Unemployment Chronicles, Day 44: Eggs and Baskets

I mentioned before that I like to put all my eggs in one basket.  This is mostly because I am lazy and don't like to work on things that don't have a high probability of helping, but on many occasions, the approach has served me well.

I only applied to one college when I graduated from high school:  UC Berkeley.  It's not trivial to get into Berkeley, and I had bad high school grades, but I only applied to Berkeley, and I got in.  When I got out of public accounting, I applied to one company and took the job.  When I moved to Washington, I did the same thing, and again for the job after that.

But sometimes Plan A hasn't panned out, and I didn't have anything to fall back on.  When I moved to Texas in 1982, left my dad's company in 1985, left KPMG in 1989.  On those occasions, I had to scramble to come up with a backup plan, and it made my life difficult for awhile each time.

At Farmers, I had a Plan A.  It was a beautiful plan.  I had a specific role in mind, one that I could have done really well, one that my superiors acknowledged I could do really well.  But it didn't happen, and I held on way too long thinking that because it was best for both sides, it would happen in the end.  When I couldn't make it work, I really wasn't prepared for this situation.

Now that I have had some tiem to think, I have a different Plan A, which is contracting; however, I'm having to work on a fallback position, because nothing is happening in the contracting world yet, and it may not ever.  The next idea is to look at manufacturing companies in this area and see if I can either get in touch by networking or find an open position.  This option is a lot of work, and it's not really what I want, but it may be all that's available.

So this kind of search involves creating a list of local companies, doing some research on them, determining which ones sound like viable options for me, then finding out if anyone I know, or anyone who knows someone I know, works there, then trying to make contact.  Also check their websites for job opportunities.  It's the type of work that mostly won't pay off, but you only need one success.

One thing I wonder:  The Way to get a job is to pick a company you want to work for, then talk to hiring managers at that company about your qualifications.  If this is The Way, why is it that in 6 years as a hiring manager at Farmers, I was never approached in this manner?  Something seems off.

On the other hand, I worked for an insurance company.  Maybe it's as simple as that.