April 30 I learned something today about conducting an effective job search: to always remember this is my job search and I need to manage it at a pace that allows me to be effective and confident. I realize that, in this economy, hiring companies hold the winning hand and I need to jump at the right opportunities as they present themselves. But enthusiasm and over-scheduling are two very different things, and this week, I over-scheduled myself.

I am on my way to Seattle for an interview tomorrow afternoon and I have already been on two separate interviews today. This morning, I had a third-round interview with a company that I’ve been talking to since late February and, after an hour break for lunch, I had an initial interview with a local promotion agency. By the end of the day tomorrow, I will have been on interviews with three different companies in 36 hours. Each one requires preliminary research and preparation as well as follow-up. I’m already having trouble separating today’s interviews in my mind as I try to write some notes in my files on each firm.

On the bright side, I’m finding that companies are hiring and I’m getting interviews for some interesting positions that seem to align closely with my objectives. Still, companies are being slow and methodical about reaching a hiring decision and I am being asked to come back for several rounds of interviews.

May 6 I took the weekend off from the job search and feel refreshed after last week’s self-inflicted interview gauntlet. On my return flight from Seattle, I read the in-flight magazine and got a really cynical chuckle out of the month’s cover story. It’s a profile of the ceo of the company that bought my former employer’s client. The article is full of cheesy pictures of him posing, perma-tanned from basking in the limelight like a celebrity. Ironically, I read an article in The Wall Street Journal this morning about this same ceo and how Wall Street analysts are really giving it to him for not generating results from the acquisition. I admit I’m biased, but as far as I can tell, the only thing this celebrity ceo and his management team have done is create turmoil in people’s lives. Hundreds of people have lost their jobs as a result of this merger, and the stock value is in the tank. I’m a shareholder and I lost my job, so I’d rather not see this guy cheesing it up on the cover of a magazine. I’d personally prefer he did his job and tried to build long-term growth for the company, but the only definitive news the Journal reports is impending overhead reduction (read: firing more people) and proliferating line extensions of their major brands. Is that vision?

May 15 My wife and I have reached a milestone in our dual job search. She already had two offers from local clinics before I was laid off, but we decided to take some time and consider other parts of the country for relocation. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t getting anywhere with interviews in Bozeman or Boulder, so we decided she would join one of the local practices that had offered her a position. While this decision limits my search to the Twin Cities, we were finding that most of my interviews are here already and, even if my search takes longer as a result, at least she will be establishing her medical practice and we can certainly live comfortably on her physician’s income. On top of all these logical reasons, we like Minneapolis and our house. That seems as important as any other reason to stay.

May 23 I interviewed for a really interesting position at an ad agency in town today. During one of my five interviews, I met with the creative director whose first question was, “What is a promotion guy doing interviewing at an ad agency?” I reminded him that advertising — and promotion — are business tools first, and I told him that I consider myself a business person who understands that building profitable sales for clients is how agencies stay in business. I said that marketing turf wars are really antiquated, and true marketers understand the value of active, behavior-based marketing to drive short-term volume and to build brand equity long-term.

This was only the most recent case of being treated like a snake-oil salesman — as if a promotion marketer isn’t worthy of being in the same room as the strategic-thinking advertising geniuses. Despite this, the interview went quite well and I like the agency overall.

While it goes against my “policy,” I had a third interview scheduled this afternoon at another agency in town; they had asked if I could stop by for 30 minutes this afternoon. I had heard through the grapevine that the candidate list was narrowed to two, so I assumed this was the gut check “are-you-interested-in-the-job” session. To my surprise, they offered me the job! I asked for the Memorial Day weekend to discuss the offer with my wife and they agreed.

June 4 I had a follow-up interview today at the agency I met with for the first time last week. They were kind enough to expedite the process when they found out I had an offer somewhere else. It’s flattering and a bit overwhelming, but the position has evolved in the last few days and is less appealing. If the position had stayed the same as originally defined, I would have had a difficult decision to make, but after today’s interview, the choice is clear: I’m accepting the offer I got last week. I start July 8.

July 12 I finished Week One as the new director of promotion marketing for Fallon Intersect, a new division of the advertising agency. This job is a near perfect match against the job objective I wrote back in mid-March. It’s a newly created position that allows me to shape my role and responsibilities. It’s the opportunity to build a business with the resources of a larger company. It’s a flexible, creative culture with great growth potential. It’s a chance to add international business experience to my credentials. I really am fortunate to have this opportunity; it is one of the first jobs I applied for after I was laid off at the end of February and, believe it or not, I found it posted on monster.com.

If there is one thing you take away from my story, it is the fact that a well-planned job search requires a balanced search with networking, recruiters, classifieds, and online job banks. You just never know where you’ll find that next big opportunity.

Looking back on the past several months, I feel good about the effort I put into my search as well as the plan I developed and then implemented. As one of my favorite football coaches once said, “Ninety percent of luck is preparation.”

I’m feeling really lucky right now.

George McGowan is director of promotion marketing for Fallon Intersect in Minneapolis and chairman of the Twin Cities Chapter of the Promotion Marketing Association. Reach him at [email protected].

MARCH 13

A Business School classmate loaned me a career transition manual. I scheduled two hours each day over the last week to work through the exercises and develop a personal job objective and marketing plan. I’m not the type to follow each step of the workbook, but I’ve found the exercises very useful while sorting through my options and my emotions.

Before doing the exercises, I found that I had more questions than answers. Did I want to stay in the agency business or return to the client side? Where would we consider relocating? What kind of work did I want to do? I thought about changing careers entirely — maybe teaching or taking a not-for-profit gig. None of these issues were resolved simply by filling out workbook sheets, but the hours of thought put into completing the exercises, accompanied with lots of conversations with my wife, friends, and family, helped. After two weeks of unemployment, I have a clear job objective reflecting the kind of work I want to do, where we want to live, and the types of companies I want to target. I’m ready to go get some offers.

APRIL 1

Today is the one-month anniversary of my lay-off, and I couldn’t be happier. The adage “finding a job is a full time job” seems true, and I am regularly logging 10 hours per day on my search, but I’m removed enough now to have gained some perspective. I’ve come to see this as a great opportunity to re-evaluate and re-focus. And the conclusion that I am coming to terms with is, maybe I’m better off.

My move to Minneapolis three years ago had a lot to do with the person who became my boss here (I had worked with him previously in Chicago), but my primary motivation was personal: My wife (girlfriend at the time) had just been accepted into a residency program in Minnesota. My employer offered to relocate me due to the needs of a growing Minneapolis office. I jumped at the chance.

It didn’t take me long to realize that things rarely work out perfectly: The job I was hired for was actually about three steps backward in my career development. After a year working with assistant brand managers — a position I had held almost 10 years ago — I got moved into a business-development role. This should have been an ideal situation, since our biggest account had just been acquired by a competitor and our office needed to get business or close.

The problem was that the economy was entering recession and the marketing industry was about to hit its worst slowdown ever. Being an agency employee without monthly retainer or account revenue after your name on the income statement isn’t a good place to be during a recession. I figured it was only a matter of time.

I’m not just rationalizing my current situation. While the work wasn’t the most satisfying, I did get engaged and married. The move to Minnesota was more than worthwhile. And I liked my co-workers; they made an otherwise intolerable situation bearable and, occasionally, even fun. In the end, the lay-off made it easier for me to get out of a rut and concentrate on finding a more satisfying and rewarding job.

APRIL 3

I was supposed to have an interview today for a position I applied for online at Monster.com back on March 3. The description fit my objective dead-on and it’s located right here in Minneapolis. I heard from the company in mid-March and we scheduled an interview for today.

Unfortunately, the company called to reschedule for next week. It’s not like they canceled the interview, but emotions run high during periods of uncertainty, and I’m feeling pretty down as a result. Interviewing is draining and it’s tough to get the game face on only to have to wait another week.

APRIL 10

Over the years, I’ve talked to a lot of recruiters and stayed in touch with a half-dozen or so. One of my first steps upon revising my resume was touching base with them. Additionally, I made contact with a couple of local recruiters referred to me by people that have worked in the Twin Cities for a lot longer than I have.

For the most part, my conversation with each of them was similar — times are tough, particularly for someone at my level, but they would be in touch if anything came up. A few offered to present me to companies with which they have relationships and to whom I was interested in talking. Perhaps the most refreshing, albeit discouraging, advice I received was from a recruiter who told me I was better off going directly to companies, since the current economic conditions make paying recruiter fees highly undesirable right now.

APRIL 12

Having a well-prepared job objective will eliminate lots of wasted phone time discussing positions that I won’t be interested in. At least, that’s the idea: to provide recruiters with specific information to help them best help me.

That thought was proved wrong in a conversation I had this afternoon with a recruiter new to me. She called about a position in Los Angeles. I explained my job objective and geographic parameters and why L.A. wouldn’t work from a lifestyle or professional standpoint. She proceeded to “advise” me that my wife and I needed to compromise — this from a person who I had never talked to before and who had not bothered to ask one question about my interests or goals. I informed her — rather emphatically — that we knew a thing or two about compromise, having lived in two cities for the better part of three years while my wife continued her medical education.

I probably handled that one a bit aggressively, but I was returning from an interview in Washington, DC, and was tired. The last thing I needed was insensitive advice from someone I didn’t know. Fortunately, the rest of my dealings with recruiters have been very positive — if not overly productive.

APRIL 15

I have always been a closet entrepreneur, and one of the promises I made to myself during the first week “off” was to dedicate time to work on some business ideas. I may not have this kind of time once I take a new job.

So here I am in Mexico working on my first consulting assignment. I am developing a tourism marketing plan to attract U.S. consumers to a little-known resort area on the Pacific coast. It’s a long story, so I’ll save the explanation for another time. The good news is that the income from this project will take some pressure off the job search now that my severance has ended.

APRIL 24

I’ve been meeting at a local coffee shop once a week with a co-worker who got the ax the same day I did. We’ve exchanged recruiter names, talked about our interviews, shared job leads, and just enjoyed having someone to talk to who is going through the same stressful experience.

He is younger than I am, but is having great success getting interviews and, like me, finding that companies are taking their time making decisions. In both our cases, we’re being asked to come in for three and four rounds of interviews with every company. I just scheduled a fifth-round interview for next week.

I’m confident that one or both of us will get jobs soon and we’ll be able to look back on our “support sessions” as an important routine in dealing with the weekly highs and lows of the search process.

To be continued.

George McGowan can be reached at [email protected].

March 1: It’s 10 a.m. on Friday morning, and I’m sitting at my neighborhood coffee shop reading The Wall Street Journal — in its entirety. For three years, I have been running in here for my morning coffee on my way to work and I have always envied the people I saw doing exactly what I am now.

I was laid off yesterday and this was my first decision. Before revising my resume, calling all the recruiters in my Rolodex, setting up an account at Monster.com, or any of the myriad tasks that will become part of my daily routine over the coming days and weeks, I will join the folks I have envied and spend a morning sorting through the emotions that seem to change with each article I read.

Until yesterday, I was a vice president at one of the preeminent consumer promotion agencies in the country. I’ll spare the details — they really aren’t the point here anyway. My story is the same as any of the hundreds of promotion marketing professionals across the country in my same situation. The editors of this magazine were nice enough to ask me to share my story and, in so doing, to give voice to the challenges facing a lot of us who call ourselves promotion marketers.

Through sharing my successes and failures, my emotional ups and downs, and the challenges that are incumbent to a job search in today’s economic climate, I hope folks will glean some good ideas and, most importantly, some hope in their own efforts. For everyone else, perhaps my experiences will remind them that they can help through advice, contacts, and ideas.

March 5: I finally feel like I’m getting organized, and am definitely more focused than the last few days. It’s funny, but I haven’t really gotten angry yet; I’m mostly relieved that I have closure on the 18-month purgatory that my office experienced after its biggest client was acquired by a cross-town rival. I always knew that this outcome was highly likely, so I was mentally prepared for it. Still, the feeling of closure is tempered by anxiety and, occasionally, sadness.

I had a laptop at my old job so I don’t even have Internet access at home. A couple of expensive days at Kinko’s updating my resume and running to the local library to access e-mail was enough to convince me to invest in upgrading my home computer. I feel good about my resume, thanks to some good critical feedback from several friends in the industry. I am finding the Internet to be a remarkably good source of job information, though rather overwhelming. More than once this week, I started searching for jobs and wound up spending three or four hours online. I need to step back and formulate a plan.

March 6: My old employer called and needs help on a one-day consulting assignment in Chicago. Since I had expressed interest in doing just this type of thing during my severance meeting last week, they took me up on the offer. I used to live there, so I can stay with friends and visit with a few recruiters I know in town. I’m looking forward to it; it will be a good story to tell in interviews and it reaffirms my self-confidence. That’s one thing that sneaks up on me at times, the creeping sense that I did something to get laid off. I have to keep reminding myself that this isn’t about performance — it’s about profits.

March 7: My wife and I have been doing some soul-searching over the last few days regarding the “where” part of the job search. She is finishing her residency in family practice medicine in the next two months. We originally narrowed her search to Minneapolis because of my job — and because we like it here. She has a couple of offers in town, so it makes sense to stay here rather than starting from scratch to move somewhere else. We have the freedom to look elsewhere now and we’re going to at least consider some other areas where we might like to live. I’m not sure that freedom makes things easier.

To be continued.