Lose Your Job? There's Lots of Advice Out There

Here's your guide to some of the recent advice online for the unemployed:

What to do right after you've lost your job:

• Apply for unemployment insurance, and then prioritize your finances, Clark Howard writes. When figuring your financial priorities, consider that you may need to put off paying down your credit card debt (house and food come first), but you may need to hang on to your car for the benefit of having transportation during your job search.
• Look for a LaidOffCamp--or other local community groups and events geared toward networking or job search help.

If you're feeling desperate:

• Take a walk, advises John Riha's career counselor:  “'A long walk,' she advised, 'every day. And leave the cell phone at home for an hour.'"

If you feel you're alone:

• Realize how much the government is doing to mitigate your misery, compared with the aid offered during the Great Depression. From the Economist:

Thanks to welfare schemes and unemployment benefits, many of which have their origins in those dark days, joblessness no longer plunges people into destitution, at least in the developed world. ...Governments are piling in with short-term help for workers.

If you think LinkedIn doesn't matter:

• Amanda Sundt, one of the writers on the WSJ's "Laid Off and Looking" blog, has found a new job as chief marketing officer at iExplore.com. How'd she find it? "Through participating in an industry group on the professional networking site LinkedIn," she writes. She also writes that she found "no value at all" in major job boards.

If you're young:

• Care more about colleagues and contacts, says Ben Stein. He writes:

"Make every good connection you can. Almost all good jobs are gotten by who you know at least as much as by what you know. When people are hiring in both government and the private sector, a recommendation from a friend or colleague means more than test scores. Make and expand your web of friends and colleagues from the earliest possible moment, including high school. Your colleagues are a form of capital as real as money, even if not as liquid."

Seen some other really good advice? Share it in the comments.