Subscribe
Community
Surviving job loss is all in the attitude
Confronting spell of unemployment also taxes spirits
Friday, Dec. 18, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by EMILY BARNES
Eleanor Nelson of the Job Match Re-employment Office during an interview earlier this month at her office in the Southern Maryland Business Center in Waldorf.
|
E-Mail This Article
Effort and optimism are the secrets to powering through a spell of unemployment, experts say. But learning specifically what to do to stand out in a crowd of frenzied job applicants is almost a full-time job in itself, and one that is not made any easier by the anxiety and humiliation — and the accompanying loss of nerve — that a firing can cause.
Jennifer Lane of Marbury worked for a legal software company that she declined to name, and said the company treated her and six other account managers pretty well, letting them go May 5 but paying their bonuses and keeping them on the payroll for almost two months.
While Lane exudes self-confidence, she admitted that being without work is "stressful, very stressful. I had planned on retiring with that company. … It's hard not to take it personally." She and her husband have cut their spending and she has accepted that, even when she finds work, she will never again earn what she did before.
Paradoxically, she thinks her qualifications, which include a master's degree in social work and a law degree, cause her to be overlooked by employers who assume that she wouldn't want the humbler jobs they are offering.
"It's really frustrating to believe that I'm getting screened out on the basis of my former salary," she said, but hoped that applications she had pending, including a legal research job that "I'm way overqualified for" or a position as a Charles County court commissioner, would pan out.
Lane is a client at the Job Match Re-employment Office in Waldorf, whose desks feature computers for perusing job boards, but also cheery-looking foam apples to help users battle stress.
"If I get an answer I don't like, I want to put my fist into the wall, I'll squeeze the apple [instead]," explained Eleanor Nelson, who runs the office, which is a service of the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland.
Because the management-level professionals Nelson serves could probably scour the Web from home, the place is not as much about the hardware as about maintaining the structure and fellowship that her clients used to get at the office.
Opportunities to talk with other unemployed people are crucial, while seekers must meet as many people as possible in the working world as well in case something comes up. Almost all professionals find their "next good fit" job through personal connections, Nelson believes.
"You don't necessarily get as far if you ask somebody for a job, as if you contacted them and say, ‘I'd like to have some of your time [to talk]. You seem enthusiastic about your own career.' … It works because that person you talk to might be having lunch with somebody in two weeks who needs the skills you talked about," Nelson said.
Most important is remembering that losing a job isn't the end of the world.
"You're down there in a box. It's gray and dark, but you come out and the sun is shining," Nelson said.
Jobseekers need to accept that they may have to radically reinvent themselves in order to go back to work, said Sandra Holler, an employment counselor based in Prince Frederick. Some of her clients are taking computer training while others have started taking college courses, she said. It is important to keep plugging away at the search but "it's pretty desperate," she said.
"So what they have to know to do is to be very specific on what direction they're going to go in. Do some research; have a good resume, cover letter; all of those boost their confidence. In this county I've known a lot of men in construction and because development here is just not going on, they are … searching for something else in that field to do, like a superintendent or a foreman," she said.
But are those jobs available either?
"No," she said, "but you know what? If I were a young guy, like under 35, I'd find out where in the state or country they're building and that's where I'd go. But when you're older, with a life, a mortgage, children, you're not able to pick up and go like that. Younger ones have that kind of advantage but the older ones have the experience."
Part of having a positive attitude is a willingness to make the most of the bleakest opportunities.
"I say to my husband, ‘God forbid, if I were out of work I'd go in and work at McDonald's and I'd be a regional manager in a month,'" Holler said.
Holler's client Hugh Conway is one of those doing his best to keep his chin up. Abruptly fired in August after 10 years of selling light construction equipment in Baltimore, he is collecting canned goods for food pantries near his Owings home and generally trying to stay busy.
Because of disability payments for a serious injury he sustained on the job a few months before, he and his family are getting by. But he is struggling with boredom and despair.
When he lost his job "I was in shock, walking in a daze. It's indescribable. This kind of stuff is happening to everybody." he said. "A lot of it is filling the time with something productive, trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to do. I have to reinvent myself again. … Most people don't start a new career at 54. It's very challenging for me."
Judy Angelheart, who until recently was client services manager at the Southern Maryland Workforce Services One-Stop Career Center Office in Prince Frederick, is encouraged because would-be workers are keeping their heads and making realistic choices.
"By the same token, I don't see a lot of angry people on a daily basis. Frustrated, but I don't see people that are angry, which is good," Angelheart said.
"We do have frustration, we do have people that are, ‘Can you please help me with that?' but so far people have been very polite … and people are wondering, ‘Where can I get a little bit of training? How can I improve what I have so I have a better chance?'"
Adding to the frustration, Angelheart said, is that getting responses from the unemployment insurance workers at the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation has been a nightmare for clients.
DLLR spokesman Bernie Kohn said the office is swamped and urged applicants to file initial and continuing claims on the Internet to avoid the crush. Those who are already in the system but are having trouble getting a response can call the complaints team at 410-767-3246, he said, stressing that the number is not for those seeking to file new claims or ask general questions.
Finding a job now is particularly difficult for the never-employed, according to Dana Van Abbema, director of career development at St. Mary's College of Maryland.
New college graduates have had little opportunity to prove themselves in the workforce, leaving them squeezed out of the competition by the armies of unemployed workers with experience, she said. At the same time, enforced idleness can be easier for young people to endure.
"More psychologically, I think it's often easier to adapt. Many of them have a soft place at home where they can fall for a while. I think it's much different to be employed for five years, 10 years then suddenly be jobless, maybe with a mortgage and a family," Van Abbema said.
Some new graduates are even embracing the situation, heading off for "gap year" adventures like the Peace Corps or European travel instead of plunging into the fray.
"A lot of them just aren't ready. [The career center] did a survey last year. Students … sometimes they would say, ‘I didn't [participate in programs]. I wasn't ready to look for a full-time job. I wouldn't want that,'" Van Abbema said. "I imagine if you fall into that group, the downturn in the economy is sort of, it turns up as a convenient excuse, so I certainly wouldn't want all our students to be portrayed that way."
