As my wife and I considered the job search, we mostly discussed location, fit and offer.  We are both from the mountain west and would like to relocate there.  Job fit was obviously important given my decision to start looking.  But because I still had a job, I was not going to just take any offer, it would need to be a better job than I currently had.

My job search efforts consisted of two primary approaches.  One approach was to network with old college friends and former coworkers, and the other approach was putting my resume up on sites like Monster.

The good news was that these efforts resulted in quite a few interviews.  I did not have very many close friends who worked at places that hire engineers, but contacting those that did resulted in a surprisingly high percentage of leads.  This was a fairly efficient way to find job opportunities and get some interviews.  I just wish I had more engineering friends.  Monster helped generate lots of opportunities as well.  Every time I updated my resume my phone would start ringing, and emails would come in.  Mostly these were recruiters, but sometimes companies would contact me as well.  Sites like monster will also let you set up criteria for your search and send you email alerts for job opportunities.  I was gratified that even during a slow economy, my resume and few contacts were generating quite a bit of interest.

When interview opportunities would come up, I would always pray about them.  Yet, at this point in the process I was a bit disappointed in what I felt was a lack of specific answers.  While I did have a good general feeling about what I was doing, no specifics were coming at all.  It seemed like all the specific decisions were up to me.  I would sometimes speculate on why that was.  Does God not know the future in every detail?  Does the agency of the people making the decisions prevent specifics from being known?  Was I supposed to go through some of this process on my own?

Well, the search was generating lots of interviews, that was good.  But I did sometimes feel like I was spinning my wheels.  There just are not very many good mechanical engineering jobs in the mountain time zone, you often do not know what the offer would be until it comes, and fit is sometimes hard to know from the outside.  It sure would be nice if God would just tell me the future in specific details.  But prayer does not seem to work that way for me.  I felt lead in a very vague, subtle and general way.