After Months Without A Job, They Found Work: How’d They Do It?

Downtown Tampa / Andrew Avitus

Tampa, FL – With the Tampa Bay area’s unemployment rate above 11 percent, finding a job these days can take a heroic effort.

Tales of hiring managers being inundated with resumes are everywhere.

When a company called Vangent opened a telephone call center in Riverview earlier this summer, it received 2,000 applications for 200 positions.

Meanwhile, the length of people’s unemployment is stressing government assistance programs.

Unemployed people in Florida typically start receiving up to 26 weeks of state unemployment compensation. Once they exhaust that, they may be eligible for up to 33 more weeks of federal benefits.

Through late August, some 93,000 people had already exhausted all 59 weeks of state and federal assistance and were collecting a last, emergency round of federal assistance that can last up to 20 additional weeks, according to the state Agency for Workforce Innovation.

Nonetheless, some of these long-term unemployed Floridians are managing to find jobs. Looking back on their job search, they often say they spent far too much time perusing Internet job boards and not enough time making contacts, such as at the plethora of job networking groups that have sprung up around the Bay area. A good list of them can be found on the Web site of Real Estate Lives, a local networking group for real estate professionals, at www.realestatelives.org.

Here are four of their stories.


SONIA SANTOS

Age: 29

Last job: medical assistant at a pediatric medical office

Unemployed: 8 months

New job: medical assistant at Bay Area Infectious Disease Associates

It was embarrassing and it was awkward, but it wasn’t until Sonia Santos asked everyone she knew to help her find a job that she finally got one.

Santos had a bad experience at her last job, a medical assisting job at a pediatric doctor’s office, and was let go in December after three months. Like millions of other out-of-work people, she first scoured Web sites such as Monster.com and Jobing.com for work.

The jobs were there, but after sending applications to dozens of employers listed on the job boards, she received only one returned call. People say it’s easier to get a job in the medical field, but Santos began to wonder.

“How many medical assisting jobs are actually out there?” she said. “And how many doctors are hiring?”

As one month out of work led to two and eventually to eight, the cost of raising three young children – ages 2, 4 and 6 – began to whittle away the family’s bank accounts. Her husband worked at a local hotel, but the family still needed two incomes. Eventually, her parents in Brandon pitched in with some financial support, she said.

Things began to turn for the better when she dropped her guard.

She had been reluctant to talk about her need for a job: “I didn’t want to be a statistic,” she said.

But she eventually posted a note on Facebook, telling all her friends that she needed a job – badly. She told family in Puerto Rico, who scoured that Caribbean island for jobs. And she told the members of her Latin singing group.

Eventually, one of the fellow singers told her about a medical assisting job at a Brandon clinic. That contact landed her an interview and a job. She’s working in Brandon now, but expects to transfer soon to one of her company’s clinics in Tampa.

“I had no more shame,” Santos said. Had she known someone in broadcasting, “I would’ve put it (news of her unemployment) on the radio.”


FELIPE SABOYA

Age: 28

Last job: Albertsons assistant manager

Unemployed: 5 months

New job: Walgreens assistant manager

At the relatively young age of 28, Felipe Saboya’s faith in the American corporate system was shaken when he lost his job last summer.

He’s giving the corporate world another shot, but is building a small business on the side just in case.

Saboya’s family fled Colombia six years ago after his mother, who worked for the government in that South American country, received several threats. The family sought asylum in the United States and settled in Sarasota, where they had a friend.

He started working for Albertsons as an hourly associate in one of its Bradenton supermarkets and eventually worked up to an assistant manager spot at its Parrish store.

“It was a good corporation, and basically I was going for the career, planning to climb the corporate ladder,” Saboya said.

After three years with the grocer, rival chain Publix Super Markets bought 49 of Albertsons stores and went about morphing them into shiny green Publixes. Some, but not all, of the former Albertsons employees were offered jobs. Saboya wasn’t.

Newly unemployed last August, he began searching Internet job boards but quickly found they were unproductive and depressing. Figuring he needed to be more aggressive, he hired Larry LaBelle, an employment consultant, to help him polish his resume and refine his sales pitch to employers.

A key piece of advice: he learned that he needed to give prospective employers concrete examples of how he made previous employers money or saved them money, Saboya said. Meanwhile, he put out word on his Facebook and Myspace accounts that he was looking for work.

Eventually, a friend alerted him to a job at Walgreen’s. He visited the drugstore in Ellenton and landed an interview, which soon led to a job. He started in February after five months of job hunting. Saboya is still a little nervous about the corporate world, and has launched a small commercial cleaning service on the side.

For now, he’s keen on seeing how far he can go with Walgreen’s.

“Let’s see what happens,” he said.


BRIAN HOLLANDS

Age: 42

Last job: Commercial real estate agent

Underemployed: 10 months

New job: Business/Professional Development Officer for The Corporate Training Center at Hillsborough Community College

Brian Hollands never technically was unemployed, but it sure felt like it.

When the real estate market was hot, he was closing on two commercial real estate deals a month with a local Century 21 broker. But in the year before he left the business, he had done seven deals all year.

His salary as a commercial real estate agent fell at least 50 percent. He knew he needed to do something else.

So, by fall 2008, with the real estate market in tatters, he started looking for a new job even as he kept his old one. He woefully underestimated the amount of time landing a new job would take, he says today.

There were plenty of jobs paying $35,000 a year, but few that paid $50,000 and up and matched his skills in sales and business development, he said. Hollands had picked up a peculiar array of jobs and life experiences in his career, from diving for sea urchins as a novice marine biologist to working for business services firm ADP to real estate.

Hollands initially started hunting for jobs primarily on Internet job boards, but soon realized he needed to press the flesh at job networking events. Two popular ones he attended are hosted by the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance and another group called the Tweeners, which met at a Lutz church.

In July, after nearly a year of looking, he landed a job at HCC’s Corporate Training Center. The center helps businesses train employees in information technology, communication, management and other skills. He’d spotted the job opening through the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance, and a neighbor who worked for HCC put in a good word for him.

“I was able to get a reference there, and that might be enough to get your resume pulled out of the stack,” he said.


STEVE MEITZEN

Age: 53

Last job: Sales for luxury condo developer

Unemployed: 18 months

New job: Corporate sales executive for H&S Swansons’ Tool Co.

Steve Meitzen thought it would be a snap to find a new job, just a matter of tapping the 9,000 contacts in his database.

He never dreamed it would take him 18 months.

Meitzen had been a salesman for the Residences at Windward Passage, a luxury condo property in Clearwater Beach. Things went swimmingly until February 2007, when the market began to sour. His boss told him, “‘We have to move you off of salary and put you on 100 percent commission.’ I said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ ”

He initially saw his unemployment as an opportunity to fix up the house for a few months, and he didn’t even bother to file for unemployment compensation. Gregarious and fond of public speaking, he had built up an arsenal of 9,000 contacts in his Microsoft Outlook database and 187 LinkedIn connections.

But when he began looking in earnest even his numerous contacts couldn’t help. In one letdown, he thought he performed well while interviewing for a company that processed claims for a certain ill-fated insurance company.

“I had a great interview until I heard it was AIG,” Meitzen jokes now. The job never materialized.

His contacts eventually paid off, however. He spotted a job ad on CareerBuilder.com for H&S Swansons’, a Pinellas Park company that makes components for aerospace firms.

He happened to know the chief financial officer at H&S Swansons,’ which helped him stand out from the other 250 people applying for the sales job. He’s been on the job since January.

If he were to look for a job today, Meitzen says he would meet with at least three business contacts a day and spend less time scouring Internet job boards.

“I’m not asking you for a job,” he would tell each person. He would go on to ask them three questions: “Can you name me the most successful person you know in the Bay area? Who’s your best friend in the Bay area and where does he work? What’s the fastest growing company you know of?”

By Michael Sasso
September 4, 2009
source: tbo.com