Forest Leaves

Jobless in a worsening economy

By Chris Lafortune

In retrospect, Anne White's timing couldn't have been worse.

The former Maryland resident moved to Oak Park to be closer to her granddaughter. She had a job as development director with the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation.

But she didn't feel right. She'd work in not-for-profits for much of her life, and the work was starting to feel familiar.

"It was like suddenly there was this voice that said, 'You've been in development for a long time, you're 65,'" White said. "Something else was speaking to me."

And so she left in August, to find something else to do. Then the economy tanked. Work became scarce.

She and her husband moved to Oak Park, but they still have the home they lived in on Chesapeake Bay, unable to sell.

"I call this the sweaty palm part of my life," White said. "I keep having this vision of a flying trapeze artist standing up on the bar.

"You let go of the one bar, flying out in the middle of the air and you sure hope you can catch the other bar."

It's not a good time to be looking for work, but White, along with many other Oak Parkers, is out of a job.

According to statistics from the Illinois Department of Employment Security, Oak Park's September unemployment rate was 4.9 percent. Statistics are not seasonably adjusted.

In July, Oak Park's unemployment rate peaked at 5.8 percent, higher than anytime since 2003. Discouraging times

"It's a discouraging market right now," Career and Executive Coach Diane Grimard Wilson said. Wilson is the author of Back in Control: How to Stay Sane, Productive and Inspired in Your Career Transition.

"There's just so much financial turmoil that people are experiencing personally," Grimard Wilson said. "You look around, and it's just sort of all over."

To help people, Grimard Wilson has started a support group for the unemployed at Unity Temple in Oak Park. The group is a pilot program, but she's already got 20 people attending.

Grimard Wilson wants to help people to develop skills to manage change, the space between careers.

Work, even if people don't like it, gives people structure and meaning, she said. When someone leaves their job and cannot find new work, that can erode their self-esteem.

"Many of the people you talk with, they know how to do a resume, they know how to do an interview," Grimard Wilson said. "They don't know what to do on a Monday when they don't have a job."

White is a part of Grimard Wilson's group. In the past, White said she always chose to go from one job to another.

But she's never done any of the inner work, to think about that transition, she said. The job in Oak Park came so quick, she never really had a chance to break from her old life out east.

"I literally flew home, packed my car with what I needed, and left Ed to deal with packing the house and selling the house," White said.

Now she's in Oak Park, new to the area, and she's lost her network.

In times like these, Career Coach and Creative Advisor Wendy Lalli said, networking is most important. Networking key

"Expecting to find a job in the want ads, I think people have kind of given up on that one," Lalli said. "Even finding a job online, going through different online sources ... you're competing against everybody, literally, in the world."

Networking is key, Lalli said, and that includes online social networking. Instant messaging, Facebook, these are tools people seeking work need to understand, connecting with old friends, finding out if they know someone who is looking to hire.

"Expand your network as wide and deep as possible," Lalli said. "Some face-to-face events make sense, but not all of them."

People also need to change their expectations of work.

Some people still seek the permanent job, a place they'll work the rest of their lives, Lalli said. But that place doesn't really exist anymore.

People should find work that they want, Lalli said, not take anything that's available and putting off an impression of desperation.

"Find something that makes sense for you to do and that you want to do," Lalli said.

White is in the process of reinventing herself. She's spent much of her career working for other people, she said. She wants to find something for herself now.

And she has no intention on retiring. She comes from a generation of feminists who trailblazed into the workplace, broke through glass ceilings and stood up to cultural norms.

"Here we are retirement age, and we're supposed to go out to pasture to play golf?" she said.

Oak Leaves

Managing emotional unemployment

Author Diane Grimard Wilson is running a support group at Unity Temple to help people manage the transition from one job to the next.

The group is a pilot now, scheduled to end Dec. 2, but she believes the program will continue.

"People need all kinds of help now," she said. "They need help with practical aspects. But they need space, ways of understanding this, tools to help them manage this whole interior."

Grimard Wilson's top five tips for managing emotional unemployment are:

* Create structure to Stay Focused: Look around you and your environment, make certain you surround yourself with people, places and things that help you stay focused and positive. Keep a schedule of your time working on the transition.

* Know Your Own Story: Take a moment to stand outside yourself and write a simple account of where you are and how you got there. Every story has honor.

* Tap into the Power of Your Style: Know your blind spots and what will come easy for you during this time. Some people love research and some enjoy networking. In transition, you need to do both. Guard against only focusing on what's easiest.

* Let Your Emotions Be Your Strength: Everyone has many emotions during this time. Be aware of these, accept them and move on to positive actions.

* Cultivate Intuitive Intelligence: Many of us get swamped with our own nagging, cynical internal dialogue which keeps us from hearing our deepest wisdom. In transition, especially, we need this intelligence. Give time to activities which help you hear this inner voice. Examples: Keeping a journal, meditation and fishing.

The Ladders

Is It Your Age or Your Salary?

By Kevin Fogarty

Age discrimination is neither legal nor fair. Nevertheless, it is prevalent in a variety of forms, job seekers, career coaches and recruiters agree.

Most often the discrimination isn't overt; it's more a function of who does the initial filtering of resumes and job candidates and the likelihood that those relatively junior staffers don't understand the real requirements of the job they're filling or what an experienced executive would bring to it.

"I've found age discrimination pretty prevalent," said John, an OpsLadder member who is an expert in sourcing and supply-chain management. Working through TheLadders, John was recently hired by a leading medical equipment company, six months after he was laid off as director of materials management, supply chain, purchasing and inventory at telecommunications equipment maker JDS Uniface.

"It's not overwhelming, but it is disheartening. You talk to a lot of recruiters who weed you out before you get to the manager to explain the value you can bring," says John, who is 59. "And there are two parts to it: age, certainly in my case, but with 28 years of experience, your comp package is pretty high."

It's almost impossible for job candidates to tell whether they're being judged or passed over based on their age or their salary, according to Diane Grimard Wilson, a career coach who is president of Grimard Wilson Consulting Inc. and author of Back in Control: How to Stay Sane, Productive, and Inspired in Your Career Transition.

The sticking point could be just that the interviewer is surprised to see gray hair on a candidate he or she assumed was younger.

"If you're an executive in your mid-50s who made it through the first screenings because you didn't put your first couple of jobs on your resume or excluded the year you graduated, you could walk into that interview and be talking to an HR person who's the age of your child," said Sally Haver, senior vice president of business development at The Ayers Group/Career Partners International, a recruiting company that specializes in career transitions and outplacement.

Those relatively inexperienced screeners have usually been told that their responsibility is to say 'no' as often and quickly as possible to candidates who don't fit the pattern, according to Jim Villwock, president of expense-management service IEM Group Inc. and author of the forthcoming Whacked Again! Secrets to Getting Back on the Executive Saddle.

"You're at the mercy of low-level people with a slate of profiles to match," he said. "You can address that by talking about the value you bring, but you have to be at the top of your game to do it. The subject matter you're presenting is difficult for people at that level."

The goal, Haver said, is to satisfy the interviewer that your qualifications fit the profile and that there are no other issues – such as age, health problems or unusually high salary requirements – that would disqualify you.

"You want to convince them you're pass-on-able. If you are in this screening interview with HR, you want it to be as transparent as possible," she said.

Prepare to Overcome Objections

The key to being successful isn't hiding your age or salary but being prepared with explanations or propositions designed to overcome the objections screeners of different types will bring up, according to Cheryl Palmer, a certified career coach and president of CallToCareer.com.

"Think like a salesperson, even if you're not," Palmer said. "A salesperson practices to deal with any objections you might bring up because they know what the potential objections will be."

For a screener it might be enough to demonstrate that you're still energetic, focused and vital despite a few gray hairs.

"You can get a lot of questions settled before they're even asked," Palmer said. "Usually the first few minutes of the interview are, 'Did you have trouble finding the place' or, 'How was your weekend?' Instead of the usual, you can go out of your way to say, 'I went hiking with some buddies of mine over the weekend, and I feel great!' Right at the outset you paint this picture of someone who's energetic and raring to go. You've painted over those misgivings without even knowing if age would be an issue."

Questions about compensation and authority are stickier but can be dealt with a lot more directly with the hiring manager than issues as potentially liable as age, Haver said.

"If you're talking to the hiring manager, you can cut to the chase and say, 'I can do everything you need done and more, and you're going to be thrilled,’" Haver said. "‘You will not find anybody who can do this job better than I can do it, so let's talk about how you can bring me on board in a way that's comfortable for you.’"

If compensation is the sticking point, you can suggest that the hiring manager bring you in near the top of the scale that would have been appropriate for the more-junior person that was originally expected in the role, with the understanding that your compensation will be reviewed in six months based on the amount of value you bring to the job.

"You can start on a consulting basis to get your foot in the door and say you're comfortable with that arrangement because you know the kind of value you can bring to the organization," Haver said. "Make the entry point as comfortable as possible for them.

According to Villwock, the key to making the compensation talk work is demonstrating not that you can do elegantly the kinds of things a less experienced person might not know to do at all but to show that your experience makes you uniquely valuable compared to other candidates for the job.

"Most executives I talk to are strictly a commodity," Villwock said. "They say they have 20 years experience, but it's one year of experience 20 times.

“If you do your research – and I'm talking about doing as much as 40 hours of research including talking to people inside and outside the company before a final slate of interviews – you can show that you know the company, know what problems it's really facing, and can offer ways to address those problems.

"If I'm the CEO or CFO or COO, I care about return on investment, cost savings, how you're going to help me increase revenue, not how you're going to train people in your department," Villwock said. "That says to me you're not a commodity and, to me as the CEO, that you can do things to solve the problems I'm worried about."

MOAA (January 2007)

The Bigger They Are…

By Jim Carman

Dealing with failure isn’t easy, but those who don’t learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. Here’s how to “get back on the horse” after a bad fall.

We’ve all known moments of failure: blowing an exam, missing a promotion, or just making a bad decision. If we’re lucky, the loss is mostly a private matter, there’s no permanent damage, and we can retreat into our comfort zone for reflection and rejuvenation.

But not everyone has such good fortune.

Al Gore focused his entire professional life on winning the presidency and ended up losing the election by fewer votes than the margin of error in the electoral process. Scott Norwood was the All-Pro NFL place-kicker whose 47-yard field goal attempt went wide right, costing the Buffalo Bills the 1991 Super Bowl. Dan Doctoroff, a wealthy former investment banker and New York City deputy mayor, spent 11 years and $4 million of his own money trying to bring the 2012 Olympic Games to the Big Apple only to lose — by a whisker — to London.

Regardless of whether defeat comes on a grand scale or in a moment of private agony, our disappointments affect our families, relationships, and self-esteem. Jeffery Zaslow, a regular contributor to the “Moving On” column in The Wall Street Journal, notes that researchers have advice for high achievers who fail: “Try self-deprecating humor, do extensive postmortems, allow yourself to dream big again, and ask yourself what was your failure? Was it not reaching your goal or not giving your all?” If it was the latter, then you know where you need to improve next time. If it was the former, then it’s critical to remember that sometimes you lose, and that’s an unfortunate but necessary part of life. What’s important is learning from the experience and always trying to figure out how to improve.

Life after wide right
“The biggest thing about that kick,” says Norwood, “was not how it impacted me but how it let the team down. But I had prepared as well as I could. I had done the best I could. I could look myself in the mirror.”

Mental health professionals will tell you that such openness is the first step in healing after this sort of failure. When you experience a major loss at work, such as being fired, laid off, or demoted, there is a predictable sequence of feelings, similar to the stages of grief: shock and denial, anger, bargaining, despair, and acceptance.

Diane Grimard Wilson discusses these stages as they apply to the workplace in her recent book Back in Control (Sentient Publications, 2004): “Some people start with acceptance and move backwards, while others experience the whole cycle in one direction or another.”

For example, a serendipity, such as an interview opportunity at a desirable firm, could cause you to reflect on what you learned from a prior failure and suddenly leap from anger to acceptance. Researchers agree there is overlap between these stages and no single pathway through the process.

Lt. Cmdr. George Cowan was a fast-tracking Navy pilot on a vector to the pinnacle job in naval aviation: command of an aircraft-carrier-based maritime surveillance squadron. Then his dreams were dashed when his portion of the naval aviation community was disestablished in a force-reduction decision. Suddenly he was on a path with no known destination.

Taking a lesson from Zaslow’s advice and allowing himself to dream big again, Cowan won a coveted spot at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He earned his medical degree in 2005 at the age of 40 and is now in the second year of a psychiatry residency at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center, Va.

In his work with a number of patients struggling to cope with grief and depression, Cowan has found that “problems arise when emotions and feelings are withheld and hidden, and sometimes these problems can be devastating. It’s important for people to realize that whenever they are having significant life stressors, such as a loss or personal failure, seeking help from professionally trained counselors can be a tremendously positive experience and ease their distress much [more quickly] than gutting it out or going [it] alone.”

Healing and moving on
For many, the healing process begins with a focus on the family. Turning your attention toward your family members’ lives might make it easier to get on with your own. Gore’s focus after the 2000 presidential election initially led to coauthoring a book about American families called Joined at the Heart (Holt and Co., 2002) with his wife, Tipper, a psychologist.

More recently, he resumed a higher public profile, joined the board of Apple Computer, launched a mutual fund emphasizing environmental stewardship and social accountability, and coproduced a documentary discussing the potential impact of global warming (An Inconvenient Truth, 2006).

But sometimes a focus on family and friends can lead to uncomfortable moments. Dory Hollander, a career coach based in Arlington, Va., notes that “when you’re unemployed, particularly if you’ve been unemployed for a while, it seems that friends and relatives ask the most probing, insolent sort of negatively nuanced questions. Whether it’s intentional or not, they know our soft spots.”

To address this potential problem and other transition issues, it might be helpful to consult Professionals in Transition. Founder Damian Birkel has assembled this Web site to help unemployed professionals successfully navigate a career transition or an unexpected job loss, including discussions of networking techniques, health care options, how to plan a graceful exit, and related issues associated with a sudden job loss.

Personal fitness is also an important part of recovering your spark, self-confidence, and initiative after a setback. Many career coaches encourage their clients to begin — or maintain — an exercise regimen as part of their career-transition process, since research shows that exercise can be as effective as psychotherapy in treating depression or grief.

In the wake of the failed 2012 Olympic bid, Doctoroff wanted to challenge himself physically. He took a 200-mile solo bike ride and was rejuvenated by the experience. “After not reaching the Olympic finish line, this was a meaningful victory.”

Career-transition researcher Wilson also points out that “many people get some of their sharpest insights and discoveries about what they want to do next while doing physically challenging things like running or exercising.” Re-careering baby boomers could find themselves in the same job market as enthusiastic and eager “millennials,” born in the late ’70s or early ’80s, and it’s important to project a vigorous appearance to complement an older worker’s strong and diverse résumé.

Mentors and advisors can be particularly valuable for advice and counsel following a personal or professional crisis. However, you can’t wait until you have a predicament to cultivate a mentor network. Look for mentors inside and outside of your current company. Alumni groups, professional societies, not-for-profit boards, and even your church, are favorable places to look for people with whom you might have common bonds and from whose experience you might learn. Most important, look for mentors with the grace and self-confidence to share their failures —as well as their successes — with you. The best mentor networks include a variety of people you’d like to emulate in both business savvy and people skills.

Moving from failure to gratitude
People who take risks sometimes fail, but failure is a necessary experience for personal and professional growth. And out of failure frequently emerges a sense of gratitude: gratitude for the experience, the new job, the strengthened résumé, or the opportunity to correctly prioritize your life. Reflecting on the wide right kick, Norwood says, “If everything always worked out for you, then you don’t have that sense of appreciation. You can always think you understand what it means to have things not work out, but until you live it, you don’t really know.”

Reflecting on the 20th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, June Scobee Rogers, the widow of Shuttle Commander Col. Dick Scobee, says that, “without risk there’s no discovery, there’s no new knowledge, there’s no bold adventure, all of which help the human race to soar. And the greatest risk is to take no risk.”

Chicago Tribune (January 1, 2007)

Excerpt from Wishing, hoping, doing

By Bonnie Miller Rubin and Johnathon E. Briggs

Is there anything so exhilarating as a fresh start?

A new year carries infinite possibilities. The mere turn of the calendar's page makes us vow to weigh less and exercise more, to gain more autonomy or plug a hole in the soul. And yet, as much as we thrill to every story of a banker-turned-bookseller or a police officer who hit it big in Hollywood , most of us are still here, tethered to our keyboards and cubicles.

We want to address that canyon-size gap between our expectations and our reality, but something holds us back. Maybe that explains why fatigue and depression are two of the most common health complaints for Americans.

So, on this first day of the new year, how can we tackle this epidemic of malaise?

"Start by doing something different, even if it's as simple as changing your route to work," advises Diane Grimard Wilson, a Chicago job consultant, author and firm believer that small steps can lead to big changes. "Just the declaration of `I'm going to change something' can bring out your intuitive intelligence ... triggering an awareness of those gut feelings we all have but often ignore."

And once that door is open, who knows where you will go?

Full Article: Wishing, hoping, doing

The Wall Street Journal (June 1, 2004)

Excerpt from The Jungle

By Kris Maher

Most people get discouraged during a job search by relying too much on strategies that have a low success rate, such as applying to ads posted on the Internet, says Diane Wilson, author of Back in Control: How to Stay Sane, Productive and Inspired in Your Career Transition. One of the best ways to land a job is still through a personal referral. Your best bet is to spend most of your time networking, many career experts say. To stay positive, Ms. Wilson also advises job seekers to surround themselves with supportive people and to avoid others who ask, "Do you have a job yet?"

"If you approach it from a perspective of strength and that you have a contribution to make, then the whole process is different," she says.

Excerpt from Job gone. So, how's it feel?

By 8 a.m., he was sad.

By 9 a.m., he was downright depressed.

By 10 a.m., he had accepted it.

Boosz's emotional experience is pretty typical for someone suddenly thrown out of work, although the North Canton man waded through it quicker than most do.

"You can expect to go through a rainbow of emotions,'' said Diane Grimard Wilson, author of Back in Control: How to Stay Sane, Productive and Inspired in Your Career Transition.

The trick is to not drown in those negative emotions. If you do, landing a worthwhile job will be a lot harder. No one wants to hire someone with a bad attitude, and depression has a way of sabotaging opportunities before they even develop.

"Emotional unemployment is a very real thing that people go through,'' said Wilson, a professional counselor in suburban Chicago. "It's important to have practices that you do every day to keep you going.''

Wilson suggests maintaining the same schedule you did when you went to work.

Get up at the same time. Eat at the same time. And go job hunting like you were heading to the office -- the same eight hours a day, five days a week.

The idea is to cling to a sense of normalcy in an abnormal situation. Structured activities, even jogging every morning or cooking every night, help job seekers focus on the things they still can control.

"People will spend the day looking in the refrigerator for their next job'' if you let them, Wilson said.

"Victims feel helpless,'' Wilson wrote. "If you see yourself as a victim, it is difficult to recognize your true gifts and move ahead.''

"Getting a job these days is not about the want ads. You have to network,'' said Wilson, who got her master's degree from the University of Akron.