Hi, my name is Dave Watson, I am a Senior Software Designer in High Tech Sector for over 25 years. I have been laid of 3 times in the past 12 years. Every time I have been laid off, it has left me feeling powerless and helpless as to what to do next. The layoff experience is both emotionally difficult and financially challenging for me, my wife and my family.

In the past, there have been no proven methodologies that were effective in securing new employment. In my previous work outage 5 years ago, private outplacement agencies provided some guidance re-working my resume, but mostly suggested that I "network" my way to a new position – not particularly helpful. Government agencies are even worse, being over worked with too many people to help any of them effectively.

I really wanted something that would restore my confidence, return the power to me that corporations seem to have taken, in making me feel more like a supplicant than the truly valuable asset that people really are ! As a former Scout Leader, I have always try to live by the Scouting moto's of: "Do a good deed for someone every day" and "Be Prepared" (along with all the Ten commandments)

After my previous work outage in 2008, I started to look for something a bit better than the standard “networking” methodology - "networking" was just way to unpredictable. As an engineer, I knew that there had to be something better. I wanted something that was reliable, predictable and simple. I wanted a proven process that could be used repeatedly, for me, my grown kids as well others, for our present/future job searches. In short I wanted to "Be Prepared" for the next time I was out of work - this is not business, it is personal !

My brother Kevin Watson, first started a job search project/business about 2002 after he unexpectedly got his first lay off notice - he needed to find a better way of finding employment again fast - his wife and young children were depending on him and his income. At the time,Kevin found that traditional job boards took way to much time to search for opportunities. Kevin collaborated with a good friend of his David Perry, Author of Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters to start an alternative job finding website: natsjobs.com which used one of the first job aggregators. Kevin had developed the job aggregator to alert him of possible job opportunities way before monter or indeed had such a feature.

By 2011, David P. and Kevin had managed to grow natsjobs.com into a web site having about 5,000 job hunters regularly using the site. Natsjobs.com whiich also boasted many other inovative features to help job hunters secure employment quickly. In May 2011 Kevin asked me to help him work on natsjobs as the job search hobby project had grown to big for one person to work on alone.

I wanted to help David P. and Kevin as they had the best solution that I had seen for the problem I was looking at: a better way to secure employment quickly and effectively. I wanted to "Be Prepared" for future employment outages with a solution that worked !

Kevin unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack in June 2011, about 3 weeks after he had invited me to work on the job search project. Most of the natsjobs.com website passed away with him - there was no "backup" for his sytem knowlege. I did not want to see all of Kevin's hard work go to waste as I believed in the project, as it could help myself and alot of people get work quickly and easily - part of my doing a good deed for others.

I decided to pick up the job search project and continue the work on the solution to the problem of a better way to secure employment quickly and effectively that Kevin and David P. had started - I had the solution I had been looking for all along, now all I had to do was to "Make it Happen" !

It took me about 6 months to understand some of what Kevin had accomplished, but with a lot of effort, along with a group of Algonquin students working on it as thier third year project, I was able to recover a good part of the original project. I have been working on the job search project part-time ever since his passing, as one way of keeping his vision and memory alive

I have expanded the original hobby website tremendously to include many inovative features such as: the Guerilla Boot camp course material from David Perry that has had a 95% success rate for the past 5 years with an Instructor lead course. I have translated that course material into a web based platform. The original manual/instructor course would not scale to help a large number of people because there is only a few instructors, so we couldn't help as many people with this type of offering. The natsjobs.com website also offers a full range of tools designed to help people get back to work quickly and easily, all inspired by the original natsjobs.com website - once again way ahead of monster and indeed.

Well a quite a few months ago now, in Aug/2016, I was laid off from my position as a Senior Software Developer at a local high tech firm. I am an older tech worker, so finding new employment would be more difficult in the high tech sector but I knew using the Guerilla tactics, it would not be impossible, if I wanted to persue further high tech employment.

I was fed up with the current outplacement systems that still didn't work and relied mostly on "networking" – I wanted a solution that is quick, reliable, predictable, repeatable and inexpensive. As my wife Nancy put it: "You were meant to make this project happen - someone has just pointed you in the right direction".

I had already decided to take the job search project more seriously by enrolling in the Founder Institute Startup Incubator course in July 2016 to bring this hobby project to life helping more people, more effectively. In Sept 2016, MyNewJobHunt was accepted as a project at Algonquin ARI Interactive Media Design, where the students worked on defining a unique Graphical User Interface for MyNewJobHunt,

With the loss of my most recent employment, I am more driven than ever, to make the job search project: MyNewJobHunt a viable reality in helping people find employment using the proven Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunter rograms and methodologies. I graduated from the Founder Institute Startup Incubator in Dec 2016 with a solid plan on how to Make it Happen! MyNewJobHunt has already been featured in an article by Colin Noden of APT613 .