Today I Was Just a Little Sadder - Ed Han - You were with the Job Search Community right to the end

As we move deeper into the holiday season there are many topics to write about. Whether you’re in an active job search, are worried about your company’s future, are rethinking your career and looking for a change in 2025, thinking about family get-togethers at the holidays, complaining about the poor service at the mall, or reflecting on years past, this time of year can bring out a full range of emotions. For someone like me that likes to write on occasion I'm suspending any of those happy holiday fun topics to focus on someone that I liked and respected - and will miss. It always seems that the passing of people you know can make this time of the year especially difficult.

Outside of NJ?

For those of you that reside outside of the state of NJ you may have met Ed Han through a webinar, a virtual job support group – or been one of the millions (okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration) of people he came in contact with during the course of his career.

Inside NJ?

But, if you’ve lived in the state of NJ or maybe neighboring PA over the past couple of decades AND you’ve been a job seeker, then it would have been hard not to have crossed paths with him. I first met Ed in 2009 – just a few years after I had moved to NJ in 2006. The Trinity Church in Princeton held (in person, and long before Covid) a Tuesday night job seeker networking group, and Ed took his turn as a moderator every three or four weeks. He had also been a guest speaker at a number of networking meeting events around the state. His profession may have been recruiting, but I always felt his passion was in helping job seekers. He had a conviction and a righteousness in his beliefs on the how the job search process worked, and how candidates needed to approach it. Yet, he was open to hearing the opinions others had – especially if they were dissenting points of view because he was always interested in hearing how others viewed the topic of job search.

How well do any of us really know someone?

I feel like it was only a month or two ago that Ed stepped in to moderate one of those Tuesday night Trinity Church job seeker sessions (now a virtual meeting after Covid). I'm currently working, but like to stay in touch with a couple of my favorite groups. Ed was the moderator and we joked about how long we had actually known each other. It turns out that I really didn't know Ed at all. Didn't know about his family, where he was from, what it was like for him growing up, what his struggles were, what his health was like. I think that's why news like this was such a shock.

Goodbye Ed - you left us too soon

I've already seen a few tribute posts, and I expect that I'll see a few more. I'm hoping some of those will be able to fill in the blanks for me, because frankly Ed, you just left us too soon. I appreciated your wisdom, your knowledge of the job search process, of LinkedIn, and your hatred of the Applicant Tracking (or was that Trashing?) system.

Goodbye for now Ed. Your enthusiasm and spirit will live on...

Dave

About David Shultis

I currently work as a Customer Success Manager for a small 3PL fulfillment company (www.gofetchfulfillment.com) in Lakewood, NJ. This follows years of marketing, product management and customer service roles spanning way too many years.

You can find me biking in and around New Jersey (I reached my goal of 10,000 miles this year - Hooray!), occasionally writing about whatever's on my mind, and enjoying both of my kids' outdoor adventures (Instagram - @natalieunderwater and @bdshultis), and navigating our empty nest with my wife of 30 years, Denise.