Transitions NOVA Meeting

Attendance:

Brenda Green -  HR Benefits/Payroll

David Wexelblatt - Product Management

Edwin Harmon - Operations Manager

Richard Davis - IT Technical Manager

Rick Gonzalez - Project Manager

We did our individual reports on our self marketing activities, interviews, and tips.

It seems that overall there has been a slight improvement of job opportunities, thus leading to more contacts.

At the previous meeting the challenge was to do networking with groups not specifically targetted to out of work people.

From those attending, only Brenda had attended the IT4DC meet in Reston.

I am not sure if she thought it was worthwhile as she did not report any useful business contacts.

Everyone went to the Washington Post job fair in Chantilly which was a total waste of time. 

David, Edwin, Brenda and Rick went to the Neustar open house. Brenda was successful in that she met a previous acquaintance who works at Neustar, and she had an interview in a private room.

Everyone else did the 5 minute mini-interview at the table. There were a lot of people, not enough time to  be able to stand out.

Tips:

- Check out Tweetajob.com, jobs are posted and depending on your profile you would get a tweet about the job.

- Check out UndercoverRecruiter.com, it seems to be a blogsite with useful tips on the job hunt.

- To get a copy of the Events list, send an email to jimditt@verizon.net to request for a copy of the list of local events. This is the list that Carol usually forwards.

- You can post your resume at Northern Virginia Technology Council website. We don't have any experience yet what the result could be.

- for volunteer opportunities, check out idealist.org. Also Kevin Bacon's www.sixdegrees.org is mostly about donations to nonprofits, but there is some info about volunteering

- attend the Federal Office Systems Exposition (FOSE) to be held March 23-25 at the Washingon Convention Center, there is a $50 fee to visit the exhibition.

   There is a separate career expo event attached to it that you must pre-register for. This is the page:

   http://fose.com/events/fose-2010/information/fose-career-fair.aspx

 Someone mentioned there was a way to get into the job fair without necessarily being registered for FOSE itself. Was it Rich or Edwin?

  Please share so that we all can use that method, no use paying good money when there's another proper way of doing it.

Challenge for next meeting March 3: Report on your networking activities including volunteering, neighborhood associations, networking events like IT4DC, etc.

And I believe Janet Carlton will be ready to speak on "Keeping Your Energy Level Up During the Job Hunt!"

Stay Warm,

Rick Gonzalez