Well, what you do when you don’t know the meaning of a word! You would google it, won’t you?
What if you don’t know how to solve a problem in your life…Yeah, you might still google it to know if somebody faced that same situation before and if so how did they handle it!
And that’s what I did when I moved to United States and encountered with the situation of not being able to work here due to immigration laws and regulations. In fact I am writing this post for those who are in same situation as me and a few wanted to hear from me on what to do to get your career continuing. It was such a frustration to find myself in an unemployed situation. Well, most of the frustration wasn’t the unemployment but the feeling that I was left with no option. Didn’t know what to do and where to get help. It wasn’t easy for me and was so hard to process. I wrote about me freaking out about it 2 years ago here.
Especially for somebody like me where I was in the peak of my career and having worked for several years with a company like Reliance Communications, the second largest telecom provider in India & 15th largest mobile phone operator world wide with over 150 million subscribers. Oh.. I always brag about it.
I knocked so many doors explaining what I am good at but all I faced were rebuffs and sympathy. Oh.. s#%t I hated that victim mentality! If you can’t help me just be upfront and don’t tell me that I will be alright. But later when I researched about it I understood they were all trying to avoid possible legal audit that can result when processing a work authorization visas for new employees. I get it!
Well, I understood, life doesn’t always hand over solutions with every problem and situation we encounter and there is no easy guide to address problems and uncertainties that one faces. Well one of the major reasons for this is because of how unique we people are and how our life experiences differ!
I know you all agree that we cannot program our life the way we want it to happen. But there is one thing we can do to prepare ourselves to handle an unexpected situation better. And that’s is by making yourself resourceful. And how did I do that?
Well, when I researched my situation. I wasn’t the only person, there were more that 66,000 people in the same boat. And it’s very rare to get a company to sponsor your work visa. So my instinct was to search for what people in my situation can possibly do. I found people doing different things – volunteering, getting busy with a hobby, going back to school, discovering new talents to keep themselves engaged or to kill time. Some of them decided this could be a right time for career break to settle after marriage and make babies and others turn to Spiritual Practices for comfort as written in this article by Huffington Post.
A year and half later, I re-launched myself as a blogger, artist, a social media advisor and a radio show co-host at DriveThruHR. All of which I am super proud of.
So bottom line that I want to share here on how to make yourself resourceful is:
Use what you have : Access what you have it in you already! Recognize your skills and knowledge and find a way to refine that better. For me I learnt to depend on my knowledge and experience that I had and use that to create an opportunity. I used it as a core base, and utilized my blog to share it with others. Results? I gained much more in depth expertise in HR profession through my everyday research and building my own brand through social media.
Don’t be afraid to change & try something new: Being resourceful means going beyond your natural instinct, current experiences and try something totally new. Something you would do outside of your inherent skills or training you may have had. For me everything I am doing is as new as I am to United States. Never blogged, painted and never active on social media before. Yet here I am finding myself reaching into that untapped potential.
Focus on yourself & Improve your skills: Engage yourself by working on your skill sets. How to better communicate to others, how to articulate what you have in your mind, how to socialize, how to crack an interview based on the skills and knowledge that is relevant in the current job market etc. Knowing what kind of skill sets you need to improve on and working on will help you when you are up for a job interviews in future.
Network to the core: Look for the opportunities that you can network with others and draw inspiration from others. I started networking in person at my local SHRM chapter, went to so many focus groups and conferences within my area, regularly participated in various HR online twitter chats, used Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter to expand my network and still continue doing this. So my way of making myself resourceful is to showcase my knowledge and use it to develop a professional relationship with other like minded people.
Utilize your resources wisely: Be it your skills, people, time and even money. This has helped me set my goals on what to do with this time and I could even set my priorities. For example, can I afford going back to school or do I focus on improving my skills through blogging and expand my network? Utilize your time to focus what you have it your control and do not to brood over what you do not have a control over. Had I not used my time and blog to improve my skills, reach out to others and connect with them, I wouldn’t have become a Co-host at DrivethruHR.
You got to use what you have with a bit of creativity, constantly learn new things & improve your skills to get through any career crisis. Be it while your are employed or during unemployment.
Believe me, having a job is a privilege and keeping your job is the new raise!
