Lessons learned in the over 2 years it took me to find a job.

Hey all. Sorry for the big gap between posts even though I said I was updating this blog. There are three big reasons why I haven’t posted in a while:

First, I got laid off from my old job. Even though I saw it coming from miles away it still hurts. I fell into a funk and I lost a lot of motivation to write or do anything else for that matter. Plus I had an identity crisis whether I was qualified to share advice on working in the environmental field.

Then my wife had a baby. While I love being a father, it is hard work. Whatever free time I had was used to catch up on sleep or chores around the house. But now that the baby is older and doesn’t need our attention 24/7 I am finding more time to write.

Finally, I started a new job. Not only I had to adjust to being a father, I had to adjust to a new job. I joined a government agency in a compliance role while previously I was in consulting performing a remediation work. That was two major life adjustments I had to make back-to-back. It took me a while to get my bearings straight again.

But now that things are settling down I am hoping to write some more. So for my first post back, I thought it would be best to discuss the lessons I learned in my job hunt.



Finding a job is hard.

I can hear a collective “DUH” from all of 4 of my readers. Finding a job, especially in the environmental field is tough work. First the application process is a chore. It is really good practice to tailor your resume to each job you apply for. The Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) picks up on key words from the job posting and compares it to your resume. If you don’t have enough keywords then your resume will never be seen by human eyes; which is a must if you want to get interviewed. So if you want to make it past the ATS, you need to include as many buzzwords as you can from the job posting. That means basically rewriting your resumes for every job you apply to.

Once you get past the ATS screen, you are still one of dozens if not hundreds of applicants. In many ways the environmental field is a niche industry with jobs few and far between. You have too many applicants for too few jobs. A good example I experienced was when I applied to a state environmental agency. The state agency capped the number of applicants to 50. For each job I applied to, the postings closed in less than 2 days. And out of those 50 applicants they were only going to interview 3. Good luck with those odds (more on that later).

And despite the urgency that is sometimes needed to apply for a job, the applications process can feel like an eternity. From the start of my job hunt to when I started my first day, it took me nearly two years to get my current role. Again just filling out the application takes forever; tailoring your resume and cover letter, uploading the documents, then retyping your resume because application site can’t parse the information. The turnaround time from some companies can be painfully slow. I am still getting rejection emails from jobs I applied to when I was still in undergrad. So it is really best practice to keep applying to jobs until you have signed the offer letter to the job you want. We all have bills to pay and cannot afford to wait around.

It doesn’t hurt to apply

If you think you are qualified for the job, you should apply. If you don’t think you are qualified you should still apply. In my previous consulting roles, I did site investigations and remediation work. My current job is all facility compliance. I was highly doubtful I would interview let alone get this job. The only hard skills that transferred were my note taking and contractor management. However, I had enough soft skills; conflict resolution, writing, multi-tasking that were more highly coveted by the agency. I did not know this at the time when I applied. If I let the job description scare me, I would never have gotten the job.

The biggest example I see for this is when applicants get scared with the X number of years of experience. Well first, that is supposed to scare applicants. As I said before, there are too many applicants for the jobs that are posted. HR departments don’t want to filter through all the new graduates applications. So instead they will “1-4 years of experience” for an entry level job to weed out all the kids who think that a 3 month summer internship doesn’t count. A good rule of thumb is just round up your experience. One month at field camp, round up to a year of field sampling. You spend 18 months doing Phase Is, well looks like you had 3 years of experience.

Of course, there are some exceptions. If you are fresh out of school, don’t apply for a senior Project Manager position. Similarly, if you do not have a law degree, you will not be very useful as an environmental lawyer. Use some common sense when applying, but don’t be intimidated by the job posting. If you have one skill the posting is looking for, that is enough to apply for the job.

Don’t burn any bridges

We all need help at especially when it comes to finding a job. The reason why I had four interviews at the state agency is that once I got rejected from one job, the hiring manager liked me enough to pass my name along to the next job within the agency I applied for. Of course that agency didn’t work out, but for my current job I reached out to the hiring manager that interviewed me last year. And as I stated earlier, my experience didn’t match up great with the job posting. But that connection was enough to get me a seat at the interview and sometimes that is all you need.

Having and maintaining a professional network is the greatest and easiest way to find a job. The last thing you would want to do is cut off a part of that network. Even though I got laid off from my job, I used my old manager as a professional reference. If I left on bad terms from my old job, then I would not have been in my current role.

Also as I mentioned earlier, the environmental field is almost a niche field, so often times everyone knows everyone. I was shocked that within 3 or 4 years of consulting I had developed a reputation that preceded me. Consultants that move from one firm to another chasing contracts and clients make a lot of friends, build reputations and most importantly gossip about others. Given enough time, they will talk about you. So make sure they only good things to say about you.



Interviews go both ways.

In early spring of 2018 I had two interviews practically back to back with each other. One was with a city agency, the other was with a small consulting firm. With city agency, the interview was amazing. Everyone was friendly, excited to see me, and half of our conversation wasn’t about the job at all. Contrast that with small consulting firm where the interview was question after question, the conversation was stale, and atmosphere felt like a dentist office. So despite small consulting firm working on super interesting projects, all I cared about was the city agency job.



Candidates often make the mistake that they are the ones that need to do the impressing during an interview. And while this is true, candidates should also use the interview to judge the organization they are trying to join. Your job is a place where you will be spending 8 hours a day at. So shouldn’t you join job where you get along with everyone and enjoy coming to work.



So when you do an interview use it as an opportunity to learn about the organization. Observe how the interviewers interact with you and with each other to get an idea of the workplace culture. See how they dress and the condition of the office to see if they are too busy to even look after themselves or where they work. And most importantly, ask them questions. Ask them questions about their day to day, what is their favorite and worst part about working for the organization, their favorite animal, etc. Use the interview as an opportunity to see whether organization is a good fit for you.



You can do everything right, and still not get the job.

In early 2019 I had interviews with four different departments with a state agency. I was rejected from the first three but I was not disappointed. I wasn’t a good fit for some of those jobs and I was losing out to people with much more experience. Plus I was still employed at the time so there was no urgency. But the Friday before my last interview, I got laid off. However, that last interview I was the best fit for. Not only I had plenty of relevant experience, I actually worked on one of their projects with my now former consulting firm. On top of that, the hiring managers from my previous interviews put in a good word for me. At the interview, I killed it. Not only I was knocking all of the technical questions out of the park but I was charming while doing it. gg ezpz

And of course, the next week the hiring manager called and told me I did not get the position. He called me out of courtesy because he really liked me and I interviewed well. So well in fact, that I was “one of the best interviews he has ever had,” not just for this position but since he became head of the department. Even though I was applying to a entry-level position, he said my qualifications were good enough for a mid-level role. But at the end of the day, they decided to go with someone with more experience.

With the state agency jobs they were very transparent with the whole hiring process. I knew how many total applicants there were and how many made it to the interview. After the last rejection, I crunched the numbers and if they picked at random I had an 80% chance of landing at least one of those jobs. If I told you had an 80% chance of getting a job, you would take those odds. But not getting a job and having a hiring manager tell you were on of the best interviews ever is pretty demoralizing.

The fact is, you can do everything right and still not get the job. It is a tough pill to swallow. A tougher pill to swallow is telling yourself you still have to apply for jobs. It is hard to pick yourself up from a rejection and put yourself back into the meat grinder. I took over a month off from applying to jobs because I did not have the energy to get rejected again. But I am glad I found the courage to apply for jobs again because otherwise I would not have gotten my current job.



Of course there other lessons I learned along the way, but those were the 5 biggest ones. Hopefully I will share more with future post. Additionally, now that I am at a government job I can share my perspectives from working in a government role compared to the private sector.