It has been almost five weeks since my job ended. The first few weeks went by pretty quickly, but the past few have been harder. I remember that people kept saying to me, “enjoy this time off while you figure things out”. I even snapped at a friend of mine saying, “this is not a vacation, I didn’t choose to take time off from my job”.

I know that for many, this is not a new thing. I know many people who have been in this situation before. Many more than once. I would consider myself lucky to have not had many experiences with this in 25 years of employment. I have been working, with the exception of a 2 month period in late 2000, solidly for 25 years. Understandably this is a difficult adjustment.

I would like to take this time to mention a great place in Thornhill. It is called The Thornhill Employment Hub and it is a wonderful place. It is a government subsidized that is open to the public who need help in the job market. Are you new to Canada? Newly unemployed and need help? Unemployed for an extended period of time and looking for a second career? They have it all. They even have yoga!

They have great workshops facilitated by their staff. I have attended two so far – Targeting Resume Writing and today an all day workshop on Interview Skills.

“The Interview” – something that everyone has anxiety over. That was the first question we were asked today – How do you feel about going on an interview? I know people who haven’t been on an interview in over 20 years. Over the past several years I have applied for jobs and have been on a few interviews, but not that many. A lot of them were leads from people I knew so the interviews were less formal than if you didn’t know the people.

One of the first tasks was to break off in pairs and introduce yourself to the other, give one strength and one weakness about yourself. Some of the terms that were used as “weakness” were: lack of confidence, public speaking, shyness, and language skills (or lack of English) came up several times. That seemed to be a running commentary for me through the day.

Here is the question that will come up at the start of any interview: Tell us a bit about yourself.

When you start to talk about this in an interview is should be 80% work related experiences about yourself and 20% non related work experiences. You need to have a script in your head that you can speak clearly and concise about who you are and what you can bring to the table.

When I had my chance to speak to my partner I realized that my experiences came quite easy to talk about. How my career in travel led me to being able to see the world, which led me to my passion for food, photography and writing. It all seemed to just flow.

She commented on how my ‘accent’ was so clear and my words were so perfect. She was from another country and had only been in Canada for 43 days. She was a civil engineer in her country and now she is in Canada. I said to her that I have always lived in Canada, and she said that I was lucky.

Towards the end of the session we were given a hand out on the 50 most common interview questions. You can actually google it and you will find several articles with different amounts – 50, 31, 10 etc. The handout we received was 50, but they all basically fall into five categories just asked in different ways.

1. Why are you here? 

2. What can you do for me? 

3. What kind of person are you? 

4. Why are you different?

5. Can I afford you. 

And so the search continues. Thanks to the Targeted Resume Workshop I have a brand new resume that is ready to be sent out. I know that putting it out there in the social sphere is not necessarily what people would do, but the last time I shared, it did bring out some great feedback and connections to new people. I am hoping that this will continue to do that. I am open to new conversations, new adventures, and a new experience to take my professional life to the next level.

Living my best life,

Lisa