When I was last in the States full-time, from Jan to June 2005, looking for a job turned out to be a grim exercise in frustration. I had come back from four years in Asia with a nest egg to hold me over until I got into a corporate job again. I thought it would take six months. I was wrong.

I got up each day, sent out my five resumes with customized cover letters, made my follow up calls, arranged and/or went to my appointments. Did my web research.

I networked with everyone from a former US Senator to my co-workers at the "don't deplete the bank account" job I took, working nights.

I registered my profile with every recruiter and headhunter I could find, got my resume up on all of the Internet job boards.

I got lots of hits, was flown to a half dozen interviews, made the next-to-last cut in a few cases, but never the final cut.

I looked into starting my own business, but ultimately opted not to blow the whole nest egg on a risky start-up.

I even looked at piecing together some part-time jobs with free-lance work, but decided that if I ever wanted to have a family, that wasn't going to work.

What I experienced out there was akin to what Barbara Ehrenriech describes in "Bait and Switch." Slimy career coaches. Shifless executive recruiters. Fearful employers. Strange reasons for rejection (I always asked for feedback when I didn't make the final cut). Contact windows who rarely responded and when they did, were often either snide or soulless. Legions of recuiters for companies who pay in commissions only.

After five and a half months of this, I ended my rental agreement, sold my car, and high-tailed it back to Asia, where I was relieved to find employers lined up to hire me.

Me: 14 years of corporate work in marketing, sales, and operations management; MBA from top-ranked program; fluent Mandarin speaker, 39 years old; good health.

I suspect that I was unsuccessful in my job search because (1) I didn't actually have a job lined up before I moved back to the US (2) my time in Asia somehow created fear in hiring managers and (3) my corporate background is a bit too general, not focused enough. I've always handled both making the product and selling it, even when I working for a F500 company.

Three years after this period of crisis began, and two and half years after returning to Asia, I'm glad I went through all of that. It makes me grateful for what I've got these days. Still, there's a question that's been nagging at me. I wonder why I never found a job. Not even a crappy sales job at $40,000 a year. If I had decided to stay until my nest egg was gone (about a year), would I have actually found a job?

And what would happen if I decided to move back to the States now? I can work my way around most any problem a company doing business in China might face, can open new markets and such, but  would any employer actually want to hire me?

If you're going through what I went through three years ago, God bless you. It was a nightmare for me. I ended up okay, but not because I kept slogging it out in the US.