Never Give Up

Tragedy struck me a few months ago and turned my life upside down. I lost my source of income due to COVID19 pandemic and my father was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. He got subjected to chemotherapy and it robbed us of our entire savings since standard medical insurance did not cover cancer related treatments. I lost all faith in myself and my abilities. Everything seemed darker than ever. I started applying for jobs and got automated rejection responses from some. Most of my applications went unanswered.

A month ago, I became desperate and shunned all my inhibitions and posted a plea on LinkedIn asking for help. All I wanted was to secure an interview since I had the confidence that I will get through if I can somehow meet someone, anyone, who is willing to interview me for a job.

To my surprise, my post went viral overnight with over 200k views, 950+ comments and over 2.5k reactions to it. My connections shared my plea and I started getting leads. Things were still not easy. I kept responding to each and every comment with personalized messages along with a thank you note for reaching out to me at this time. I kept pushing all this while.

Few weeks later, I started feeling the power of networking through LinkedIn. People started reaching out to me offering me part time jobs (if they could not get a full time for me), help me in helping them start a business and some of the folks moved the earth and heaven to help me in reshaping my resume free of cost and arrange interviews for me.

I converted all the interviews into opportunities and I started seeing light at the end of the tunnel once again. Just day before yesterday, I was both happy and sad. Happy because I accepted one of the offers, and sad because I had to politely reject the rest. I wish I had the option to clone myself and satisfy everyone’s requirements. But sadly that was not possible.

I am writing this article to mention 3 things behind my story:

1.      People do care about other people (including strangers as in my case) and the world is not that bad

2.      LinkedIn works in mysterious ways

3.      No matter what, never give up, keep pushing

I do not have enough words to thank everyone who reached out to me during this tough time and I would like to assist all those who has a genuine need for a job by referring them to positions as and when I come across them.

Lastly, Thank You all and Thank You LinkedIn for helping me out at a time when all doors seemed closed to me. I have dedicated over 19 years in the IT industry and now I feel that my journey has just begun and I am going to make the most of it.

Special thanks to Shagufta Kazi, Surbhi Mansukhani, Kuntal Mukherjee, Afshan Sheikh, Ashok Kumar, Lalit Sharma, Jasjeet Singh Arora, and Heather Campbell for your guidance and help. I appreciate your support a lot.

#helpinghands #blessed #stayfocussed #nevergiveup #thankyou #powerofnetworking #karma