Hunting for a job, is not easy. At least that is what KALW's Maria Ginsbourg found out when she went to a meet-up for job hunters in San Francisco. You can hear the report she phoned in here, or read it below:I went to the Unemployed Job Hunters Meetup at the San Francicso Public Library to find out how the economy was affecting people who are unemployed.
Before the meeting, I spoke with a member named Seema. While smoking a cigarette outside the library, she told me about her job search.
In November of 2007 she quit her job as a spokesperson for the film festival because she wanted more stability. At first she wasn’t worried about finding a job. In the beginning of 2008, she was fielding phone calls from recruiters, going on interviews, and working temp jobs. But when the market crashed in October, the calls stopped. She told me she hadn’t had an interview since November.
Seema, who has a B.A in math and a masters degree in marketing, said she won’t take her next interview lightly. She planned on wearing her best suit, straightening her hair, and getting her nails done. Then rather glumly she said, “Doesn’t the brain matter anymore?”
As we walked into the library, Seema told me that the buzzword among the unemployed was networking. I asked her if being part of a meet-up ever landed her an interview. She said it hadn’t. but it gave her a chance to get out of the house and out of her own head. And thanks to the people there, she learned about resume workshops, networking parties and job fairs.
Inside the meeting room, people sat around a long oval table and shared impromptu job-hunting tips:
How do you get a resume to the top floor?
Throw it up the elevator chute.
How do you get someone from HR to talk to you?
Dress up like a messenger.
What’s the best way to network?
Throw it up the elevator chute.
How do you get someone from HR to talk to you?
Dress up like a messenger.
What’s the best way to network?
Buy a dog or a small child.
Then they took turns describing their week. They spoke about bad days. Days they couldn’t get out of bed, days when they had to let their parents pick up the tab, days they received rejection letters. There were of course good news. One woman met a friend of her dad’s at a car garage and he encouraged her to apply for a job at his company. A man who used to work in the stock exchange, said he was starting a video business. He wanted to record people’s life stories. His first customer was almost a 100 years old. One woman complained she’d gotten more dates than interviews. She did not get any sympathy. Many found hope in Obama's stimulus plan because it would extend unemployment benefits for 33 weeks.
A lot of the conversations went like this. “I want to get into so and so field.” And then someone would say, hey my aunt Patty does that, and then they would exchange business cards. It was really a communal atmosphere.
This group consisted mostly of skilled workers: programmers, a paralegal, a biology writer, a lawyer, and a project manager. And these professionals were saying that the market is so bad they couldn’t even land an interview. The project manager said that a year ago, in one month she’d received four job offers, but since November no one had called her. I asked the group when they thought the job search would get easier. They speculated that it wouldn’t until 2010 maybe Two thousand eleven.
Another thing that came up, was that temp jobs had dried up. For example, at one point, a woman named Wendy announced that the US Census was trying fill a few temporary positions. This turned out to be old news. Out of the fourteen people there, four or five had already applied.
At the end of the meeting, as everyone was putting on their jackets, Judy, the organizer, told me that some people were setting up job hunting groups make a buck off the unemployed. They would use the groups as an opportunity to promote their book or coaching program. She even got a call from a company that wanted to sponsor the group in exchange for everyone’s information. Judy said she refused because she thought that would radically change the tone of the meet-up.
We said our goodbyes, and I left the library humbled by the realization that being unemployed is really hard work.
(photo by flickr user Chailey, acquired under Creative Commons license)
Then they took turns describing their week. They spoke about bad days. Days they couldn’t get out of bed, days when they had to let their parents pick up the tab, days they received rejection letters. There were of course good news. One woman met a friend of her dad’s at a car garage and he encouraged her to apply for a job at his company. A man who used to work in the stock exchange, said he was starting a video business. He wanted to record people’s life stories. His first customer was almost a 100 years old. One woman complained she’d gotten more dates than interviews. She did not get any sympathy. Many found hope in Obama's stimulus plan because it would extend unemployment benefits for 33 weeks.
A lot of the conversations went like this. “I want to get into so and so field.” And then someone would say, hey my aunt Patty does that, and then they would exchange business cards. It was really a communal atmosphere.
This group consisted mostly of skilled workers: programmers, a paralegal, a biology writer, a lawyer, and a project manager. And these professionals were saying that the market is so bad they couldn’t even land an interview. The project manager said that a year ago, in one month she’d received four job offers, but since November no one had called her. I asked the group when they thought the job search would get easier. They speculated that it wouldn’t until 2010 maybe Two thousand eleven.
Another thing that came up, was that temp jobs had dried up. For example, at one point, a woman named Wendy announced that the US Census was trying fill a few temporary positions. This turned out to be old news. Out of the fourteen people there, four or five had already applied.
At the end of the meeting, as everyone was putting on their jackets, Judy, the organizer, told me that some people were setting up job hunting groups make a buck off the unemployed. They would use the groups as an opportunity to promote their book or coaching program. She even got a call from a company that wanted to sponsor the group in exchange for everyone’s information. Judy said she refused because she thought that would radically change the tone of the meet-up.
We said our goodbyes, and I left the library humbled by the realization that being unemployed is really hard work.
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1 comment:
My experience working with the job search meetups in Chicago was similar. Collegial atmosphere, everyone truly trying to help each other, but a core pessimism that the market will be tough for a while.
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