Job-seekers see some signs of hope in bad economy
Getting educated, honing new skills while they search
+ enlarge image
About 50 people came to a job workshop at Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange on Jan. 7, sponsored by the Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest New Jersey.
Photos by Johanna Ginsberg
Sidebar
Advertisements
January 20, 2010
About 50 people came to the job workshop at Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange on Jan. 7. Sponsored by the Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest New Jersey, it was part of a series of training and networking events that have been taking place at area synagogues since January 2009.
Workshop presenters included Lisa Slater, a staffing and recruiting consultant; Beverly Feldman, JVS job development coordinator; and Daniel Rushefsky, investment adviser representative at MetLife Wealth Financial Group.
NJJN spoke with five people in transition who attended the workshop. Profiles in last week’s paper covered two job-seekers who saw signs of hope even as their search continued. This week: a “multi-talented multi-tasker” looking for a job in arts education, a data miner seeking a life rope out of the corporate world, and a systems engineer who’s enjoying the extra time with his kids, but would rather be employed.
Attendee Profiles
Anne Gozonsky Zaccardo
Age: 50
Town: Short Hills
Profession: Graphic designer/musician/cultural arts educator
Unemployed since: August 2009
Seeking: position as education coordinator in a cultural arts institution
Family: Single parent with two children, one in college and one in high school
Contact: 973-420-3005, agozo@aol.com
Anne Gozonsky Zaccardo calls herself “a multi-talented multi-tasker.” She plays keyboard in The Mood Swings, an all-woman classic rock cover band, and teaches piano. She’s also been out of a day job since the World of Music in Summit closed last summer when its owner retired.
So she has decided to go back into arts education, the field she left when she had her children and moved to the suburbs. When she began her search, she said, she was worried that cultural institutions would have been among the first to have their budgets slashed in the economic crisis.
Instead, she said, “I am finding a number of interesting openings.” Unfortunately, most are in New York City, and she has “mixed feelings” about commuting. Her children are not little — one is already in college and the other is a sophomore in high school — but for now she is confining her search to New Jersey, but she might consider commuting three days a week into New York if necessary.
But location is not her biggest challenge. “My skills are dated,” she said. Her graphic design training is all pre-computer. “These 22-year-olds coming out of any visual arts college have the skills already,” she said.
What to do? She pitches her crafting skills that younger designers may never acquire. “It’s not just cranking something out on the screen but really having worked with my hands to create it,” she said. The rest? She knows she can go back to school to catch up on her computer skills.
In the meantime, she’s polishing her abilities through volunteer work with National Council for Jewish Women. She’s already designed a logo for a new project called Tuck-in, and plans to do some marketing and visual work for it as well. And she’s kept her cultural arts education network up through the years by volunteering in the Millburn school system (“not for pep rallies and bake sales, but work relevant to bringing arts into the schools”).
Zaccardo feels she is in an enviable position. “Honestly I haven’t jumped at the first thing or felt pressured to, because I am relatively financially stable and comfortable,” she said. While the job would add “some additional financial comfort,” it is “for my own self-fulfillment,” she said.
Norman Rosenthal
Age: 39
Town: Cedar Knolls
Profession: systems/network administrator and engineer
Unemployed since: mid-December 2009
Seeking: Position as systems/network administrator and engineer
Family: Wife, a stay-at-home mother, and two children, ages four and two
Contact: 973-984-5678, norman@therosenthals.net
Norman Rosenthal was unemployed only once before, in 2002. The job search this time around is trickier, he said. Landing a few interviews is not enough. “I’m finding employers are being extremely picky on getting exactly the right skills,” he said.
Rosenthal left United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey, where he worked in the IT department, in 2007 to work for UPS. By the end of last summer, he started to worry. “There was a lot of downsizing going on. If and when it would hit me, I wanted to make sure I hit the ground running,” he said. He was let go in mid-December this year.
So he got a head start beginning his job search early in the fall. He and his wife cut $200 from their monthly expenses. He’s already been on nine or 10 interviews, but so far, no job. However, he said, “I’m pretty optimistic that hopefully this will only be short-term. But I am prepared if it does last a little longer than I expect.” He has 19 years of experience in a variety of fields, from the nonprofit sector to telecommunications and transportation.
As a parent of young children, he tries to see a silver lining. Instead of leaving the house at 6:30 a.m. every day and not returning until evening, he’s home. “My children definitely like having me around, and I enjoy getting to spend time with them,” he said.
But, he added, he’d rather be employed.
Mark Simon
Age: 53
Town: Livingston
Profession: Library science/data miner
Unemployed since: September 2009
Seeking: position as academic librarian or systems librarian for large organization
Family: Wife, an actuary, and two sons, both in college, one at University of Colorado, the other at Essex County College
Contact: 201-247-5707, mps@yahoo.com
Mark Simon, a corporate data analyst, finally had enough of corporate life and the focus on the current bottom line. “It was all about what money are we saving now, not what money will we save over the next 50 years,” he said. He watched as the company he worked for began encouraging outsourcing business to India. “I was basically helping to destroy my company; it lacked long-term thinking.”
Understanding the prognosis for his own job as a benefits analyst, he decided to grab a life rope out of the corporate world. In September, he enrolled at Rutgers University, where he is earning a master’s degree in library science. “I’m a professional data miner, you know. It’s what I’ve been doing for a quarter of a century. To me, it’s a logical extension, and there are ways to bring some synergies.”
And after surviving four waves of layoffs, he figured he had about six months on the job. Instead of waiting around, he decided to own the decision himself, so he quit. “I didn’t want to arrive out on the street at 55 with nothing to do but go back to the same industry. I was upset, I was unhappy, I was aggravated all the time,” he said.
Now he’s working to complete the two-year degree in just 15 months. This spring he hopes to land an unpaid internship, followed by a paid internship over the summer and a full-time position in the fall.
Although he knows the economy is an issue, he is not that worried, especially when he looks at his long-term prospects. “No one has ever bragged that they fired a librarian. No one has ever said, ‘Look what I did for the bottom line of our town, or our university, or our school,’” he said. He contrasted that with the corporate mentality. “People in the corporate world say, ‘Wow, those 1,500 people we just tossed out the door — look what we did for our quarterly revenue.’”
He views library science as safe from export. “In my previous job I worked a great deal with people from Malaysia and India and Indonesia. And they are willing to do a lot more work for a lot less money. I have to market something that they can’t,” he said.
Simon thinks he has one more advantage over his soon-to-be competitors in the library world: technology is on his side. He’s completing a concentration in digital library technology. “It’s not about the delivery system; it’s about knowing how to find information and knowing how to really do it well,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of librarians who use technology. But I don’t see that many who are technical.”
Follow NJJN
E-Newsletter Signup