Job Search Success Story: Henry Hirschel

Last summer, Henry Hirschel shared with CIO.com readers one of his job search secrets—specifically, his technique for identifying whether hiring managers and recruiters were checking out his résumé, LinkedIn profile and websites.

At the time, Hirschel was in month eight of his search.  

His stealthy strategy for determining the effectiveness of his resume and other job search marketing materials turned up leads on jobs and new contacts. It also gave him confidence that his job search methods were working. But ultimately, it was good old fashioned networking that led Hirschel to his new job as director of information technology with NextG Networks.

“Networking does work,” Hirschel says definitively.

He says he learned of the job opportunity at NextG Networks through a woman he had met in a networking group. She was interviewing for an HR director position with NextG Networks, which Hirschel says she subsequently got, and she was shown a list of jobs available at the company. When she saw that NextG needed an IT director, she immediately thought of Hirschel, he says, and he promptly followed up by sending a résumé. He interviewed for the job mid-November, and just a few weeks later the company offered him the job. He started on December 14, 2009.   

Hirschel is thrilled about his new position, and not just because it concluded a “really brutal” 11-and-a-half month job search. He’s excited that he was able to get a job with a growth company: NextG Networks builds antenna nodes that connect to fiber networks, allowing wireless carriers to expand their coverage by plugging into NextG Networks’ network. (No doubt wireless carriers will be relying on companies like NextG Networks to improve the quality of wireless service for customers as iPads flood the market and consumers continue to download massive amounts of data.) Hirschel says he hoped to land a job with a growth company because he had worked with them in the past (albeit in different industries).

Hirschel has his work cut out for him in his new role. Not only is he under the scrutiny of the CEO, to whom he reports, but he’s going to be implementing a new ERP system.

Hirschel is proof that unemployed IT executives and managers can land good jobs even in this economy. His advice to job seekers: Keep up the hard work. He spent six hours a day, six days a week on his job search.

“People can find things,” he says, “but they really have to persevere.”

Got a job search success story you’d like to share with CIO.com? E-mail me at mlevinson at cio dot com.