I was too. How does it look like out there? I was with Cargill for more than ten years. Sharing any positive experiences with job search, ideas or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
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I was Riffed on July 25th. It took me 5 weeks to land a permanent job. Unfortunately I found there is a negative stigma attached to being layed off. There is also age discrimination going on. Once I decided to not mention being Riffed and stared telling people I was looking for a new challenge things started turning around. Never list any employment going beyond 10 years ago. My experience was LinkedIn is the best tool for landing a job. I would not use it for social media purposes. Lots of folks posting that they were layed off , how they enjoyed Cargill, how much they learned, etc. I would not recommend doing that. It am sure that if my LinkedIn showed I was layed off, I would still be looking for a job. You want employers to feel confident about you not sorry for you. Use the free outplacement services (mine was LHH) they really helped me get started and stay on track. Best of luck.
I have no idea if any of these will pan out, but I had been applying to a few opportunities before I was laid off, and almost all in the Mpls/STP area have lead to first, second, and now final round interviews!
You will be fine, your experience is valuable. But it has taken about 3-5 weeks to get to this point with each opportunity, companies are definitely not moving that quickly right now! So traction might feel slow but fingers crossed it picks up for all of us.
I have been networking like crazy. Everyone has been so generous sharing their time, insights and connections. I was really worried I'd be a burden, but most people really just want to help.
I listened to the 20 minute networking meeting for free on spotify (with premium membership) to have a plan of attack for those meetings and it's been a helpful framework.
Apply for jobs online. Where possible, try to get an internal referral. Make a database of everyone you talk to so you can reference it. Finding a job has turned out to be a full time job in itself, but I feel like I'll land something better because of it.