Aaron P. - Look Under a Rock

My search for full-time job began with a simple goal: look for other areas for employment that I hadn't before. First, I attended the One Stop Career Center in Oakland and asked the question, "what more can I do?" Their answer: network, network, network. In addition to my determined approach online to submit my resume for jobs, I joined the East Bay Professional Network, located on the 2nd floor of the same building as the job center.

Over the course of many months, EB PEN remained patient, and dedicated to their core mission and to my success. The idea of job seeking is a multi-faceted approach, designed to 1) reconstruct your job search; 2) Redesign your resume; 3) Tap into your personal and professional network.

The workshops, speakers and EB PEN members consistently directed my job seeking outward to the hidden job network, and internally, to keep my mind, body and soul in the best possible condition.

Job seeking is the hardest job I have ever had. Staying positive under a constant barage of negative emotion took all of my physical and mental energy to continue. With the solid goal that stable employment meant the most for me, I listened to suggestions, attended the speaker workshops, and worked extensively outside EB PEN ti improve my skills, experience, and most importantly, my network.

In the end, the social media site, Twitter, opened a door at a company I had never heard of, but existed my job industry. What seemed like a normal conversation, quickly turned into a job possibility. After researching the company, I had 2 interviews with my future managers, and ultimately an executive who signed off that I would be a great asset to their organization. What else could they say? I worked every day to make myself the only candidate a company would want. All thanks to EB PEN.

The focus and hard work in my job search yielded, what I feel, the best job opportunity I could possibly imagine.