Welcome to June layoff-ee’s – Pride month, the start of summer, and even more companies are still doing layoffs. I had hoped that things would have settled down a bit now, and I know a good number of senior leaders (in particular, but others as well) are still looking for their next role. I know this is dragging on longer than I wanted, but now we’re heading into what I fear may be a quieter time as vacation season kicks in. This issue will be about caring for yourself while in your job search.
Photo by Rafael Cisneros Méndez on Unsplash
Looking Back – Maximizing PTO
Unlimited PTO is great if you’ve got it and use it. Those of us still job searching are still with “unlimited UPTO (unpaid time off),” which is not quite the same but has some of the same perks. Indeed’s “You Days” (monthly scheduled days off) were also a great addition to the mix. I had already transferred those “You Days” to my personal calendar; the next one is coming up on June 16th. I’m looking forward to a day off from job searching and focused on taking care of a few errands before summer gets busy.
Given that the hiring managers and recruiters will be out of the office for the company and federal holidays, those are great times for you to get away as well. This article has a few easy suggestions for when to take your time off and get extra days due to holidays (3 min read, but an easy skim).
Looking Forward – 11 Rules For Self-Help
This article on Mashable summarizes “every self-help book ever” (actually dozens) into 11 rules. (15 min read, but it saves you ∞ time by not reading every self-help book ever.) In particular, the rules like “take one small step,” “change your mental maps,” “be useful to others,” “Sleep, exercise, eat, chill out. Repeat,” and “Write it all down” are on theme’s we’ve already covered here.
Today’s Tip – Searching and playing games
I mentioned a few weeks ago about trying Otta. So far, I’m impressed with the user experience and simplicity, but not yet impressed by the engineering leadership roles on the site. I’m also giving Blind Talent a try, but I haven’t gotten too deep into their experience yet. I’d say it’s still worth branching out as I see various jobs on these sites vs. LinkedIn, where I tend to look the most.
As an aside – In the meantime, I’m playing some Valheim (now that it’s on the Xbox Game Pass) and enjoying the baseball season (even though the Cardinals are off to a rocky start.)
Fun Stuff
Final Words
If I can help with your search, please get in touch with me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not tainted by any outside influences.