Release the Hounds!

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Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Here ye, Here ye. Let it be known that “The Hunt” is about to commence! The hunt for a new job, that is.

Very recently, I was abruptly excused from my duties with my employer. It was deemed my services did not match their current requirements so my “butt-eth” was tossed to the curb. The situation at this company both suddenly and drastically changed literally overnight. I knew something was up because the day before my official termination, there wasn’t a manager to be found. Even during our twice-weekly status update meeting, our manager was unavailable. You know there is something big going on when a manager doesn’t attend their own status meeting. It just doesn’t happen.

So here I sit at my computer wondering what I want to do when I grow up. I’m only almost 50. That’s still young enough to consider a career change, right? Actually, that’s a bit of a lie. I was contemplating my future. Now I’m doing something much more fun. I’m writing a blog post since my ADHD brain was getting bored thinking about resume updates, cover letters, networking and interviews. It said, “We need to do something creative so let’s write!” Yay me! I’m being both distracted and productive at the same time.

One lesson I learned from the last time this happened to me is to let the government know that you’re unemployed as soon as possible. Even if they won’t do anything about it until your severance runs out (assuming you got any), you still need to apply right away. Governments move at the pace of, well…governments so you need to give them lots of time to pass your paperwork among the dozens of departments and hundreds of bureaucrats before you even get a hint of approval, let alone, a payment.

As part of this application process, the government sent me a link to their “Job Bank” site. This provides a bunch of tools including questionnaires related to your personality, your skills, your most recent bowel movement. and cholesterol levels. They then compile all this information into a list of jobs you might be well suited for.

I initially filled these out in my typical way. I find the center response — usually a “3” on a “5” point scale — which is my safe zone. Any question that has any level of uncertainty gets a “3”. This value is safe and non-committal. It should not impact the results of this very critical questionnaire. Whether I feel strongly or not in my response to a question, I will only go either one above or one below the “3”. I firmly believe that no response ever has the certainty associated with either a “1” or a “5”. What types of people would do that? There’s always room to feel stronger about your response so reaching the extreme on one end or the other is an impossibility.

YES, I will commit a ‘5’ to your highly ambiguous question!

After my first pass-through, I decided to “live on the wild side” and risk a few extreme responses. For example, when asked if I like working with machinery, I went all-in and said: “YES, I will commit a ‘5’ to your highly ambiguous question!” I won’t even entertain the thought that machinery could mean anything from a household blender to a modern torture device. I will risk the assumption that you mean machinery that I would like and not something to be used against humanity (like the smartphone).

It was interesting to see the results. Apparently, I am a 99% match for “Dress Maker”. I don’t even know what that is. Is it someone who operates a sewing machine constantly making only dresses since other forms of clothing are either too complicated or not challenging enough? Or, is it referring to something a bit more creative where design is part of the job duties? That would surprise me given the number of times my wife has sent me back to my room to change because, apparently, I’m colour blind and can’t figure out how to dress myself.

I actually find these services helpful. I like being given a list of things that I could be good at since it presents the possibility of change. I also like seeing my current occupation pop up there depending on my responses to some of the questions. It’s comforting to know that you may have been “ok” in the job you’ve been doing for the past 10 years.

Losing your job is a traumatic experience but it’s not always a bad thing, or at least it’s not a permanently bad thing. Each time it happens, you get an opportunity to reflect. You get to tell yourself that there were things you liked about your last job and there were things you didn’t. Now you have an opportunity to find something that has more of those things you liked. Maybe you were talking about leaving your last job anyway but were afraid to make the leap. Maybe you were considering a career change but were too afraid, or comfortable, to give it a try. Now’s your opportunity to make some changes…or not. That’s the beauty of it. You didn’t have the choice to leave your last job but you do have the choice of what happens next.

Until next time, keep pushing forward. Maybe sometime in the near future, you will see a highly glamorous, but reasonably priced dress sitting on the rack in Walmart made by “K’Avery Designs” (the apostrophe is to make the name more “artsy”). “K’Avery Designs”: the designer that makes only dresses that are glamorous, durable, affordable and made using only the most human-friendly machinery (unlike the smartphone).

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