Merry Christmas. You're Fired.

It’s THAT time of year again.

I still remember those yuletide tidings from six years ago as if it were yesterday. It was the worst decision that employer ever made but the best thing, in retrospect, that could have ever happened to me.

It didn’t look that way at the time.

I quickly determined it was time to make some changes. I changed my approach to LinkedIn, getting way more active. I signed onto Twitter. I bought a few strategic domain names. And I started networking like a mad man.

I had always been an avid networker, but I kicked my efforts into overdrive and started shaking the trees for job opportunities. The key for me was not looking around for jobs that were being advertised. I was looking to create a role for myself as were potential hirers.

The position I ended up with and the one I hold to this day did not exist until it was offered to me upon my inquiry. It was to work for a company competing with the company that had let me go – and in which I still held a small stake.

One of the big changes for me was to embrace competitors. After being let go, I stopped avoiding competitors at industry events and began reaching out to them and still do. Your best option when things go south is to join the competition. To this day I keep those lines of communication open. I never used to do that.

So what did I learn and have I learned over the past six years about work and looking for it?

Don’t go for the advertised position

You’re special! How could any organization have anticipated needing someone like you? Identify your unique value proposition and package it up for a targeted roster of potential employers. You’re not selling your round self into an existing square hole. You are explaining how you can help a potential employer grow, sell more, buy better, find more profit, operate more efficiently.

Let them pick your brain

Let potential employers pick your brain. Guess what? Sometimes they will have no intention of hiring you, but conversation of any kind always represents an opportunity and your willingness to chat should stimulate a return flow of useful information and insight.

Any information is useful to you while searching, including the quality and qualifications of competing candidates. But brain picking can get out of hand so it's good to know, in advance, what you are and are not willing to share. The reality is that you want to steer the conversation back to you and the future, not the past.

Network like a crazy person

At industry events I try to get the business cards of speakers, audience-member question askers, people sitting around me in the audience and, of course competitors. It’s amazing that we still run around with little pieces of paper with our contact information and even more amazing to see the array of cardholders that people use.

Cardholders intrigue me because they are so tiny. Cardholders would never work for me since I go through about 100 cards at a typical industry event. And if you don’t have a card when I meet you, I will have you write down your email address.

Get to know your competition

Nuf said.

Use social media

By “use” I mean curate your connections. When someone moves, ask for their updated contact info. If someone loses their job, endorse them and offer help finding a new one. LinkedIn is an amazingly powerful tool that constantly surprises me – even without a premium account. ;-)

Follow people you admire on Twitter and favorite and retweet their posts. TweetDeck and other such tools are useful for managing your Twitter feeds. I have yet to explore and integrate Instagram, Facebook, WeChat or Tumblr in my social Web, but these and other channels are worth exploring.

Keep your contacts up to date

After you get those business cards, you better enter them into Outlook or some other system. My acquaintances are constantly telling me to get CardScan or to scan business cards with my phone to save time. I do it all by hand and send personal messages. Call me old school, but this is what works for me. (It does help me remember names and faces – and I have often written notes on the cards.)

Introduce people

I know people in my industry that try to charge for “strategic introductions.” If I think two executives ought to be talking with one another, I’ll go ahead and make the introduction regardless of whether one or both are clients.

Of course, introducing executives is a ticklish business. If you are a client of mine at Strategy Analytics I will ask if and how you want to be introduced.

Karma

Believe in it and curate that too. Surround yourself with positive energy and keep working on your network and looking for those unadvertised positions. I don’t advocate doing project work for free – as I have seen some suggest. Anything done for free is forever tainted by that price tag, including you.

There are a lot of reasons why companies choose to let people go before Christmas – though the timing seems to be the height of cold-heartedness. It’s a little like tearing off that Bandaid. The sting isn’t supposed to last too long – about six months for me six years ago – and it should mark a fresh start for the new year. Channel that anger and frustration into the job hunt. I did.