Except for family and friends, nobody knew him, and nobody cared.
He was a soldier in a war fought from a personal bunker.
His weapons were reams of paper, a computer and a gift for words. But, most importantly, his most effective firepower was his unflinching Audie Murphy never-give-up attitude.
Though Tim Johnston was in an Army of more than 2.5 million created by the great job crash of post-Sept. 11, he and his fellow pink slip recipients have had to fight for re-employment one-by-one.
Their quest was to turn just one of the other side — mostly employers running lean ships in a new-era recession — into a new friend. They knew they were outgunned, mere ants among the giant shoes of corporate America seeking to be noticed.
Some have given up, retreated to the rear lines, taking near minimum wage jobs once the unemployment checks gave out. Others opt out by employing themselves in a new business. Still others fight on, hoping one month of 200,000-job growth foretells better times to come.
Johnston, through a mosaic of perseverance, patience, circumstance, pluck and luck, won his battle last November, ending what seemed then an excruciating eight months of being unemployed.
Though nothing close to the faux drama of a Jessica Lynch story, Johnston has written of his experiences in an insightful book, "Diary of a Job Search: One Man’s Journey From Unemployment to a New Career" (Ten Speed Press, $16.95, with Laura Lorber and Perri Capell, managing editor and senior correspondent, respectively, for careerjournal.com).
It was on that Wall Street Journal-affiliated Web site that Johnston first published his periodic diary for the comfort and edification of the hundreds of thousands who stopped there while searching the online ads as they, too, fought to find their job nirvana. He was the everyman of millions of unemployed.
From the day he was let go from a Boston-based nonprofit, Johnston chose the high ground. "I chose to accept it as an opportunity," he said, stressing his normally positive attitude. Easier perhaps because the job had been an emotional roller coaster, with the train pretty much stuck at the bottom of the hill.
But he also experienced the laid-off jitters. "At times, it was frightening, because we had just had a new baby," he said Occasionally, he felt "totally petrified" looking to the future. But he never panicked. After being laid off, "My wife and I decided to take the next day off and go to a movie."
The next day, he purchased 10 books about how best to find a new job. Over the next month, he culled ideas that made sense to him while he and his wife, Claire, prepared to move from expensive and restrictive Boston to the home of her relatives in Princeton, N.J.
Johnston, operating out of a spare bedroom, launched a multipronged campaign to seek new employment — scouring newspaper ads as faithfully as online job sources, networking, self-help books, support groups. He even "mined" his father’s Christmas card list to strengthen his admittedly weak networking campaign.
"What you find out," said Johnston in retrospect, "is you don’t’ have any idea what eventually will pay off" in your job search. Like all soldiers under fire, you go with your gut.
Though the job he finally landed came by way of an online ad, he believes all his job-hunting weapons were important, although he found job support groups tiresome. "I found most people much more desperate than me; I tired of the people who seemed willing to chew off their legs to escape the trap" of unemployment.
He also concedes to a tactical error of looking for jobs only with for-profit firms. Once he opened his mind to nonprofits, many more interview invitations were offered.
While it took eight months, Johnston feels "very fortunate" that he landed his information technology job at a large nonprofit agency near Philadelphia, where he and his family now live. "A lot of people have been looking for much longer," he said.
His advice to those still looking: "Stay in the moment, always think positively and never, never give up." He kept telling himself, "This period of my life will eventually pass." It did. Tim Johnston found his new job.
Write Eric Zoeckler at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206 or e-mail mrscribe@aol.com.
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