Thankful Lessons And Hard Work

Hello Everyone!

I have missed you all so much! This blog is a little different than my usual blogs. I am updating you all on what has been going on. Life is amazing and very busy.

Computer problems. Car problems. Finding a full time job problems.  ALL of this things has been taken care of. I am truly blessed. God provided.

So much as happened to make my life a LOT better than it was a year ago and definitely better than it was two years ago. For a long time I was struggling with a long term job search, I finally got a full time job in an office.

It was a long difficult stressful process but I learned a lot about being persistent and believing in myself. In order to get back into an office environment, I had to work in retail for a while which was something I thought I would never have to do again after having so many years of office experience.

Today I am in a place in my life where I have never been so thankful and blessed. Never giving up and a lot of hard work was the key to bring me through the tough dark times. I was also forced to learn to be patient. You have to sometimes go through the process to discover new things about your life.

The best thing about my long  job search is that I started my blog Thomasina's Words. Lately my work schedule is really busy and long hours, I realized just how much I missed blogging regularly. Learning how to use my time wisely and being productive as possible was a huge lesson I learned when I was searching for employment. I am determined to fit in blogging more often into my schedule.

I will be doing another blog post on the hard learned lessons of being in a long term job search.

Being an artist and a writer helped me cope with the stress being out of work. I had an outlet to vent my feelings in my journal, write a blog post or create an art piece. I would not be the artist and writer I am today if I had not had the time during my unemployment to focus on this important part of my life.

More blogs to come :)

Thank you for reading!

Thomasina

My Top Ten Tips for Job Fairs

1. Dress Professionally. You never know who you will meet and first impressions really count. I saw a girl in a black pair of skin tight disco pants at a job fair. Maybe there was a booth for a nightclub or strippers...

2. Bring your amazing resume. Make sure you have worked on your resume enough where you feel it best represents you and your skill set.

3. Get there early and study the map of the booths. It is best to get to the event location early not just to get a great parking space but the people at the booths will be at their best and the lines will not be as long. Also mark on the map the booths of the companies you do not want to forget to visit.

4. Don't expect to be hired on the spot. Maybe this happens. I wished many times this would happen to me when I went to the many job fairs I attended.

5. Use job fairs as an opportunity to network and meet new people. At a recent job fair, I found out about several companies I never knew existed in my area.

6. Chances are the person standing at the booth may not have anything to do with the actual hiring process. I actually heard a booth person say they really didn't know anything about the hiring procedures for the  company. They were just there to cover the booth. Not kidding.

7. Speak up. Talk to the company representative. Open up the conversation by asking "Tell me about your company" or "What does your company do?" This lead to a very informative discussion that allowed me to ask about the positions within that company that would suit my skills and degree.

8. Ask about the complete application process. To be honest, I hate filing out applications. But after I spoke with the booth person, I felt a lot less stress about the process. Do you need to make a profile? Can you just complete one application and then submit for just the positions that come available. Or do you have to submit a new application each time for each new position?

9. Don't give up. It is so easy to become jaded after going to job fair after job fair and not get the job you want. But you never know what the next opportunity may hold. Just when you want to give up, that's when your breakthrough will happen. Just go. What do you have to lose?

10. Enjoy the wonderful free job fair swag. I LOVE the free office supplies.  I stock up on pens, pencils, rulers, post it notes, water bottles, hand sanitizers tote bags, stress balls , plastic cups, mini flashlights etc. I go from table to table, and  pick up the lovely goodies. A job fair is after all an opportunity for companies to market themselves to the public. Sadly some companies attending job fairs aren't even hiring, they just want to know if you would be interested in them if their were hiring.

These are of course just my personal opinions and experiences. Please feel free to comment below about your experiences good, bad and ugly at job fairs.

Thanks for reading.