BSR Broadcasts | Getting Laid Off: Disaster or Path to Nirvana? Joshua Waldman of Career Enlightenment

Joshua Waldman

A lot of us solo and encore entrepreneurs have stories about the Great Recession. Countless new BSR clients have started their first session with the words “Well, everything was going just fine until 2008 hit…” And Joshua Waldman has a 2008 story too: “When I was laid off two times in six months back in 2008, I decided it was time to really understand the modern job search.”

We love that. You see, rather than panicking or despairing, Joshua decided to take charge of his own life. That’s the solo path in a nutshell. You’re not dependent on an HR department. You’re not sitting around waiting to be hired or fired. You have yourself…and you are enough.

Maybe it was the three years that he spent studying meditation in Nepal, but Joshua was able to turn everything around after his layoffs. He sat down, took a deep breath, and took inventory: “By applying my knowledge of social media to proven job search strategies, I found that I was winding up in the interview chair in a fraction of the time it took my peers,” he writes. “But it was too soon for me after the layoffs. And so the only images in my head during the job interviews were pictures of getting laid off from yet another great company. Yep. I still had plenty of healing to do. So I decided that while I was recovering, I would help other people who were ready for the job.”

That was 2009. The year Career Enlightenment was born.

Today Joshua is a renowned authority on leveraging social media to find employment. He is the author of Job Searching With Social Media For Dummies (one of the For Dummies group’s best-selling titles) and his writing has appeared in Forbes, Huffington Post, Mashable and the International Business Times. His career blog, CareerEnlightenment.com, won the About.com Reader’s Choice Award for Best Career Blog 2013. When he’s not writing, Joshua presents keynotes, trainings and breakout sessions around the world for students, career advisers, consortiums, and professional organizations.

Joshua is truly an expert in the brave new world of 21st century careers, and it will be a true honor to have him as a guest on next week’s BSR Broadcast. Don’t miss this opportunity to listen to a true authority share his hard-earned wisdom!