jersey	NJ	n/a	$611
New Mexico	NM
New York	NY	n/a	$405
North Carolina	NC	$15	$522
North Dakota	ND	$43	$470
Ohio	OH	$0	$400
Oklahoma	OK	$16	$368
Oregon	OR	n/a	$507
Pennsylvania	PA	n/a	$573
Rhode Island	RI	n/a	$551
South Carolina	SC	n/a	$326
South Dakota	SD	n/a	$323
Tennessee	TN	$30	$275
Texas	TX	$61	$426
Utah	UT	n/a	$467
Vermont	VT
Virginia	VA	$54	$378
Washington	WA	$138	$583
West Virginia	WV	$24	$424
Wisconsin	WI	$54	$363
Wyoming	WY	$32	$444

Next Gen Sequencing - An introduction

I was asked to provide some information on the different platforms available for NGS as well as the basic technical differences between the various platforms. Given that there are already a number of good resources available out there, I will list them below as an initial introductory list to next generation sequencing.

Roche – 454

Life Tech – SOLiD and Ion Torrent

Illumina – HiSeq and MiSeq

PacBio - SMRT

Complete Genomics – DNA NanoBall

AZCO Biotech – MaxSeq

Elaine Mardis at NHGRI Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMIF6zUeKko along with http://www.genome.gov/12514288 other lectures on genome sequencing.

BlueSeq YouTube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpQxMiRk9hE

Comparing current platforms as well as future/emerging platforms (i.e. nanopore technology).

https://sites.google.com/a/brown.edu/bioinformatics-in-biomed/online-review-articles  A good list of review articles on Next Gen Sequencing

http://www.stanford.edu/group/barronlab/PubPdfs/2011/Landscape%20of%20Next%20Generation%20Sequencing%20Technologies.pdf A publication that discusses all the chemistries of Next Gen.

Day3

As the news permeated throughout the company, farewell emails started to come through. Some folks, unfortunately, were asked to leave on the day of the announcement. Others got an extra day or two. Still, others, like myself, were given a little longer time to get our stuffs organized, projects transferred. I felt lucky to have the extra time, but sad to be receiving these emails from colleagues or I should say, ex-colleagues, whom I greatly admired, talking about their experience here, saying goodbye and wishing everyone the best. The messages might have been worded differently in each email, but it was clear that everyone still wished our company the best and still believed in it. I still believe in it. 

I took a bit of time off today and joined my family for lunch and swimming at the community pool. I enjoyed the time, but could not concentrate much as my mind kept wondering if some of these opportunities would pan out. I kept looking at my phone, reading messages, and sending out resumes. I would be glad when this was all over and I could feel normal and live normal again. Would it ever be "normal" again? I doubted it sincerely. One comment on my previous post was from someone who experienced a layoff and still has not been able to shake it off.  I wondered if that would ever be me. If I became that person, that might be a good thing.  Because, in truth, that would mean I would have a job and right now I could not be sure.

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My new chart of opportunities

In/Out of State	Area	Date Due	Days Remaining
In	Phoenix	8-Jun	0.00
In	Arizona	8-Jun	0.00
Out	Bay Area	8-Jun	0.00
In	Phoenix	8-Jun	0.00
In	Phoenix	8-Jun	0.00
In	Phoenix	8-Jun	0.00
In	Phoenix	8-Jun	0.00
Out	Bay Area	11-Jun	3.00
Out	Bay Area	11-Jun	3.00
Out	Chicago	11-Jun	3.00
		14-Jun	6.00
In	Phoenix	7-Sep	91.00

I am charting out my opportunities to make sure I am not forgetting to follow-up on these opportunities. So, the count is 12 with 3 positions through recruiters, 2 with company HR, 1 through referral and 2 through direct contact and 5 are miscellaneous others that may or may not pan out. The due date column is my timeline to follow-up on the conversations. Hope to move some of these opportunities along tomorrow. I had a priority column, but right now, it might be too early to tell. 

I also want to mention a few links that I visited today that were helpful:

Ventureloop.com - thanks for this as well, Pam. I did a search on "genomic" and saw a number of companies I recognized and though some of the postings were old, it gave me an idea of which company to research on for job opportunities.  

Indeed.com – Thank you, David. I remember someone has mentioned it before, but had not looked at it until now. 

Glassdoor.com - Also, thanks to David - I had visited them in the past, but only to look up companies that are of interest, but had not considered the job search page. Thanks for the reminder. 

It's almost 1AM in the morning, now. I should head for bed, but there just seems so much that still needed to be done. Still, I should go. Before I do, I want to say a few thanks. I am thankful for everyone who wrote in their support, especially Dan, who offered financial support, though we have only met about a month or so over Twitter. I still have a long road ahead, but your words of encouragement will help me push forward. Thank you ever so much. 

I hope what I say on here will also help others who might be in the same predicament. Unemployment seems like such a lonely state of affairs to me. It is almost like people feel ashamed to tell others that they are unemployed. You find a lot of people who would give themselves various titles during their unemployment to hide the fact that they are unemployed. Phrases like "between opportunities" or "exploring options" come up in conversations, but most people don't come out and say, "I am unemployed." Some say it is because it is more difficult to find a job when you are unemployed. For various given reasons, the people who are employed seem more desirable to employers. However, I would argue that this should not be. Many good people become unemployed due to no fault of their own and this should not be held against them. Anyway, I am digressing. Perhaps, this could be a blog topic for another day. Good night, everyone!