Fellow CCI employees, I need help. For many, many, many years I have worked for CCI. I have been there for 15 years and many people I know have been there for more than 5 years. We are good people, very dedicated to doing a good job, and passionate about helping students. Now, it looks like I need to look elsewhere for income as the CCI future is no good. Where to start? Where do you get the courage to fill out applications? I've not interviews in years? It's all so overwhelming, I have not do a resume. Will I be black listed because I list CCI on my resume? Do I ask my boss for a reference...how does that all work?
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Thank you everyone who posted positive things and advice
Good advice! Thank you to those who took time to post. I'd also like to recommend indeed.com as a web site . They scour employers' job boards. I posted my resume in indeed and got a call the next day.
I'm with 20105. Find a Career Services Coach that you trust. Take them to lunch. They can help you develop your resume and provide a plan to jump-start a self-directed search. Get set up on indeed.com and create job alerts. This aggregates posts from multiple sources. Start networking. If you have been in place for 15 years, you will get the (positive) attention of other schools (if that is where you choose to look...). Be careful with headhunters. They are paid by the employer, so to them you are simply inventory - and they will have a lot of comparable inventory very soon. No reason not to use them - just have other strategies working for you.
I understand - after 15 years - why you seem a bit fearful and nervous. This is challenging, but doable. Ignore the bashers and idiots on this board who offer nothing but discouragement and smart-assed remarks. Associate with and listen to those who can and will help. Start now - results require action and persistence!
Great, the World's Biggest Jackass is back. This is late for you, did ya hafta cover an extra shift at the fryer? Loser!
McDonald's career page: http://www.mcstate.com/careers/
Those CS people have an 81% placement rate too!
check in with career services. they can help you look for a job, do mock interviews, and even polish up your resume
I'd hit head hunters. It really depends on where your skillset lies, but I'd start calling recruiters right now. Once you find a handful that you can work with they will help you polish up your resume. Also, hit LinkedIn (If you havent already), open up the profile, link with as many people as you can, indicate that you are open for job offers and do not lock your profile have it displayed publicly. Update your profile once a week as most companies and recruiters look how fresh your updates are (that indicates that you are truly ready to move on and looking for job). This can be an easy start as initially just need a paragraph describing your background. Join linkedin groups, like things, etc. Again, it raises your 'activity profile and that helps. List your resume on different job boards (e.g., monster.com) - recruiters will find you. Call recruiters - if they do not deal with your kind of skills some of them to the person you need to contact. Find someone on linked in who has a similar job to yours and copy their resume from linkedin - that's a good start (you'll need to modify it so it is factually accurate). Once you are set here you might want to look into your skill set and look into alternate career - the for-profit sector will be depressed for a while, so if you have good Excel skills, or communication skills, or whatever, think about sectors or industries that might need those skills. I'd stay away from newspapers, craigslist, etc. For me it was a major waste of time as for every position they publish there is a hundred people applying, it gets ultra competitive and your chances drop below 1%. I'd be proactive, find some emails at places where you might fit and send emails to those folks, it does not hurt to say something like I am looking for opportunities and while I understand that you might not have any openings right now please consider me if something opens up. Emails like this get forwarded a lot, so you never know what's going to happened - worked for me in the past (the hardest part is finding emails). The overall job market conditions improved over last 6 months and you'll find something - again, it all depends on what you do and want to do - the higher up you are, the more difficult it'll be to find something that matches. The issue is that you spent 15 years here, you have some seniority and tenure here, it is likely that you were comfortable in your role. Be ready to accept that this might not be the case at your new place of employment, be in peace with it, you'll need to start building your brand and reputation and it'll take years - as long as you accept that you'll be fine. I'd jump on all of this ASAP - this ship is sinking much faster than any of us realizes.
You've taken the first step by realizing that external forces are creating a change.
(1) start by making a list of resources to check daily (local paper online classifieds, higheredjobs, etc...there are other specialized ones for different areas like student finance and IT), (2) it doesn't take courage, since it is your job now and will be until you are in a secure position - just do it, (3)list CCi and be prepared to answer questions about your involvement in the unethical activities (best to role play a few interviews with friends and family), and (4) get the contact info for all of your colleagues now so you will be able to act as references for each other. Good luck and be confident - you'll be fine!