Your Friends Still Job Seeking? Here Is a Good Way To Help

Number 143

Are you trying to assist an unemployed friend? You might provide a great service by locating project work that he or she can take on while looking for a permanent position. Professional job searches can easily take a year or longer, and short-term projects can provide a bit of income to ease the pain. But there are many other reasons for a job seeker to adopt this strategy:

• Stay in the flow. Job candidates who are engaged in even small projects are more likely to keep up with trends and developments in their field.
• Try something new. A frequent mistake made by the unexpectedly unemployed is to keep looking for jobs much like the one they used to have. And those jobs might not be around any more. When they take on projects that are a bit different from what they are used to, they develop fresh ideas about their skills, their preferences and their options.
• It may lead to something. All kinds of work is being outsourced these days, and sometimes full-time positions emerge from small contracts that grow into bigger contracts and trusted relationships.
• Build a story. Potential employers will want to know how you have been using your time. You will be a more attractive candidate if you can enthusiastically describe the ways you’ve stayed engaged in creative activity.

Marcia Newell is the owner of The NewinCo, Inc., a well established Washington attorney search firm. She agrees that a good way to energize a job search, and improve the candidate’s attitude, is to line up interim projects.

Newell says that, “Although candidates’ expectations, attitudes and market approaches will not turn a bad market to good, the boost that can come from project work will give candidates a significant competitive posture and maximize their odds of receiving offers.”

“Another benefit of project work, including pro bono work, is the expansion of candidates’ networks,” Newell says. “People seeking employment must place themselves in a target-rich environment – usually not found when we’re sitting in our home office in pajamas.”

“Of course the electronic network can be implemented from home,” she says, “but I find that candidates have far more success in attracting/creating new job opportunities when they are out in the community actively engaged in … well, in anything. Oddly, there is a significant positive correlation for job seekers who avidly pursue a beloved hobby during times of unemployment. This supports the suggestion that a key to assisting job seekers is to help them keep up their energy.”

Staying energized and engaged in interesting activities may help candidates overcome a stigma that could be plaguing the more than 4 million Americans who have been out of work for more than a year. A USA Today story in January described the growing phenomenon of employers who are reluctant to hire the long-term jobless on the assumption that they are lazy, lacking in creativity or unwilling to work.

And often it is a third party, like you, who can help find the project work that will make all the difference to a job seeker. For example, you might notice friends or colleagues who are overwhelmed with work, and suggest ways that they could lighten their load by offering a modest consulting contract.

While you are working your network, looking around for possible projects, think broadly. Perhaps you know of a nonprofit group that could use your friend’s expertise. Could you raise some contributions that would fund a small contract, bringing in your friend as a visiting expert?

While you are thinking about options, consider the potential of internships. As mid-career job changes are becoming the norm, more and more older workers are gaining experience as modestly paid, or even unpaid, interns.

And at the same time you are looking for interim work, find other ways to help keep your friend stay involved in social and other enjoyable activities. As Newell suggested, job seekers who find engaging ways to use their time away from employment may be the first to be hired.