It is a year of extremes. If you had told me at New Year’s that we would be facing a pandemic this year and that I would be sitting at home unemployed, I would probably have laughed in your face. First of all: a pandemic? That only happens in movies. No way that the whole world shuts down overnight. And secondly: if I end up sitting at home unemployed, then something has really gone wrong somewhere. If anyone makes well-considered choices in that area, it’s me. So a pandemic and unemployment? No, I don’t see that happening any time soon. Boy, was I wrong…
When everything suddenly is completely different…
A while ago, I wrote a rather personal article, about how everything suddenly was completely different… In a relatively short time, I went from: ’employee with a new job in sight’ to: unemployed in times of a pandemic’. The news that I was no longer able to start working for KLM hit hard. But at the same time, it created enormous motivation to get myself out of this situation as quickly as possible.
Don’t forget you’re human. It’s okay to have a meltdown, just don’t unpack and live there. Cry it out and then refocus on where you are headed.
Meanwhile, two months have passed, and (thankfully) there is an update!
…and how it all worked out in the end
In a difficult market with a lot of uncertainty, unemployment and few vacancies, it was quite tough. As a result, there were times when I felt rather down. Thankfully, the government’s financial safety net provided support and ensured that I did not necessarily had to apply for everything that came my way. This gave me time to look for ‘my next dream job’. Thanks in part to my incredibly valuable and helpful network, everything worked out in the end and I found that dream job! 🙂
A new job that feels like coming home
Last week I started as Product Owner at Oxxio: one of the brands within the Eneco Group. Despite the fact that it is a new company with many new colleagues, in a strange way it feels like coming home. It feels the same as when I started at Eliza was here six years ago; that just like Oxxio it is a smaller brand within a larger organisation, Sunweb Group in this case. The fact that we all work from home now makes the start a bit unusual, but at the same time it does not bother me at all. It is now my second week and I feel very welcome within the team, I have had quite a few ‘virtual coffees’ and more and more pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place.
It were two exciting and also quite (emotionally) exhausting months; the whole corona thing of course also affected me quite a lot, socially speaking. Luckily’, I saw quite a lot of people during this period, though remotely and in the form of a gigantic number of job interviews, haha. But in the end it all worked out, at least job-wise. I’m glad that I can finally close the Sunweb chapter and hope that a lot of time will pass before I will have another job interview! 😉