A Few Minds Are Better Than One

Ivan’s continues his search for job satisfaction, attending a support group for people in career transition. Those who have been fired or laid off can expect to experience a predictable range of emotions, he learns, but can pick up the pieces through a series of steps outlined by outplacement counselor John Gleason and author Kent B. Banning. Among their tips--the secret of the functional resume:

Ivan was having a really rough day. Make that week. No, maybe month or even more.

For a basically cheerful guy with very few needs--a roof over his head, food in his stomach, a couple of good pals, some time in the waves, oh, and complete job satisfaction--nothing seemed to be going right.

Fixing his old job didn’t work. That sabbatical, well, his tan had already faded, and that was the main accomplishment of his three weeks off on the company dime. Business school was a bust. And his friends were getting really tired of listening to the same old rap: “I hate my job, but I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” The other night over a candlelight sushi dinner, his girlfriend had given him an ultimatum: Cheer up or shut up.

Needless to say, the rest of that evening was a quiet one. Ivan didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the lump in his throat wasn’t an errant piece of California roll, but rather the accumulation of a lot of pain and frustration.

For Ivan Hunter is a ‘90s kind of guy. Surfers, after all, have feelings, too, and he understands that all growth means change, and change means fear and rejection and frustration and pain and anger. What to do about those feelings, though, when he’d worn out his welcome in so very, very many places? Who to turn to for advice, when he might as well throw away his address book for all the good it did him these days?

One lonely, rainy Saturday morning, when he was too depressed to even wax his board, Ivan sat alone at a beachfront dive, sipping latte and leafing through the local alternative newspaper. And there it was, just what he’d been looking for--maybe. A support group for people in career transition, meeting Wednesday night not far from the drugstore. And it was free. Cool.

On this night, there were two guest speakers, an outplacement counselor named John Gleason and Kent B. Banning, author of “Time for a Change: The Re-Entry and Re-Career Workbook,” (VGM Career Horizons, 1995, $9.95).

When Gleason began to talk, Ivan’s mouth practically dropped open. This man knew what he was thinking.

For people in the middle of a career transition, particularly those who have been, as they say politely, downsized, “most often they’ll go through the five elements typically associated with trauma in your life, starting with denial and going through bargaining and acceptance,” Gleason told the group.

“What they almost always fail to understand is that it’s the classic grief cycle. . . . The least understood part of the grief cycle is that it’s like a biorhythm. It recurs,” he continued, as Ivan nodded his head in acknowledgment. “Once acceptance is reached, traditionally what I’ve seen, after counseling some 500 persons, is during that grief cycle, they’ll have developed some bad habits--usually procrastination--and good habits give way to slovenly work habits. And thus the job search can become protracted.”

Ouch. That sure hit home for Ivan, who some days had so little energy that not only was it a struggle to pass out pills at Moreland, but that lately he’d all but stalled out on his quest for a new life. What to do, though?

Gleason was sympathetic but firm. Get through the grief cycle and get some discipline back into your life. That means spending at least 25 hours each week on the job search or transition effort.

The outplacement counselor also encouraged the support group members to get out and get involved in a professional organization or in volunteer work associated with the search or goal job so that “your own self-esteem can be enhanced by contributing something worthwhile.”

Bottom line, though, is “a personal discipline and routine,” Gleason said. “It can’t be a week on and a week off in terms of a search, or it will literally take you to bankruptcy or cost you your family. That’s one of the great tragedies.”

At this point, one man in the audience crushed his foam coffee cup and raised his hand. “My name is Nicholas, and I have been spending hours every week on my job search, but it hasn’t been working at all. I have this mostly great resume but it has this big hole in it. You see, I lost my last job because of a substance abuse problem. I went through rehab, I’m in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I’m clean now, but whenever I get a job interview, they look at this six months of nothing and say ‘What gives?’ ”

Gleason looked understanding, but a small smile played around his lips. “So tell me,” he asked the troubled man, “does your resume begin with this gap? Is it in chronological order?”

“Of course,” Nicholas said. “That’s how resumes are done, right?”

“Sure, if you never want work again,” Gleason said. “You need to toss out your chronological resume and write yourself a functional resume. In a functional resume, you begin by listing all of the relevant achievements that you have reached in the course of several jobs, in a descending order, most important first.”

A functional resume will end with a listing of the jobs you’ve held, he said, but it won’t have any dates. If you meet the qualifications of an employer, you’ll likely get an interview. If they find out about your problem through a background check, then you indicate all of the positive things you got out of the experience of rehabilitation.

“You mean like call it self-discovery and healing?” Nicholas asked, encouraged.

“Call it a life-saving experience,” Gleason countered. “That’s pretty dramatic. . . . And stay calm. I’m going to hire you because of a positive attitude and achievement. If you become defensive, that could translate into your work style, and I don’t want that.”

The woman next to Ivan raised her hand. “This functional resume you talked about. Could that help me, too?” she asked. “I’ve been out of the work force for the last seven years raising a family. I had a good job before I left work, and I have a lot of skills, but I have a big gap in there, too.”

“Absolutely,” Gleason said.

The woman was nodding her head, but still looked troubled. “I have one more problem,” she said. “I don’t want to go back to the same kind of job I had before, but I’m not sure what I do want to do.”

This is where Banning stepped in.

“The most important thing at this point is a skills and desires assessment,” the author said. “It requires some introspection from the standpoint that a person has to find out who they are and really what backgrounds they have. Many people have skills they didn’t realize they have, abilities that were somewhat supplemental to their main positions.”

Banning’s book, he said, has a skills assessment that people can complete on their own, or they can go to a guidance counselor for such an evaluation. “Basically, you sit back and go over your occupational life, or your life, period. There are skills that one picks up through a hobby. I know a number of people who have turned hobbies into businesses.”

Turn a hobby into a business? Huh, Ivan thought. I wonder if I could surf for a living. Nah, no one would pay me for pleasure. Or would they? Who could I work for as a surfer?

Banning brought Ivan back with a start. “ People also have to look at whether or not they want to continue to be employed by someone else,” he was saying, when the musing Ivan Hunter rejoined the group. “There is an increasing number of people who are becoming entrepreneurs or going into franchises.

“Now, the entrepreneur has a certain personality profile,” Banning continued. “You have to decide if you meet that profile: risk-taking, creative, hard working--60 to 70 hours per week--market-oriented. Also there is another one: the ability to self-motivate.”

Ivan wasn’t quite sure that he had the internal motivation necessary, but at the end of the support group he found himself feeling a lot less hopeless. And an idea was growing. Maybe he could do something with surfing and get paid for it.

What he needed, he decided, was some help: a skills assessment. A guidance counselor. He’d do it, he decided, and went home whistling.