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COVID-19 Help for California Workers and Small Businesses

Resources for California workers

If you have lost your job or had a reduction in hours as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, you can apply for the State’s unemployment program. You can find more information or apply online now.

California Employment Development Department (EDD) COVID-19 page: https://www.edd.ca.gov/about_edd/coronavirus-2019.htm

EDD page to file an Unemployment Insurance Claim: https://www.edd.ca.gov/Unemployment/Filing_a_Claim.htm

The State has set-up a one-stop online resource to access emergency resources and connect to potential employers. Visit https://onwardca.org/ to sign-up.

Resources for California small businesses

The SBA is offering Economic Injury Disaster Loans of up to $2 million in assistance to cover a temporary loss of revenue. You can find more information or apply online now.

The SBA has launched the Paycheck Protection Program. These loans are up to $10 million and the SBA will forgive these loans if all employees are kept on payroll. The money can also be used for rent, mortgage interest, or utilities. You can find more information or apply online now.

Easter Eggs and the Job Hunt

Every year, the Easter Bunny stashes eggs throughout our home. Every year, our children wake us near dawn, straining at the leash. This means I’ve been up at dark-thirty filling and hiding eggs and want nothing more than to go back to bed. Much like Christmas as an adult, come to think of it…

The Easter egg hunt holds some lessons for the job hunt, too:

Be enthusiastic. Expect wonderful things to appear unexpectedly. Enjoy the hunt. Have a spirit of discovery and delight.
Be curious. Look in unlikely places. The legendary “hidden job market” just means “takes effort and luck to find.”
Be energetic. Keep moving. Don’t linger in one spot, keep looking. Traffic is always light on the extra mile.
Play nice. Share information and tips. It’s not a zero-sum game. Everyone can win. Helping others with advice may prove to be an investment, coming back to you in unforeseen ways.
Starbursts might be flavored wax. The jury’s still out on that one.

What Baseball Teaches about Job Search

It’s Opening Day of the 2019 baseball season. With that, all teams are tied for the pennant race. Everyone’s got hopes. And I think there’s a lesson here for everyone engaged in a job search as well.

One way to look at baseball is as an exercise in perseverance. A great player might have a .300 batting average. Only 20 players in the history of major league baseball have achieved a .400 batting average for a season–the most recent was Ted Williams, in 1941. A .400 batting average is generally considered unattainable in the modern era.

What this means is that the greatest players succeed less than 40% of the time when they go to bat. Fail 7 of 10 times–a .300 average–and you’re a great hitter. Fail 6 of 10 times, you’re a baseball legend and the greatest hitter in 78 years.

Baseball is hard. You take your swings, you miss, you strike out, you ground out, you fly out.

You fail until you win.

Job searching is hard. You apply to a promising opening and hear nothing. You get an interview and don’t get called back. You get to a second or third interview and learn that they’ve decided to go with an internal candidate. Or they’ve decided not to fill the position after all.

Or any number of other failure points, only some of which you can control.

If you’re looking for a job, you will fail. Repeatedly. And that’s fine. It’s part of the game. It means you’re in the game.

What’s not OK is letting fear of failure keep you from stepping up to the plate every chance you get.

Fail until you win.

Infographic Resumes: Clown Shoes for Your Career

I’m convinced that most of the people calling for infographic resumes are the people selling infographic resumes. Not employers.

Here’s an article describing several cases against littering your resume with charts and graphs–and if you’re going to anyway, how to do it right. Protip: don’t eat the crayons.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3037764/hit-the-ground-running/how-to-create-an-infographic-resume-that-doesnt-repel-hiring-managers

You Are Not a Used Car

It’s obvious, when you think about it, that your resume and your job search is an exercise in selling. But there are many different kinds of selling. In “Simple Daily Habits of the Delightfully Successful”, HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah presents a working definition of sales that doesn’t sacrifice your self-respect:

…Not used car-style sales. Selling doesn’t involve pressure or manipulation. Selling is the ability to explain the reasoning, logic, and benefits of a decision or a perspective in order to get buy-in. Selling is the ability to overcome skepticism or doubt. Selling is the ability to convince other people to go where you want to go.

The practical lesson here: your resume should be this kind of sales proposal. Make the reasons to hire you, and the benefits of hiring you, obvious. Lay out the evidence. Make your case.

If you want the job, do the work of showing why hiring you is in their best interest. It’s not about manipulation or trickery. It’s about delivering value.

Done well, you get the job, they think it was their own great idea. Everybody wins.

How to Prepare for a Job Interview with Thomas Edison

Apparently Thomas Edison invented bizarre interview questions, too. Could you score the required 90% or better with questions like these?

Who was Francis Marion?
Where is the River Volga?
Who invented logarithms?
What is the first line in The Aeneid?
What war material did Chile export to the Allies during the War?
Where is the Sargasso Sea?
Of what is brass made?
Who was Leonidas?
Who discovered the X-ray?
Where do we get shellac?
Why is cast iron called Pig Iron?
Who was Bessemer and what did he do?

In modern times, Edison would hire champion Trivial Pursuit players, I suppose. More at Mental_Floss.