This is "The Unemployment Chronicles", a soon-to-be group-blog at DK4 to help unemployed folks find work or other means of income during this unemployment crisis/catastrophe/disaster, and keep their heads and spirits held high in the meantime. This is also meant to be a warm, safe, comfortable place for unemployed folks to vent and connect and hopefully get something that will help them. Long term, or maybe sooner than that considering how dire things have become, I hope we can organize some political action for unemployed folks. See "The Unemployment Chronicles" blog over at DK4.
In the short term, though, unemployed folks need jobs and they need to survive long enough to find a job. This diary will hopefully turn into a collection of practical advice tips for finding a job and getting through the current piece-of-crap unemployment situation. I'll start this out with my own small bits of things that have worked for me, but I would very much like this to become a "community quilt" with contributions from lots of people. I will update this diary with useful bits from the comments.
Attitude Shift!
I think the most important thing you can do that will make all the things below easier is to drop whatever pride you had in never needing help and accept that you are now one of the low-income/no-income crowd. That means mainstream society will start ignoring you but you are actually now part of a huge group of people who can help you survive. Give yourself some time to grieve over the old life. Then take a deep breath and start thinking about a different kind of life, poorer in income yes but hopefully richer in personal connections. Talk to more people than you usually do. Tell them you're looking for work. Look for programs or discounts for low-income folks. Check your food bank. Talk to your church.
Surviving on savings/no income
You need to be able to survive on your savings or no income. The first thing to do, and I hope everyone has done this already but I'm always amazed at how many don't, is cut your expenses to the bone. Cut everything til you're down to what you absolutely need, which at this point boils down to water, food, shelter, clothing, warmth, transportation, and the cheapest entertainment you can find. Every expense should get down as close to "free" as you can get. Use your local library if you have one, for books and computer access. Contact your gas/electricity company for any sort of program or discount for low-income folks. Find a community garden where you can grow your own food, or (if it comes to it) squat on a vacant lot to grow your own food, or find someone with a little space you can grow some food on.
The DK diarist "Troubadour" put up an excellent diary back in June 2010 - Ways to Save Money Now, loaded with practical tips on saving money and living on less income.
Taking care of your physical self
You need to pay more attention to your physical self. Your attitude is now in intensive care and taking care of your physical self will help keep the attitude healthy.
- Keep a regular sleep schedule. You don't want to get into the habit of staying up all night as it's a terrible habit to break and IMHO things always look bleaker in the middle of the night than in the middle of the day.
- Keep a regular eating schedule.
- Get more exercise than you were getting before. Walk walk walk every day if you can.
- Get as much sunshine if you can.
WebMD has a page on "Tips for Reducing Stress". They boil down to:
* Keep a positive attitude.
* Accept that there are events that you cannot control.
* Be assertive instead of aggressive. "Assert" your feelings, opinions, or beliefs instead of becoming angry, defensive, or passive.
* Learn and practice relaxation techniques.
* Exercise regularly. Your body can fight stress better when it is fit.
* Eat healthy, well-balanced meals.
* Get enough rest and sleep. Your body needs time to recover from stressful events.
* Don't rely on alcohol or drugs to reduce stress.
* Seek out social support.
* Learn to manage your time more effectively.
Practical job search advice
In my experience you are more likely to get a job through a personal connection than by responding to job postings as a face in the crowd. So you need to do everything you can to increase the number of personal connections you have.
- If you haven't joined LinkedIn already, do so; put up your personal experience and start connecting yourself to friends and former co-workers. The value of LinkedIn is that you can dramatically expand your network of personal connections through your friends of friends, and even friends-of-friends-of-friends. Studies have shown that you are actually more likely to get a job through a distant connection than a close one because they won't feel as bad if a job lead they pass on doesn't work out. If anyone needs help with joining LinkedIn or using it, post a comment and I'll be happy to help.
- Next, I would turn my Daily Kos sigline into a job-wanted ad - because you never know who's reading who can help you out, and it only takes one person to connect you with a job. Boil down what kind of work you want and where you want it into a sentence, put it in your sigline with a link to your LinkedIn profile or other online resume. I think this action is particularly important for a couple of reasons: a) it gets you the unemployed person in the mindset of it's ok to advertise that you're looking for work; b) it signals to the Daily Kos community that there's a living breathing person here looking for work and therefore probably in some pain; c) if enough people were to start doing this, say thousands of Kossacks, it might really wake up the more complacent members of our community into realize there is a Really Serious Problem here. If you don't know how to boil it down to a sentence, post a comment and I'll see if I can help.
- Next, consider joining a local political group. The leftist political groups tend to attract pretty smart passionate folks and IMHO smart passionate folks who have the same interests you do are some of your best bets for finding a job through. Don't go into it thinking "I'm here to find a job" but if you're willing to put in the slightest bit of work with the group, you'll quickly find a place on the organizing or steering committee where you can show people something you're good at. Plus we're going to have to get organized to fix this jobs crisis and the more of us with practical experience at it the better. Democracy for America (DFA) is an absolutely terrific group, especially for folks who have never joined a political group before. They're great at showing newbies the ropes and at least when I was with DFA, we sometimes had local politicians present at our Meetups, like when we had a local city council-woman come and tell us what it's like to be on the city council. They also run bootcamps and training sessions for teaching practical political activism and organizing. They are an independent progressive group, allied with the Democratic party but way more progressive and active than most Democratic party organization. That's the only group I have direct experience with but others may have recommendations for more groups to get involved with.
- Also, consider volunteering for something you're very much interested in. You'll meet some new people who also presumably have the same interest who may ultimately be able to connect you with a job. Plus it'll give you something regular to do and get you out of the house, and it'll give you something to put on your resume for this time period.
- When you've finished going through all the open jobs and you've done all your personal networking, consider researching the companies or organizations you would like to work for that aren't necessarily posting jobs right now. Get to know their products, their competitors, their problems. Keep your eyes and ears open for anyone who may happen to work there and find out what you can. Write and keep on hand a tailored resume for each company you want to work for, and explain what you would bring to the table to help them with a specific problem that you think they might have as a result of your research. If one of those places does open a position up, you'll be ready and waiting.
Some other possibilities:
- consider posting a job-wanted diary to Daily Kos and tell your story, and keep posting it every week with updates until you find work. Again, we have to keep making it clear to the community that we have a crisis on our hands. Imagine the statement that would make to the DK community if we saw a thousand stories every week of people who were looking for work, who WANT to work but cannot find a way to. This whole situation is so tragic that we have to bring that to a wider audience.
- be open to finding other ways of making a living than what you were doing for. Somebody on DK estimated that the US may have as many as 40 million people who are no longer deemed necessary to the jobs economy. Some people here are making money of selling their handmade goods on Etsy and other sites.
- connect with other folks looking for your work in your area. It helps to know other folks are going through the same problems and you might be able to pass information back and forth. We could conceivably set up multiple "child blogs" to this group-blog to help connect folks in various geographic areas at various levels.
What else, Kossacks?
If y'all have any other pieces of practical advice for unemployed folks, please post a comment here and I'll keep adding stuff to the diary. And for all the unemployed folks who need to vent that they've done all these things already and none of them has done a damn bit of good, well, post that too. :) I have no illusions that this will help everyone; I think we're going to have to get politically organized and active around the livelihood issue to make an impact widely felt. But this could at least keep some people from hitting emotional bottom. For all the unemployed folks reading, never doubt that there are many people who care about you. Our Kossack safety net ain't all in place yet, but I have a vision of us building one, and we will get you through this.