Find the right job in '06
Know yourself, get help, and don't settle for a bad fit, career advisers say
By Joan Axelrod-Contrada, Globe Correspondent, 1/8/2006
Last year, Milé Lin of Waltham sat down at her computer and typed out her goals for 2005.
After three years of working as a sales and new business development manager for a small California-based import-export firm, Lin, 31, wanted to move to a larger company. She cared less about finding a job in a hot industry than in developing her skills as a manager. Last summer, she found just the right fit — a position as sales manager for Pierce Aluminum, a growing company in Franklin.
Her carefully plotted plan for finding a new job is a model of what hiring specialists said job seekers should do: Know yourself. Get help. And don't settle for a job that's not right for you.
Finding a new job might be one of the most popular New Year's resolutions, but, like so many other vows made this time of year, it's easier said than done.
''There's a quote I like that goes, 'Isolation is the dream killer,'?" said Gail Birger, a career consultant who also teaches adult education courses and leads a weekly networking group in Westborough.
Check in with someone — a career counselor, networking group, or even just a friend — once a week to keep your job search on track. "It's having somebody hold your feet to the fire," Birger said.
Costs of a professional coach or career counselor vary, with some starting at $75 an hour, while others charge several hundred dollars for a multisession package of services, which could include resume and letter writing, interviewing skills, and other advice. Some coaches charge on a sliding scale.
Indeed, the professional support Lin sought rounded out her own efforts.
She first researched her field, mostly via the Internet, and then found a continuing education class, taught by Birger, to boost her job-hunting skills.
From the class, Lin learned how to better prepare for interviews and to write cover letters in a bold format. Called the "T format," the body of the cover letter is divided into two columns, one titled, "Your Stated Requirements, and the other, "My Qualifications."
Job seekers put three to five bulleted items under each side of the T, thus mirroring their qualifications to the requirements of the position.
Within a few months, Lin got four job offers, three of which she turned down. Pierce Aluminum was the only company that met all her criteria: a management position in a growing and profitable company that was a leader in its industry, where she could have an immediate impact and be allowed to drive new business.
"The key is, don't settle," she said. "I didn't say, 'This job is good enough.' I was going for a home run."
Nor did Jay Dennett settle for anything less than the right fit. The resident of Hampton Falls, N.H., had a history of job-hopping, which he vowed to break once and for all with his 2005 resolution.
He started his career as an aerospace engineer but found the work tedious and routine. His next stint — fixing copy machines — also bored him.
A career in carpentry ended early with a work-related injury. Finally, he became a manager in a real estate appraisal company.
But the stress of being a manager began to wear on him. Rather than risk making the same job-hopping mistakes, Dennett sought help from Jeanine Tanner O'Donnell, a career coach and president of Blue Kilowatt in Hampton, N.H.
Dennett initially thought he'd leave his job in real estate and find a new full-time job elsewhere.
But O'Donnell told him not to do anything drastic. Maybe he could "tweak" the job he already had and find something on the side to satisfy his need for new challenges.
Dennett wondered if he could hold on to his job but stop being a manager. He proposed the idea to his boss, who gave him the go-ahead to work from home and be paid per appraisal.
Meanwhile, to satisfy his need to do something novel, Dennett was scouting for entrepreneurial opportunities when, serendipitously, he ran into a friend who was looking for a partner. Dennett joined the business, Branded Outfitters, in Hampton Falls, which makes customized T-shirts and other products.
He learned to operate a needlepoint machine used to stitch corporate logos and other designs on merchandise.
"I'm just a little out of my comfort zone, and it's great," he said. "Sometimes it's good to stir it up."
But sometimes job seekers can get lost in the hunt and simply need help getting back on track, having their doubts assuaged.
"When you're job hunting on your own, there's no one there to help you move beyond the stages of frustration along the way," said George Moriarty, director of The Career Place in Woburn, one of 32 Career Centers in Massachusetts.
Rebecca Wish Gelfand was laid off in the summer of 2004 from her job as an executive assistant. Though buoyed by a support network of friends and family, Gelfand found herself spending too much time on the computer as her search dragged on for more than a year.
"I thought something would come out of the computer and be my answer," she said.
Gelfand ultimately realized she had to get out of the house more often.
So she decided to attend a networking event in Lawrence last fall. There, she met personal coach Grace Durfee, who runs Balance with Grace in North Andover.
Worried that she was too old, or going about her hunt in the wrong way, Gelfand, 58, turned to Durfee for advice.
"She didn't want me walking around thinking it's the ageism," said Gelfand. "She said all the rejections were for a good purpose — that none of them were the right job for me. She made me feel better about it."
Ultimately, the right job did come along, after Gelfand answered an ad in the paper for a position as assistant to the executive director of North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly.
Networking remains a key way to find jobs. Just ask Tom Batton. A 49-year-old video engineer in Londonderry, N.H., Batton took a voluntary layoff from the Christian Science Publishing Society in 2004, where he worked in multimedia productions.
At the suggestion of a friend, he made up business cards, one of which he gave to a former colleague he had run into — one of those "passing things," he said. He also joined two groups of the networking operation, Wednesday is Networking Day, or WIND.
He followed their advice to do a little something each day to move his job search forward.
His efforts brought him close to two jobs, one of which he particularly wanted. When he didn't get that job, Batton hit an all-time low.
Nervous because his severance was running out, Batton found support from his networking teammates. Then in March, he got a call out of the blue from a company he had never heard of.
The former colleague to whom he had given his business card, a cameraman, had a new client that was looking for a video engineer.
Batton now works for Cramer and Serono Inc., a marketing firm in Norwood, all because of that chance encounter with his old colleague.
"He remembered me," Batton said. "If someone hands me a business card, I know to hold on to it now. I know how important that is to someone's life."
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