thoth's Journal: Layoff and job search

I thought I would expand on my recent comment if anybody happens to look at my journal.

I was laid off in Nov 2008. Typical story, company had up and down quarters, and held small layoffs every year since 2005. I survived three or four rounds, but was finally caught up in it. I received 14 weeks of severance, plus my unused vacation time. I had 6+ months of living expenses in addition to what I received from my former employer, and I would have been in major trouble without that cushion. My mortgage was $2000/month and COBRA was $350, so with utilities and food I was definitely spending above $3000 a month, probably around $3200 to $3300. You can cut back the obvious stuff but you still need a phone, gas, my car insurance payment came up, etc. I can now see how people that are laid off can get into mortgage trouble, and how easily you can go to affording your home to defaulting on it. Unemployment added $250 a week, which sounds small, but it REALLY helped out.

The layoff was right before Thanksgiving, so I took a few days to de-stress, and then started the job search. I looked through dice.com, careerbuilder.com, fedjobs.gov, reached out to local contacts, updated my LinkedIn profile, and so on.

I also heard from recruiters that got my info from the job boards (dice.com, careerbuilder.com). I was moderately bummed most of those listings seemed to funnel into recruiters but I guess that is the reality.
The job I wound up getting was the gov't job I applied for via their website fairly early in the process. It took months of back and forth, interviews and paperwork, but I got a phone call and job offer in June 2009, after being unemployed for 7 months.

About recruiters - it is inevitable you have to deal with them, since they do have job leads. But only one of the six different ones I dealt with seemed interested in matching me with a reasonable fit, and most importantly, keeping me on the radar of the prospective company. Recruiters get paid by placement fees from companies, so that is who they really work for. Most probably want to do the least work for the most payoff - fill interviews at companies that pay them the highest fee, and deal with candidates most likely to get a job within a few interviews. My experience was literally "two and out" - you didn't hear from the recruiter again if two interviews didn't work out. When a recruiter talks about how many companies they work with and how many "opportunities" they have, none of that matters. You'll get two or three interviews, then you become too much effort to deal with.