Job search advice: Be proactive, networking works

In these challenging times, many Filipino-American community members are being advised not to lose hope as they search for a job.

Marty Nemko, considered by the San Francisco Bay Guardian Magazine as “The Bay Area’s Best Career Coach,” advised job seekers to become more organized and plan out their job searches with painstaking thoroughness.

“A job search requires time, and more important, clever strategy,” Nemko said to FilAm Star.

Strategizing a solid game plan, Nemko points out, will do wonders for increasing confidence and perhaps gaining the attention of a future employer.

“If you are trying to get hired in a field for which you don’t have a lot of direct experience, it may be appropriate to write a White Paper that would impress your target employer,” said Nemko. “For example, I just met with a client who aspires to become an athletic director at a college. Given these tight economic times, I encouraged him to write a White Paper which presented under-the-radar strategies that college athletic departments are using to raise revenue and then to send that White Paper, along with cover letter to 50 athletic directors at California Colleges…”

Nemko, a current resident of Napa County, has worked at KGO talk radio in San Francisco as a career coach and as a career editor with U.S. News & World Report, is now offering free career advice on his blog at www.martynemko.com.

“I believe you’ll find the site unusually helpful,” said Nemko, whose wife Barbara serves as the Napa County of Education Superintendent. “Everything is free…This is simply my way of giving back.”

As a career coach expert, Nemko agrees that in these economic conditions most available jobs are contractual (1099 employee) and that a majority of companies hiring are only doing so for temporary and part time workers because of the advantage of not having to pay them benefits.

In his blog, Nemko encourages job seekers to be open in learning how to re-invent themselves and stressed the importance of practicing the art of being proactive in their job search, which are being done by some in the various Filipino American communities.

One example is Demi Acosta, of San Pablo.

Acosta was employed as a cabinet maker when the housing market was booming but three years ago, when the cabinet maker shop company closed because of many foreclosures in the real estate market, he personally pitched his carpentry skills to one of their former clients.

Today, Acosta is currently employed by that former client as a “housekeeper” near Silverado Resort in Napa County.

“My job is not only to keep the house in proper order, sometimes they also let me babysit their children,” Demi said.

Or take the story of Mon Lacson, a Filipino who owned a contracting business that renovated houses.

Locson enjoyed a job that found him traveling not only around California but also to locales like Oregon and Hawaii, and provided him with a handsomely-earned living.

But Locson’s business was unable to survive the economic downturn and as a result he could not find a contracting job for close to two years, which found him and his family out of the house they were in and depleted of their family savings.

“I have to start from scratch but at the same time also I have to earn a living for my family to survive,” said Locson. “I started knocking on doors around my neighborhood asking them if they have problems with their plumbing, electric switches, broken tiles…”

Lacson attests that with those past minor jobs in hand it encouraged him to pursue his career as a “household handyman.”

“With little income, at least I am helping my wife earn a living,” Locson said to FilAm Star.

Those among the various Bay Area Filipino American communities have not given up hope altogether in their search for a job but perhaps part of the problem stems from Fil-Ams being uninformed or unaware of how to gain access to quality resources.

This is where Nemko believes the traditional way to search for a job is no longer applicable and an outdated notion of relying on just one job search technique, such as limiting your submission of job applications to only online.

Nemko and other job coaches suggest that networking could be the best job search technique of them all, bringing a certain truth to the statement, “it is not what you know but it is whom you know.”

Angie Ramirez, a Filipina who formerly worked as human resources assistant for an insurance company stressed the motivational aspect to the search and what to do in order to remain positive and some of the options available.

“First and foremost in your job search it is important that you must be confident in yourself first, you gain that if you are currently not working by volunteering your time to work for a non-profit organization or by going back to school to brush up your skills in computer etc and also let people know that you are looking for a job and that you are good at what you do,” said Ramirez.

In summary, Ramirez said: “I am totally behind the idea of referrals or using back channels or personal network—anything that will let a job seeker stand out from the crowd, but eventually because of the advent of computers and internet you will still have to apply online that is why you really need to learn about computers.”