Oh no, Tom. That's a sucky position to be in. Good luck to you.

Oh, I've already talked about something they've done well! I was just trying to think about what's most useful for a person starting out in their career, like getting better at meeting facilitation, for example.

That's a good one, and often confidence in presenting themselves/their work.

Tommy, you've been missed, welcome back. All kinds of jobma to you.

Tommy, welcome back! What kind of work do you do?

Database programming. Mostly with MS Access front ends and MS SQL Server back ends. I've also done a lot of web application design, using Javascript, jQuery, XML, CSS and stuff like that.

Tom, would you feel comfortable saying what area you live in, roughly? There are a lot of us who could probably say something about the techie job market in our areas.

I'm sorry you have this worry. It sucks.

I'm in Chicago.

Not sure what's posted now but definitely check my company's site out (& let me know if anything is intriguing). [link]

Thanks, lisah and everyone else!

I'm just too pessimistic about job-searching. But I know I'm being overly-pessimistic so I just have to make myself go through the job hunt anyway.

A question: How are resumes usually submitted? In a Word doc? PDF?

I'm trying to decide if I should buy Word for my MacBook Pro.

Usually PDF, though occasionally I see them in Word. I'd go with the former.

PDF helps you avoid unfortunate changes if the recipient has a different set up than you.

You might want to check university website job postings. They don't tend to pay as well as corporate, but they can be pretty steady (especially if they have a good endowment) and enjoyable, with good benefits. The University of Chicago or NorthWestern might have something.