Phase 4: The New Hunt...for the elusive 'Newjita'

    A quick recap, for those just joining the game: Sudden loss of my job, followed by days of anguish, torment, fear. Taking stock of the situation reveals a group of wonderfully supportive friends and family who, whether they know it or not, have saved me from myself. Emerging from the emotional aftermath, I am, by both necessity and desire, back in the hunt.
   The prey, a new job. My quarry is unknown. I have been hunting before, but I enter this new hunt with a set of old tools that, though long trusted, may have to be abandoned in order to catch this new and elusive creature - a New Job In A Techno Age, hmmmm. I am hunting the elusive 'NEWJITA'. I love acronyms!
    Yes, the NEWJITA it is. I've identified the name of the prey, so now, how do I hunt it? What doe it look like? Where does it live? How do I track it? How do I capture it? Tame it, and make it work for me? These are the new questions as this Old-School Job Hunter enters the wilderness home of the Newjita.
    So, let's look at my hunters kit, and see what I have to work with.
1) Desire to catch my prey - check.
2) Resume - with which to bait my prey - oooh, this thing looks stale, no one would bite on this, I will have to fix that.
3) Cover Letter - this is always a bit tricky and will have to be adjusted to the individual Newjita after I find its trail.
4) Hunting Attire - oh, man, when was the last time I wore THAT suit? These shoes? What's the saying, 'you can tell a lot about a man by his shoes'? Hair cut? Yeah, get one...Oh, and that 'I'm a rebel so I'm gonna grow a beard' look... I know, as fun as the thought has been, it's gotta go before I show up for an interview.
5) Hunting Method - I haven't been on a hunt in a long time, so I need to pow-wow with some of my colleagues and friends who have and  get their take on this new prey, and how to catch and tame the wild Newjita.
    Like any good hunter will tell you, you just don't throw your gear in the back of your truck and go, you must have a plan. You must understand the nature of the prey, the habitat in which it lives, how it behaves, and yes, even your limitations as a hunter.
    Here is how my plan has come together so far.
    I have updated my resume, prepared a couple different cover letters, cleaned up my suit and shoes, (scheduled) some grooming and pulled out the rollodex, no check that, the cell phone, to contact my fellow hunters.
    The first thing I worked on is re-establishing as many contacts in my current and past job areas as I could, filling them in on what I have been up to and bringing them up to speed on my current situation. This process has taken place over several coffee sessions, a couple lunches and dozens of phone calls and facebook posts (I bet you were wondering when I would start linking technology to the hunt!). The end result was this - the methodology of the hunt  has changed - catching a Newjita will be challenging for someone like me, who is bridging the gap between the old-school, snail-mail method of job hunting, to the new approach, involving the instantaneous world of electronic 'tracking' of the new prey.
    I see the hunt as two pronged... My approach has been to spend several hours each day 'sniffing the winds' of the dozens (heck proably hundreds) of job-related sites on the internet. I enter information over and over, peruse the prospects that the search engines return. Next I prepare the bait -choose the right resume, include the right references, and attach the proper cover letter... I hit 'upload', and await the baited trap.
    In the past week and a half or so I have repeated this process nigh on to 40-50 times. Attempting to lure prey from three or four different areas, using a variety of tracking and baiting skills. Now the hard part for any hunter....the waiting.
    The second aspect is more old-school. Getting in my Jeep, driving around to the offices of my fellow successful hunters and putting them on the spot - I take a 'rush-the-cave' method here - put a fresh copy of my resume and business card directly in their hands.... you can't ignore, or hit the 'delete' button on a hand shake or someone standing at your office. To me that demonstrates the eagerness of the hunter, the hunger to track down the prey!
   Though my blind for waiting out the appearance of the Newjita is MUCH more comfortable than any tree stand, duck blind and all but the most opulent of ice-houses - I sit in front of the computer, with my Columbian Coffee and a fresh bagel at hand - and I wait, like any good hunter, trying to not get cramped up (cooped up in the house), trying to stay attentive (I finally have all the time I need to catch up on shows on the DVR), or trying to stay awake (there is really not much preventing me from stretching out on the couch for a nice long nap)....waiting, waiting, waiting - for the first glimpse of the Newjita...