Day Seven

The need for Change:

This morning I woke up and decided I needed to change, the world wasnt going to change for me - I needed to change for the world. I got up and started reading websites that would help me achieve this goal. My friends that were entrepreneurs had suggested free lancing websites might serve as a good way to get challenging work while introducing myself to ways that i could upskill myself and get paid.

I signed up to the following:

• www.guru.com
• www.freelancer.com

I then browsed the work opportunities on each site and found out that by building a profile and selecting some different categories, i.e System administration, Cisco and Data Entry that I would be able to receive notifications direct to my email.

Each opportunity has a bidding section where you post a brief note about what you can do and how much you would like to get paid for the job.

I also started reading up about SEO and Internet marketing. I read that by placing google adsense and amazon ads on your website you can earn money from people buying products or clicking ad links from your site. From my understanding these are called "leads" and if a lead turns into a actual deal then you get money from it.

I.e If you put a book review on your website and someone comes along and reads it and wants to buy the book they click the amazon link and purchase the book then you get a certain % of the sale. Amazon is known to be quite high for their payouts, I spoke to a friend tonight that was making about 4-6% from each resulting sale.

I plan to cover how you add google adsense and amazon ads to your blog in a later post - perhaps in Day Eight or Nine if I have enough time.

Day Six

I got up bright and early, prepared myself for the interview, dressed well and made myself presentable. I arrived early at the recruitment firm and I was fairly relaxed. Sandy introduced myself to her and we sat in an office overlooking the rest of the downtown.

She told me that my situation was unique and similar at the same time, unique in the fact that I am on a working visa and my sponsored place of employment had just restructured me and similar because I had just joined the boat of other people just like myself that the company was representing. There are approximately 18 positions in my town for the type of work that I do which is Network/System administration. Problem is there is also about 200-500 people looking for the same type of positions in town. And most of these employers are going to want to hire without the additional paperwork that it would take me to be onboard legally.

So in essence she was telling me I was pretty screwed.

Day two - Day five

The following days I was a little more relaxed. I did the following:

• Cleaned up the whole house
• Winterized the garden
• Made some contacts with local recruiters
• Read my book
• Played some computer games
• Got winter tires for the car
• and a whole host of other small chores that needed to be done

I had made an appointment to see a recruitment agent in the city to see what the situation was like, the recession it seemed had hit pretty hard and I had become just another statistic.

Day One

On this morning I was called into my bosses office,the company had been in good shape at least as much as I thought. "I'm sorry Joe - we'll have to let you go" he said, "this is the HR consultant to look after you from now on" he continued, "and here is your package from us, please review it and sign the release papers which you may return in a few days". I was pretty shocked, I didn't come from this country and I thought that my position was secure I had been employed for just under a year and the company had been making record profits during the worst recession of the last 20 years. I sat their shocked in silence..."would you like a box for your things" my boss interrupted my thinking. "uh yeah i guess i might need two actually" i replied. I was escorted out to my desk by HR. I stood their alone, all my co-workers had been ushered into the cold Datacentre and not told anything other than "restructuring". The HR lady hurried me out and told me that the rest of my things would be couriered to me the next day. They even provided me with a taxi home - how courteous.

I broke the news to my fiancee who had called it the week before when one of my workmates had also been laid off. The same day I was laid off so were two others, another in my team too. The rest of the day I conversed with ex-coworkers, friends, and family about what I was going to do...