If you lose your job, you shouldn’t immediately start calling and e-mailing your network and answering Internet job ads, writes Fortune’s Anne Fisher in her August 28 Ask Annie column. Understandable as that course of action is, she writes, it’s unlikely to get you into the job you want.

What mistakes have you made when job hunting? Have you ever taken a job you knew was wrong for you -and, if so, are you still in it? What have you seen friends or colleagues do to sabotage their searches? If you’ve landed on your feet after a layoff, how did you do it?

Called in to help companies lay people off, and to offer career guidance aimed at easing the newly unemployed into their next jobs elsewhere, outplacement firms are pretty busy these days, especially in the financial services industry, writes Fortune’s Anne Fisher in her April 4 Ask Annie column.

Have you been offered professional job-hunting help as part of a layoff? Just severance? Nothing at all? Does having a job coach help? Can it speed your job search?