Project Lemon-Aid

I attended my first Project Lemon-Aid event this week and boy, was it refreshing! I really don't understand why everyone who is unemployed in Des Moines weren't there on Tuesday. There's really no excuse :)

The event took place from 8am-noon at Connxions in Urbandale. It was my first time at Connxions and it has great meeting space in addition to its bookstore and coffee/munchies cafe. Pumpkin chocolate muffins - never seen those before - they smelled delicious!

The event started off with a four-person panel representing RDG Planning and Design, Deerfield Retirement Community, Home Depot and Doll Distributing. It was refreshing to hear the perspectives of representatives from smaller companies.

From 10am-noon, participants had the opportunity to attend, one-hour breakout sessions on topics such as "Plan B", Social Media, Networking and Resume Writing led by experts in the respective field.

What did I glean from attending this event:

Tim Bianci is an amazing facilitator - wait, I knew that already :)

If you're applying for jobs and you don't have directly applicable work experience, have a brainstorming session and add items to your resume that are applicable, but that you don't get paid for.

I like to follow-up with companies I've sent resumes to, but I haven't figured out a way to make it look like I'm not stalking them...until now...keep abreast of what the company is doing in the media. When they are mentioned, send the company a note mentioning the article and your congratulations...this gets your name in front of them again.

Check out Elevate America; Governor Chet Culver announced a major public-private partnership between Microsoft and the State of Iowa to provide free technology training for up to 5,700 unemployed Iowans, starting July 15, 2009. If you aren't taking advantage of this yet, you'd better get signed up fast!