Where are all the Jobs?: How Your Former Colleagues Can Create a New Job for You

Sunday, May 1, 2011

How Your Former Colleagues Can Create a New Job for You | Career Rocketeer

How Your Former Colleagues Can Create a New Job for You

Posted: 01 May 2011 03:30 AM PDT

I just received great news that someone very close to me got a job after a flurry of layoffs in the science library in which she worked. She hadn't had to look for work for 19 years, but all along she and her colleagues were preparing for the future. Her story illustrates the importance of networking before it's time to rely on your network—the best time to network is while you're working, they say. Below are her words, words that we should all heed.
I began a library service at a small biotech in 1991, and my company was fully supportive of growing this function to meet the growth and new functions that came into our company over 19 years. However, the past 2-3 years were financially challenging for the company, and the library staff and services began to be cut back along with everyone else, in several waves of layoffs.
Over the years, we formed excellent relationships with our internal customers, most of whom were R&D scientists and clinical and intellectual property staff in a steadily growing company which had one approved product on the market. In recent years, as the layoffs continued, many of our former customers joined other area biotechs.
I noticed someone in my group making notes every time he heard someone had been hired by a new company. Our group thought this would be very helpful to others being laid off, so we all set up a web page in-house that linked to the career page of every area biotech we could find, which included our list under each company name of anyone from our company who had been hired there.
This list helped our scientist-colleagues who were receiving layoff notices to know where their former colleagues had been hired, so that they would have personal contacts at any company in which they were interested in applying or networking. This web page was also helpful to our company’s outplacement firm, and it kept my library group “in the know” – every time someone at our company heard the news of a hire of a former colleague, they would tell us so that we could add them to our list.
Some of our former colleagues would even call from their new jobs and ask us to add them to the list. LinkedIn was another good source to verify a new hire, when the news-bearer wasn’t 100% sure of their source of information.
At one of these local companies, several of our former colleagues (scientists and support staff) missed using our services, and requested a dedicated library service like the one they had had while working with us.
About a year ago, one of those scientists introduced us to a manager at her new company, and we described our services to her and offered to help in any way we could, while their company considered developing this type of service. We kept in touch with our former colleagues and this manager as the months went by.
They contacted us recently when their new librarian position was posted, and invited us to apply. In addition, several other former colleagues now at that company contacted us and offered to forward our resumes, using an in-house process of recommending candidates.
I prepared for my interview by studying closely the current activities and goals of the company, their history, the information they provide to the investment community, and I used LinkedIn to learn the job responsibilities of the people I would be meeting that day. It was very useful to request these names before going to the interview. I also looked through the company’s careers page to study the types of positions they are putting in place, to understand the job responsibilities/work processes of the people whose information needs I hoped to support.
In preparing answers to possible questions I thought might be asked, it was important to skip back several months, before I was focused on “deconstructing” the library services, to reflect on all of the years that my group and I were continually building and adjusting services to meet our company’s changing needs. This was what helped me at the interview to convey my passion for and describe my experiences in helping scientists get exactly what they need to move ahead.
Most of all, I am thankful to our former colleagues for taking the initiative at their new company of talking about what we used to do to support their work, and for everyone at (my) new company who did so much great work to make this position possible!

Guest Expert:
Bob McIntosh is a career trainer at the Career Center of Lowell, where he leads more than 20 workshops on the career search. He consistently receives ratings of "Very Good" on customer evaluation forms. Bob is often the person people go to for advice on the job search. As well, he critiques resumes and conducts mock interviews. Bob's greatest pleasure is helping people find rewarding careers in a competitive job market. These he considers to be his greatest accomplishments. Please visit his blog and connect with him on LinkedIn.