Word: ward
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...FAST As the sole breadwinner for his wife and three kids, Ward knew that he had to get a new job quickly. He found himself unemployed at 5 in the afternoon; by 8 that night, he'd called four people he knew in Ohio who did the same sort of computer work he did, as well as his college buddy Lyell, down in North Carolina. "I'd been using Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, but in a very passive, extracurricular way," says Ward. "I knew Lyell was big into the Twitter scene. He immediately began blasting information out to contacts...
...them, a pal from high school, wrote back Sunday night. He now worked for a tech company in Louisiana, and asked if Ward would be interested in being put in touch with the Web-development group. Ward eagerly agreed and had a phone interview the next day. "Here I was four hours into being unemployed and I already had a phone interview," he recalls. "I was like, Wow, this is going to be impressive...
...YOUR NETWORK TO STAY UPBEAT Except it wasn't. Ward's skills and what the company needed didn't line up. Intellectually, he knew it was that simple, but the rejection stung, especially coming on the heels of having lost his job the week before. "You've just been told, We don't want you. That has a crushing effect on your soul," says Ward. "Then as you go out and look for a job, most of the jobs you look at you're not going to get. You're going to be told no over and over again...
Using social-networking sites to look for work - in addition to traditional job banks like Monster and Dice - helped with that emotional part of the job search. Twitter didn't provide many leads, but Ward did come across a lot of other people looking for work. "It turned into a big support network," he says. While he was looking for a job, Ward wasn't able to sleep more than a few hours a night. The first thing he'd do when he got up at 4 or 5 in the morning was send out a tweet. (See the best...
...BEYOND JOB-RELATED NETWORKING LinkedIn proved more useful in finding possible positions. Early in his search, Ward watched a webinar by onetime arena football player Lewis Howes on how to better leverage LinkedIn. Sounds hit-or-miss but Ward got a lot out of it. He began joining LinkedIn groups, even those that weren't work-related, like one for members of his college fraternity. That landed him a note from a vice president at Cisco Systems - a man on the other side of the country who hadn't even gone to the same school as Ward was now telling...