Riding out the job hunting rollercoaster

Note: A version of this appeared in the Detroit Free Press in July 2009.

There’s a man driving around town with cardboard taped to his car doors advertising his job availability and skills — the “Will Work for Food” guy on the street corner gone mobile.

I didn’t resort to putting handmade signs on my car. But in a few months of actively looking for a job, I tried just about everything else.

The way things are now, if you’re seeking work, you have to give it all you’ve got. According to Todd Palmer of Diversified Industrial Staffing in Troy, there were three candidates to every job opening a year ago; now it’s more like six or seven. These are not normal times to be job hunting.

 The last time I was in the employment market, I was in my 30s. I got interviews for every job I applied for and an offer after each interview. Flash forward 17 years. When I left my job over a year ago to pursue a longtime dream of opening a restaurant – yes, great timing – I was a features and food editor and columnist at a newspaper where I had been employed for 16 years. When it turned out that, a la “Green Acres,” restaurant life was not for me, I sold the business a few months ago.

It was to a much different job market that I emerged. It is the rare newspaper that is hiring. Since I have public relations experience, too, I widened my search to jobs in that field, and was willing to relocate. Nothing.

It occurred to me that age could be a factor, though a headhunter I know told me it’s not about age, but about being current in your skills and forward-thinking in your approach. Meeting a 65-year-old recently who was just hired to turn a struggling public agency around made me believe.

So I decided that finding a full-time job should be, well, a full-time job. I learned quickly that you don’t apply for one or two and then wait and see what happens. You apply for as many jobs as possible; I’m at 80 and counting.

Meanwhile, I started doing volunteer public relations work and took a part-time position that paid much less per hour than I used to make so I could upgrade skills I didn’t use at the newspaper. I also made appointments with key people in the community to let them know I was available and get ideas to improve my marketability and for directions to pursue.

Beyond that, I reached out to companies and organizations where I believed my skills and experience would be a good fit. A former coworker also told me about Michigan Works!, where you could get advice on your resume and possibly qualify for some training. In our community, it’s located next to a gym that I used to frequent. When I had a membership there, it always seemed a little incongruous, people parking their new SUVs and cars and trotting into the gym toting their workout clothes, as others who were out of work parked what were often not-so-new cars and walked with not quite the same lilt just a few rows over into the unemployment office. Parallel universes that didn’t intersect.

Well, they do now. When someone told me how great it was that I “humbled” myself to go to Michigan Works!, I was surprised. To me, if you want to find work, you do whatever it takes to get it. The agency offered help; I needed it. But I asked one of the Michigan Works! counselors about it and she said it’s a common stereotype. In the past, the people they saw were those with minimum skills and education. That is no longer the case, she said. Now, it’s everybody.

Not working when you want and need to be, full-time, at a living wage, with benefits, like you used to, is one big roller coaster ride. Some days are upbeat, with hopeful signs, contacts made, resumes submitted. Others are not so great. Not working can be isolating. For me, getting down to just two keys on my keychain – house and car – was somehow symbolic. Where before you were competent, valued and respected (and carried a bunch of keys), you begin to feel that now, you are just another face in a sea of jobless people.

I’ve applied for jobs all over the Midwest and Eastern seaboard and gotten few responses. In retrospect, I’ve learned that I probably botched a few by setting my sights too high on salary and addressing it up front. It’s not that I wanted so much — just near what I’d been making before. But one expert has since told me that you don’t bring up salary out front – you get them on the hook first, and then broach the subject. I’ve also learned that as time goes on, we scale back our expectations – as one unemployed person I know put it, you stop thinking salary and begin thinking hourly.

Meanwhile, the few times employers have called, it was for jobs that sounded good, but paid about half of what I used to make. There was a job across the state that sounded good. After a successful phone interview, they said I was their first choice and invited me for a personal interview. But it was three hours away for a job I learned then would pay $20,000 less than I had been earning before.

It was the same after I talked for an hour with an editor at a daily newspaper in Illinois. We hit it off and it was clear there was interest on both sides. Then he told me the salary. I couldn’t afford to relocate for that level of pay and had to bow out. We were both disappointed, though part of me wanted to pursue both jobs anyway and throw paying the bills to the wind.  They’d made me feel like Sally Field. Finally, someone really liked me.

There have been days, though, that things seemed absolutely hopeless, which I know is common when you can’t find a job. The mom of a 30-year-old with a master’s degree who hasn’t been able to find work for two years and has been living at home told me his confidence is decimated – this being a smart and handsome young guy who has brightened the days of a neighbor lady just by jogging past with his shirt off.   

But I am most of all an optimist. Each day brings new possibilities. And all it takes is one offer to turn everything around. In fact, I just got one. It’s not quite full-time, and it’s not exactly the same field I’ve worked in until now, but it has terrific potential to be rewarding, and benefits.

I guess that’s the other thing those of us in this situation are learning. You have to realize you may not get the same type of job you had before, but figure out how the skills you have can be adapted to another one, then sell it to an employer.

In the meantime, I’ve grown to appreciate people who are willing to help along the way. Maybe they take time to meet and let you pick their brains, or put you in touch with others who might be of assistance. There are the wonderful few who will call or email you back even if they don’t need anything from you – which is just about everyone when you are job hunting. For me, it was an editor at the Chicago Tribune, offering advice and ideas. There was the HR manager for a communications job with a food company that I knew I would be perfect for, explaining that more than 160 other people had thought so, too, and he couldn’t interview us all. There are the people at Michigan Works!, who not only came through with that resume and training assistance, but as a bonus, offered moral support and cheerleading.

I won’t forget. And when I am once again working and in a position to influence and help those who aren’t, you can bet that I will do the same.