The sacred side of finding work
The providence of God
"Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
"So why worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
"Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For after these things all the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all of these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all of these things shall be added to you. Therefore you do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
Matthew 6:25-34, The Orthodox Study Bible
This text, from the Sermon on the Mount, is a central text, and it is to this text that everything else relates; it is by being anchored to the Sermon on the Mount that keeps the other practices anchored in faith and preserves them from becoming magical or superstitious.
God will provide for his faithful. Sometimes God the Spiritual Father provides in painful ways. Often his understanding of what is good for us varies greatly from our own, and it is only through learning in an experience that we learn that God understands what we need and we do not.
God does not always give us what we want, but he is always willing to give us what we need. Whether or not that includes the job we want. Read "The Angelic Letters", a tale of providence.
God sometimes allows the Evil One to take away the jobs of the pious. But God is in command, and he will not allow us to be tested beyond our strength. Unemployment is a trial, but it will not prevent God from providing and exercising his own providence over people allowed to be tested.
The life of devotion
The most important foundation within this walk of faith is simply living the Orthodox life. This means prayers, confession, communion, and the entire sacramental Orthodox Way. This does not manipulate God; it may involve clearing away obstacless we have created, which is what we work on when we confess our sins. But there is not something alien that is added to the Orthodox faith to activate God's providence; God's providence is active even when we are trying to do everything and he doesn't give what we think we need. And so the first thing is, "Do your rule." (And "As always, ask your priest.")
Generosity
This is the point when things can get a bit scary. Christ, who promises providence, also tells us not to store up treasure on earth. Most of us have not made the monastic renunciation, but we miss the mark if we seek our security in what we can arrange with our own money and resources. That is the point where money becomes a false God and an idol.
(This may always be an idol, but the less money and financial security we have, the larger the idol looms.)
One part of Orthodox ascesis that is particularly relevant here is generosity, that of sharing with others what little you have. The person who is generous is lending to the Lord; every gift tells God, "I am trusting you," and seeks providence in God, not money or earthly resources. And we would do well to remember the words, "The Pope is not Christ's vicar on earth--the poor are!" In the Last Judgment, our generosity or hoarding from the needy will be remembered, but there are also much more immediate rewards. I would recall the opening Kontakion to my Akathist to St. Philaret the Merciful:
To thee, O camel who passed through the eye of the needle, we offer thanks and praise: for thou gavest of thy wealth to the poor, as an offering to Christ. Christ God received thy gift as a loan, repaying thee exorbitantly, in this transient life and in Heaven. Rejoice, O flowing fountain of Heaven's treasures!
It is paradoxical to give more in response to losses. But it is vital.
St. Xenia / Ksenia
We particularly ask the prayers of St. Xenia in seeking employment. If you do not have an icon of St. Xenia, consider buying one. My practice in seeking employment is to pray the Akathist to the Most Holy Lady and Mother of God, and the the Akathist to St. Xeniaeach day. Their prayers make quite a difference, much as St. John the Much-Sufferer in dealing with lust.
You should also ask the prayers of your priest and parish and the faithful you know.
The secular side of finding work
Two of the books I value most for jobhunting are What Color Is Your Parachute? and Games Companies Play. Games Companies Play is perhaps one of the best specimens of mainstream jobhunting books, and What Color Is Your Parachute? starts much further back, saying, "Let's wait a minute on tweaking resume keyboards. Let's dig much further back and make sure we're answering the right questions."
Resume writing services
Monster and other services offer a "free resume critique:" Buyer beware!
I was working with one friend on his resume and mentioned that Monster offered a free resume critique. He submitted his resume, and the feedback was deceptive and obnoxious. The reviewer said he was going to be "bluntly honest," and was then bluntly dishonest and manipulative and wrote a doozy of a spiel that was engineered to scare him directly into their paid resume writing service. And it contained almost nothing that could be used to directly improve his resume.
He had asked me if it was worth a professional resume writing service; after seeing that specimen I said, "Maybe; it would be worth asking on LinkedIn, but not with these people." If they were going to be that deceptive and manipulative in their free resume "critique", they were the wrong people to trust with writing your resume.
If you attended college you may have privileges with your alma mater's career services office, even if you didn't graduate: these can be helpful in several ways, including a resume makeover.
Websites
There are a lot of job boards, and several job search engines; Linkup is well worth considering as it pulls jobs from company's websites that haven't hit the "pay to post" boards like Monster. LinkedIn really needs no introduction, but I invite you to connect with me. I also invite you to contact me if you have any questions.
There will be a lot of details to keep track of. This is a use case for a spreadsheet; if you do not have a spreadsheet you use already, LibreOffice is a free and full-featured Office suite that includes a spreadsheet, or you can just use a spreadsheet on the web with Google Sheets.
Research, research, research!
The biggest way you can send a perfumed letter in an interview is research. There are a number of tools at your disposal; you can visit the company website, search for them on Google news, and to give one "best-kept secret", request a copy of the company's annual report. I am not saying you should believe them all; every annual report I've read claims that things are going great and the last year may have been the company's best year ever. As with the "About" section on a company's website, that is how the company presents itself, not necessarily how the company is. Still, it is valuable for insight and the more you know about a company, the better. And if annual reports are a tad too optimistic, they none the less show a company's line of business, where it is focusing, and show how the company would like to be seen.
Find jobhunting / networking groups
In many places, there are jobhunting support groups: not necessarily "support groups" in the counseling psychology sense, but groups where jobhunters can gather, sharing wisdom and expertise. You may find a career coach at one of them: you might get a free resume makeover, or have someone make sense of something puzzling to you. Which brings me to my next point:
Again, buyer beware
There has been one change to the information technology landscape in recent years. Job hunting sites like Monster allow applicants (whether in information technology or not) to state a geographic preference so they can request local opportunities. And there's a whole brigade of recruiters, strange as it may sound, who will ask an applicant in Illinois who has requested Illinois positions to apply for a position in Silicon Valley or NYC, traveling at the candidate's own expense for the in-person interview and perhaps signing a contract that would probably make an attorney really squirm (and assure you this is a standard business practice to protect their needs if you raise questions). Buyer beware; this is part of the cost of doing jobhunting in information technology.
The problem isn't as bad as it used to be; the sheer quantity of these junk calls has dropped to be much more manageable than it was a few years ago. But I let non-local calls go straight to voicemail: there are a few non-local calls that aren't from that class of recruiter, and you can hear them when you check your voicemail.
There are presumably other traps and pitfalls out there: "Be thou the defender of my soul, O God, for I walk through the midst of many snares; deliver me from them and save me, O Blessed One, for thou art the lover of mankind."
Conclusion
I have covered, or rather briefly touched on, the sacred and secular dimensions of jobhunting. But this is more of a "table of contents" than a full book; I point the reader to books or other resources (What Color Is Your Parachute? and Games Companies Play on the secular side, perhaps along with the highly recommended The Twenty Minute Networking Meeting, and one's rule of prayer and parish priest or spiritual father on the sacred). The offering seems insufficient, but I'm not sure I have better. Still, I offer this much in the prayer that God will provide for you in his gracious and eternal love.
This article was written while I was jobhunting and out of work. Later that day, I received and accepted a job offer.