Top of the list is, of course, to vote if you have not already done so.
My second suggestion is to NOT call anyone until at least Thursday. Everyone is “deer in the headlights” over the election. Hopefully it will be decided by end of day Wednesday so we can all get back to doing whatever passes for our normal activities by Thursday.
If you call anyone earlier, you risk getting dragged into a political discussion, which let me assure you, you don’t want to have. Politics and Religion are the two biggies to avoid when it comes to job search.
Let me suggest you spend the next several days working on expanding your list of networking contacts by using The FENG’s Member Directory Search feature. You will find this powerful tool by going to www.TheFENG.org and signing into our website. Our Member Directory Search feature is under Member Area, Member Search (second item down). Under “Member Area, Member Downloads, Other Useful Documents,” you will find a file called “Member Directory Search Documentation” created by Tom Allen of our Atlanta Chapter.
The FENG membership database contains ONLY the directory listings of those folks on distribution for our evening newsletter. It is as accurate as we can make it. Not only do we remove members who have bad email addresses, we also survey our entire membership several times a year to get updates.
That said, there are always folks who have retired, or sadly even died, who have not let us know and allow our mailings to pile up, never reading them. The solution is to only look at records that have been updated in the past 2 years. You will find a tool to limit your search to only those who really do exist about ¾ of the way down the page on the left. It is labeled, “Include Records Updated after.”
Begin getting familiar with this tool by searching all the firms where you have worked by entering them in the “Work and Education History” box at the top of the form. Be sure to search all variations of their names. Keep in mind, we have been around for 25 years. PwC needs to be searched as PwC, PricewaterhouseCoopers, as well as Price Waterhouse.
Next try searching competitors of the firms where you have worked.
After exhausting this approach (or your energies), take a short break and get yourself a cup of coffee. Walk around the house, or the neighborhood to get your blood circulating again.
Another good approach if you have unique Special Interest Groups is to see who else in your chapter has the same areas of expertise. You are limited to 100 results, so if you get too many, use the “Include Records Updated after” tool to narrow it down to a reasonable number you can write, call or Zoom in a month.
I will appeal to your “Inner Accountant” and point out that the use of this tool is FREE, or rather included with your membership in The FENG. No matter how many searches you run, there will be no additional charge. (Of course, you can make donations frequently if you are getting great results. The Donate button is in the upper right hand corner of your screen.)
Before you go crazy running searches, the only cautionary note is that you can only save ONE search to your member ID. So, if you like your result, save it and download it to your hard drive. When it is safely there, rename it, because the next file will have the same name and over write it.
Let me assure you that working on this valuable project during the upcoming week will be more absorbing, relaxing, interesting and rewarding than what everyone else will be hyper focusing on.
If you have any problems using this tool, please contact me. If I get enough requests, I will record a Zoom educational session and publish the link in our newsletter.
Regards, Matt
