White Collar Job Seekers Flock to Support Groups

A box of donuts signifies good news at the weekly Simi Valley meeting of professional job search group Experience Unlimited. A member who lands a new job brings in the pastries to celebrate and at one recent meeting they came courtesy of one whose year-long job search resulted in a position with a Woodland Hills-based trading company with manufacturing plants in China. After giving encouraging words to the group of some 50 people don’t give up on newspaper classified ads and start a daily exercise regimen he waved goodbye and was out the door. As the economy soured and cost-cutting spread across all industry sectors, white collar professionals found themselves in a position some hadn’t been in for decades that of the job seeker. Unemployment in positions in management and financial operations nearly doubled between February 2008 and February 2009. Job losses in sales, office and administrative support went from fewer than 1 million in February 2008 to nearly 1.5 million a year later, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. forecasts unemployment at more than 10 percent in Los Angeles in 2010 and at 8.2 percent in Ventura County. Financial services jobs in particular were expected to drop in both counties. Meetings of Experience Unlimited in Simi Valley put faces to those numbers. Introductions by members and visitors reveal these are not entry level position seekers but seasoned professionals and executives with backgrounds in engineering, information technology, project management, sales and marketing, education and finance. What groups like Experience Unlimited offer is not just no-cost search tips, resume reviews and mock interviews but also a support network that shows the job seeker they are not alone. Thousand Oaks resident Russell Brudnicki has been looking for an engineering job for the past month and a half and credits the Experience Unlimited meetings with getting him up to speed on resume writing and interviewing. Other jobs he’s had in his career came through friends or other contact and Brudnicki never had to go through the job search process most other workers do. In the five-day workshop he took in December, he came away more knowledgeable about writing cover letters and doing follow ups to an interviews, Brudnicki said. “It’s all the stuff that is intuitively obvious but is not,” Brudnicki added. At the Conejo Jewish Job Support Group that meets weekly at a synagogue in Thousand Oaks, job seekers are encouraged to stay active and keep their energy up and there is no need to apologize for having been laid off, said volunteer coordinator Deborah Gallant. “If they are depressed they will never find a job,” Gallant said. With unemployment rising and not expected to shrink until at least 2011 according to a recent UCLA economic report, the services offered by Gallant’s group and Experience Unlimited are more in need than ever. Yet in the case of Simi Valley the state Employment Development Department, which operates Experience Unlimited, stepped in to enforce bylaws limiting membership to 40 people. The department placed a gag order on the volunteers to keep them from speaking to the media, canceled a week-long workshop to start March 30, and a March 20 meeting reportedly ended with the California Highway Patrol and Simi Valley Police called to the EDD office. Chapter members who spoke on background were unhappy with the situation as the state was alienating a group of volunteers willing to share their real-world experience. “We are polishing them up and sending them out back into the world,” said one volunteer who didn’t want their name used. “The state doesn’t understand the value of this.” The department limited membership to 40 people because that is a number that is most effective, spokesman Patrick Joyce said. There were some members told that they no longer qualified to take part because they were not actively seeking work, Joyce added. The CHP was called to the Simi Valley office because some employees found the atmosphere to be unsettling after Experience Unlimited members were disqualified from participating. “It was a precautionary measure,” Joyce said. “We are not saying anyone broke the law.” In recent months not only have more people signed up for the week-long job search skills workshop but more are following through to show up and finish the course. Membership in Experience Unlimited requires donation of time to help other job seekers, a concept one volunteer described as “paying it forward.” The EDD also operates the program in Canoga Park and Lancaster. Knowing the turmoil in Simi Valley, Gallant has positioned her group as independent of state oversight. Temple Adat Elohim donates the meeting room and coffee and participants do not have to be Jewish. Like Experience Unlimited, Gallant has professionals from the entertainment, education, banking and insurance industries attending the Tuesday morning meetings. Job hunting in the digital age is new to some of the participants, who only know about sending paper resumes through the post office. The support group started in February and Gallant has speakers scheduled into June and prepared to bring in more for however long the services are needed.