I had a lovely time at the SBA meeting.  It was small and intimate and I met some very interesting folks. Every time I go to such event I have the opportunity to streamline my self-description and my pitch.

One participant was Mike Paunovich of LocalBizBlogs, a very useful business idea in my view, and Marissa LaMagna who owns a travel company (I immediately clicked with her) and Joanie Block, founder of Good Vibrations. The meeting was held in the cohousing section of Swann’s and Joanie inhabits one of the units there. She showed me the downstairs portion of her studio-duplex. I would love to have such a living space but it will have to wait.

MarkMacleod was there and I told him I’d sent him a bunch of suggestions and he said he’d not had time to read them yet. No problem, said I. 

Carlos Hernandez came over and opened my eyes to how I can capitalize on my LinkedIn presence.  There is a gauge on that site that tells you how complete your profile is.  My score was 47% complete.  He said studies show you have to get it up to at least 67% for it to be valuable to you.  So after he left I began contacting my already listed contacts and boosted my score considerably.

This evening I went to the World Affairs Council networking session under the aegis of CraigsList Foundation.  The speaker, the head of the foundation whose name I forgot to get (!#?!),  announced that they were looking for someone to do administration in the marketing department.  Later I found out that the contact person was no other than Rachel Cohen, whom I still had not heard from.  So the next day again and left a message on her voicemail iterating my interest.  To no avail apparently.

But at that event I also met Mark McLeod, head of the Sustainable Business Alliance in Oakland.  I don’t know how I started this but I told him I could offer him suggestions for his web site even though I had never seen it!  Now there is cheek.

Mark told me that the very next day the Sustainable Business Alliance would be having its monthly networking meeting at Swanns in Oakland.  He invited me to come.

I went to GraceWorks at Grace Cathedral which I had heard about at the One-Stop Career Centers.  I was one of the early ones and offered to help prepare the light breakfast they serve at this morning workshop. The volunteer in charge of the kitchen that day, Ricardo, asked me if I knew how to cut pineapple.  Yes I did and I do and so I did.

Since I was at this Grace Cathedral workshop for the first time I got the chance to introduce myself, give a little of my background and explain what I’m looking for.

That morning the featured speaker was Rachel Cohen, interim operations manager at CraigsList Foundation.  It was instructive because I had heard of the foundation I didn’t know much about it.  She gave a very rich presentation on how to transition from the for-profit world to the nonprofit world.

A well crafted cover letter is essential to transferring to another job, she said.  You must address: why I feel this is the right fit for a job in your organization and why it makes sense for me to serve you at this time in my life.

She said your resume should list your accomplishments linked to your skills.  And it should also mention your volunteerism and emphasize your commitment to volunteerism.

At some point, she addressed my goals and mentioned that the foundation was looking for somebody in its marketing department.  So after the meeting I sent her an e-mail pitching my experience and skills. Separately  I e-mailed  her some links that I thought would be useful to her but never got a response.  Much later I realized that I had said nothing about my volunteerism experiences.  Crap.

She offered a lot of web sites to check out that could support one in making this transition:

www.payscale.com

www.idealist.org

www.bridgestar.org

www.guidespan.org

www.compasspoint.org

www.ynpn.org   (She said don’t worry that the word “young” is in the title.)

www.afp.org, a site for fundraisers.

www.heartmath.com

www.taproot.org is a good way to get experience in the nonprofit field if you haven’t got it all ready, Cohen said.  You fill out your profile and then you are assigned to a team to solve a particular problem of a nonprofit. 

Cohen informed that on July 30 the World Affairs Council was going to have a networking event featuring CraigsList Foundation.  So I put that on my list.

Also she said the Foundation Center on Kearney Street gave free classes on networking and PC tools etc.

While at this meeting, another participant, Bruce Smith told me that he heard StoryCorps was hiring.  Bruce was responding to the part of my self-introduction when I explained that besides being a journalist and author, I also write memoirs and want to expand that side of my business.

But the meeting itself was very warm and encouraging.  Actually I felt valued and uplifted when I left.  I also got the card of Carlos Hernandez who is a coach.  He had explained that he had recently given a talk at the Jewish Community Center on how to capitalize on all the social networking sites that are in the ether.  I asked him if he would show me how to exploit my presence on LinkedIn.

Back at home I went on to the StoryCorps web sites and applied for a job with a passionate cover letter. I’ve heard nothing.

July 25, 2008 

 I returned to the One-Stop Career Center at its Turk and Franklin Street location for a four-hour session in interview techniques.  I had high hopes for this workshop but I was disappointed in many regards. 

The lecturer spent much of the first hour performing, bringing attention to his clever and witty self and his bitter four divorces. Still some good tips came out of this class.  I learned about the One-Stop Career Center’s support group for those looking for new positions.  It’s called Experience Unlimited and meets on Thursdays.

GraceWorks, at Grace Cathedral meets every Monday morning from 830 to 1130.  The Job Forum is held on Wednesday nights at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce at 235 Montgomery on the 12th floor. 

He told us about the benefits of the Workforce Investment Act which enables people looking for employment to still go to school and provides money for tuition and transportation.  However there are limitations to this benefit and we can learn about them at the EDD’s workshop called California Training Benefits.

Another resource strongly recommended was a woman named Susan Cohen at the main branch of the library on the fourth floor.  Apparently she administers a whizbang business database.

The One Stop lecturer had very helpful things to say about applying for a job when you are over 40 or 50.  He said that he always starts out interview (apparently he goes on job interviews for practice!)  telling them his age right off, “and then I keep talking.”

He goes on to assure them how he loves working with young people and loves to learn new things.  “I love being in new environments.  I am very healthy and take very good care of myself,” goes his patter.

The résumé, finally, he cautioned, should always be accompanied by a persuasive cover letter citing numbers and percentages of the results you produce for last employer.  As if I made widgets!

I really liked his wisdom on negotiating skills.  He said if the interviewers ask you the dollar figure you are looking for, never give it at once.  The party who gives a dollar figure first is in the weaker position.  One way you can counter this question is by saying “what do you usually offer?  “

If they press you for a dollar figure, give a range that might interest you and keep on talking while you change the subject. 0 Then pin them down on when they plan to fill the position.  If they give you no dates, he warned, they might be “fishing” — that is they have no intention of filling the position and are interviewing only for some background reason that you could never know or have any effect on.

Let them know you really want to work there.  Ask them, “Is there anything standing between me and this position? “

Set up a follow-up date and time.  Say, “I’ll be calling you back next week. “Or whenever they indicate they’d have to make a decision by.

Never say: “I’m looking forward to hearing from you.”  Instead tell them you’ll be calling.

Send a thank you note that has passion.  Mention something in the note to make him  or her remember you or something that happened in the interview.  This is also a good time to mention former experience that you had not described in the interview. 

If they turn you down, you can still say or write to them: I still would like to work for you.  Would it be all right if I call occasionally in hopes that something else will open up?  If they say yes, get an indication of how frequently you can call.  Say every six months or something like that.

I reported the Mission district section of One-Stop Career Center for a workshop on writing a résumé. This was my first real experience in broadening my contacts.

Nina Marillo, an HR professional for many years with FedEx, was a straight talk no-nonsense woman. However instead of discussing résumés she spent most of the session explaining how to fill out an application form. I was disgusted at first since most of the jobs I would be applying for are no longer using the old-fashioned application form method. However I kept my behind in my seat and learned some interesting tips. For instance, if an application form asks you to check which days and hours you are available for work, you should check them all. She reasoned, if a job opportunity comes up that’s not Monday to Friday or 9-to-5, you may still consider it. So why limit your possibilities?

Finally she got on to the issue of résumés and also interviewing and negotiation.

Her manner was intense. She was eager for us to see how personnel people view the résumés they get over the transom. She informed us that we could apply for employment with the city or county of San Francisco at 44 Gough Street.

Then she invited us to send our résumés to her and she would revise them in return them by e-mail. Good as gold two weeks later she did so. I was amazed to see that she had relegated my employers to the bottom of page in bullet points while she turned my journalism and consulting experience into language that made it look as though it had a bottom-line impact.

My second week of unemployment, or shall I say my second week of self-discovery, I went to register at my nearest One-Stop Career Center at 801 Turk St on the corner of Franklin, near the opera house.  There I learned about the many workshops available both at this location and at the one on Mission Street corner of Cesar Chávez.  I’m excited and enthusiastic delving into this new phase of my existence.  As Jane Kay told me when she heard I’ve been laid off, “You are among austere company.”

The third week of July and there are all sorts of things to take care of before I can really make a focused effort towards finding a job.  First, I have to figure out what I want!  Do I really want to go back into journalism when the whole field is falling apart?

My last couple of years at the Oakland Tribune were the most fulfilling because I felt myself doing some creative stories, stories that touched people’s lives.  I know because readers told me so.

Wouldn’t it be great to get a job that gave me the same satisfaction only not for a newspaper that Dean Singleton is going to eviscerate?  What would that be?

I’m going to use these coming weeks and months to figure that out. Besides I have to sign up for unemployment, figure out my insurance status and I am still taking care of my mother’s affairs.  My poor mother.  I cannot tell her that I’ve lost my job — either because she’d worry and I don’t want her to — or because she can’t comprehend it and isn’t able to worry about such things anymore.

So in early July when my managing editor called me on the phone, “Francine, this is Martin,” my heart sank. 

“Would you please come to my office?”

“Jesus Christ,” I spat as I hung up the phone knowing full well what was coming.

A week later, July 11, I and 28 of my colleagues were out of our jobs.

I had been a journalist for 30 years.  I could have retired but I did not want to.  There was no sense, I felt, looking for another full-time job in journalism.  The industry was an endangered species, I figured.  But I still wanted to write and be involved in publishing somehow. 

I spent the first week of my so-called freedom trying to figure out what my next steps had to be.  Obviously, I filed for unemployment.  I attended meetings of the Newspaper Guild local of which I was a member to understand the implications of our termination and of agreeing to a severance package.

But somehow I felt vaguely unaffected.  My colleagues’ queries about the efficacy of suing the company left me uninspired and unpersuaded.

I wanted to put the whole experience behind me.  I resolved not to spend any energy on the past but instead to focus on finding what I wanted to do next.  And so began an adventure of finding out who else I could be in the world, to whom else could I contribute and serve with the skills that I had.  Or even skills I would like to develop.

Thanks to the support of our union local, I learned about the One-Stop Career Center, funded by the Work Investment Act.  Though I had heard of this resource, I had no idea of its scope which truly impressed me when I checked it out.

 By late June, I knew the shit was going to hit the fan.  A few months earlier the management of the Oakland Tribune, part of Media News chain based in Denver, had offered buyouts to our staff.  The newspaper and its parent company had been suffering from diminishing ad revenues for some time.  I did not accept the buyout and was grateful to retain my job nonetheless.  However there was the hint that layoffs might come in the future.

So when the warning came that there would be layoffs in July, I was not surprised.  I had been through this three times before with this employer where I have worked for almost 10 years.