If I were out of work or in desperate
need of a better-paying job, what lengths would I go to? Careerbuilder.com and Craigslist are good tools, but using them is no guarantee, especially in this economy Hitting the bottle might be a good strategy in a Charles Bukowski short story, but not in real life.
So what’s a job seeker to do?
My friend Steven is going old school. Five years after a self-described “midlife crisis” in which he “discovered” his Judaism and had a bar mitzvah, the 48-year-old San Rafael resident is now on another kind of quest.
He is descending on office parks and ascending tall office buildings looking for work. He walks through the halls, whistling as he goes to keep his spirits up, enters offices unannounced, and asks if any jobs are available, résumé in hand.
He’s been at it two weeks, first in Marin and then in San Francisco, so far without success. I’ve at least got to give him credit for having chutzpah, as well as a novel approach in this non-pounding-the-pavement era.
Steven said he has mined all of the usual veins, including contacts at his congregation, Rodef Sholom in San Rafael, without hitting paydirt. “A lot of people know I’m looking — folks throughout the synagogue, the men’s organizations I’m involved with, and I even have 180 contacts at LinkedIn,” he said.
What sent Steven to the pavement, however, was his high level of frustration after searching for jobs on the Internet.
“All the hours I’d spent over the last 18 months and the hundreds of résumés I sent … it was beginning to seem like a waste of time, the meager results in comparison to all the time I put in,” he said.
One big complaint: He didn’t know whom to contact for a follow-up call after clicking “submit” or sending to a generic e-mail address. “No phone calls, please,” indeed.
“So I decided to do it the old-fashioned way,” he said.
Steven does have a paying gig. For six years, he has worked as a freelance inspector for insurance companies. But financially aching insurers are reducing budgets, and he isn’t getting as many calls as in past years. His income is suffering — not good for a married man with three young children, including twins who’ll turn 1 next week.
Steven spent 23 years in financial administration and nonprofit management. Now he is cold-canvassing. As of last week, he had handed out about 55 résumés to various businesses. “I know it has a Depression-era mentality to it, but I can’t bear to sit at the computer anymore and send out résumés,” he said.
His best nibble was when he walked into one office — a men’s clothing wholesaler — and the boss heard him asking about a job, brought him into his office and interviewed him. But three openings had already been offered to others.
“I have no target businesses. I walk into everything,” he said. “I walk in and talk to the first person I can find. I’ve gotten a strong sense of empathy, but I do get quite a lot of rejection.”
His worst experience was in a San Francisco office tower, when two security men came to the 23rd floor and escorted him out of the building. “I don’t know if someone called them or they saw me roaming on their security camera,” he said.
Steven has had some amazing experiences over the past five years: his bar mitzvah at age 43; getting married and changing the last name he was born with, Small, back to his grandfather’s original last name, Smulewitz, at 44.
Some of his most recent experiences, he can only laugh at. “I walked into one place, and what an incredulous look on the face of the 22-year-old receptionist,” he said. “Someone going office-to-office with résumés? She had absolutely no frame of reference of a time when there wasn’t a Monster.com.”
Steven said he hopes his diligence pays off with a Hollywood ending. “I have this fantasy where I walk in, and half an hour before that the office manager walked out in a huff. The boss then turns to me and says, ‘Kid, you’ve got the job.’ “
Got a happy ending? Contact Andy Altman-Ohr at [email protected].