Hired!

Well, it has been over 7 months since my last test at Queen's and over 300 CVs sent out, but I now have a job. It has been a struggle to find opportunities as the economy is down and even harder to secure interviews as there are a lot of qualified people looking for work too. However, by persisting, using all the tools available to me and being able to show some adaptability it all turned out in the end.

I will be working as a Market Analyst for a company in Calgary, Alberta, Canada that manufactures and sells drilling pipe. This is not where I saw myself when I entered the MBA program, but the company is a great fit and the position require both my oil and gas engineering background as well as my MBA education, which is exactly what I was looking for. In addition, this will put me back in the heart of Calgary and if for some reason this doesn't workout, which I don't see why it wouldn't, I will be in a good place to see what else is around.

The main job hunting method that helped me get this job was networking and my school's alumni network. By attending a Queen's School of Business event I was directed to contact an alumni relations person who in turn forwarded my resume to this company. As it turns out, this company has a strong relationship with the school and that helped too.

All the other methods were very helpful too, but this was the one that got me the opportunity I signed on with. Sending resumes to specific advertised position worked. Sending resumes to companies "cold" worked, but only if the timing coincidentally happened to be right. Sending resumes through recruiters (a.k.a. headhunters) worked. However, it was through face to face networking that I found this opportunity.

Most positions I found were advertised on company websites. Although eluta.ca and indeed.ca were helpful, I found that they were not as thorough as going though the company websites myself. They will likely improve in the future, but at this time they seem only to find jobs posted on larger companies' websites or jobs that have been posted for a few weeks. Their major weakness was finding jobs posted by smaller companies. Sometimes these companies don't post a html job description and instead opt for a PDF of a scanned print of the job description. A bit low tech, true, but effective none the less. These PDFs, however, do not get "crawled" by the job search engines and as a result you do not see them in the results. So I recommend going through a list of specific companies once a week to check postings as well as using job posting search engines.

Because I found this job so close to Christmas, my start date has been delayed to the new year. By the time the company can get all the required IT and HR items in place, a lot of people will be gone on vacation and the company doesn't think there will be any point in my starting prior to the new year. So, I am unemployed for another month, but it will give me time to look for a suitable place to rent and spend some time with my family.

Overall, the hardest part has been keeping my moral up. Nobody wants to interview or hire someone who is "down in the dumps", but it is hard not to feel that way when you graduate from an excellent MBA program and can't find a job for months. Talking with the career counsellor at Queen's, working out regularly and getting out to network were the three major things that I did to stay positive. Having a supportive wife, family and a group of understanding friends were major factors outside of my immediate control that helped me through this tough time as well.

My advice to anyone going back for an MBA is to make sure you "plan for the worst and hope for the best". Make sure you have your support system in place prior to entering the program just in case you need it. With luck, you won't, but it sure helps to have it there if you need it.