Southern California Job Market : Surviving in the '90s : State Lends a Hand to White-Collar Workers : A new $18.5-million computerized system and self-help job clubs helps professionals get back in the work force.

By JEAN MERL

Sept. 25, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Margaret Joyce of Thousand Oaks was still adjusting to the shock of being laid off from her well-paying managerial job with an electronics firm when she got another, albeit more pleasant, surprise: The state Employment Development Department has a no-cost, comprehensive program just for high-ranking white-collar workers.

“It was a real learning experience for me to find out they don’t work just with blue-collar jobs, they are really interested in getting the professionals back to work too,” Joyce said. She was talking about the state agency that has best been known for running the network of “unemployment offices” where displaced workers--many unskilled or semi-skilled--go to collect benefit checks and to seek new jobs.

Increasingly, the state agency has been working to expand its scope to reflect California’s shifting job market. Its primary tool has been its 23 Experience Unlimited “job clubs” for unemployed managerial, technical and professional workers. Last fall, it launched its first “industry-specific” project--the Aerospace Human Resources Network Office in Manhattan Beach--and plans in the coming months to start another in the San Francisco Bay Area for the electronics industry.

“It has taken us years to dispel the myth that this is just a place for the unskilled and the destitute,” said department spokeswoman Valerie J. Reynoso. “We have excellent services for the increasing numbers of professionals who suddenly find themselves out of a job for the first time since college.”

Last year, the department placed about 500,000 workers in new jobs, about 10% of which were in professional, technical or managerial categories, Reynoso said. Its placement services--provided at no charge to job-seekers and to California’s approximately 850,000 employers--represent one of the better-known aspects of the state’s third-largest department. With an annual operating budget of $587 million--almost $409 million of which comes from the federal government--the EDD has more than 400 offices throughout the state. It collects various job-related taxes ($13 billion in 1987), distributes unemployment and disability insurance payments ($1.9 billion and $1.35 billion, respectively, in 1987, the most recent year for which statistics are available). The EDD also provides special job training programs for youths and other groups, maintains wage records and is a major source of labor-market information.

But with the slowing of California’s economy, the loss of many electronics and defense-related jobs and the downsizing that has accompanied a decade packed with mergers and acquisitions, the department has put increased emphasis on employment services, especially for white-collar workers, Reynoso said.

“We’re changing because those folks with needs out there are changing. We’re seeing different faces these days--not just blue-collar folks but those whose experience includes administration or engineering, those with advanced academic degrees,” she said.

For all classes of job-seekers, the task of finding employment is getting a boost from the department’s new $18.5-million Job Match, a massive, computerized program that connects eligible applicants with jobs anywhere in the state.

Begun in Northern California in the fall of 1988, Job Match is gradually being added at EDD job services offices throughout the state, and officials expect it to be fully operational by next spring. Employers can find qualified applicants from anywhere in the state, while job seekers no longer will have to go down to the local unemployment office periodically to check job postings. At offices that already have the Job Match system, EDD employees call a job-seeker at home whenever the computer spits out an appropriate listing.

For displaced professionals, however, the informal self-help job clubs known as Experience Unlimited remain the department’s most effective tool.

The job clubs, which grew out of a 1959 experiment in Berkeley and flourished for more than a decade before fading in the late 1970s, were revived in 1986 by then-EDD Director Kaye R. Kiddoo, a former Lockheed executive who believed that they could serve a growing need.

The state provides one employee to coordinate job club services at each participating EDD office and allows members use of office computers, telephones, facsimile machines and other facilities. Members help each other in scores of ways, including updating resumes, providing job leads, brushing up on interview techniques and helping at job fairs. Club members also put out a newsletter that contains resume summaries, coded for privacy, and sent to employers throughout California and other parts of the nation.

Once employed, many former club members help with everything from job leads to employment counseling. All services are free, but members are expected to spend at least four hours a week on club activities.

“The length of unemployment varies with the positions and the salaries they earned, but in the two years we’ve been here, all of our members have gone back to work,” said Norma Reagin, director of the job club in Santa Ana, one of two in Orange County.

Reagin estimated that the club--which lately has had from 150 to 180 members at any given time--has helped about 2,000 professionals get back to work, including engineers, human resources managers, computer analysts and even some chief executives, with salaries averaging around $50,000, although some members were earning $100,000 or more when they lost their jobs.

Patricia Baldoni, who oversees the job club in Simi Valley, said many members are high-achieving, well-educated people who have suddenly found themselves looking for work for the first time since college. Often, they need help learning to market themselves. The club’s strength, she said, lies in “the diversity of the talents of its members and their willingness to help each other.”

For Joyce, 34, who lost her job as director of corporate purchasing at a Bay Area-based electronics firm about a year after it closed its Chatsworth plant, membership in the Simi Valley job club provides an opportunity to meet with others in similar circumstances.

“It gives you a chance to talk with peers, to realize there are a lot of really talented people that this has happened to. Without that, you can start to feel bad about yourself. This helps you keep your spirits up,” Joyce said.

M. Ross Feeney, 53, of Inglewood, who lost his job running a materials lab in Torrance when his firm cut back its work force, said job clubs such as the one at the EDD’s Manhattan Beach aerospace network office help bolster his resolve to push hard for new employment.

“When you’re looking by yourself, you get so you hate the rejections, so you stop looking as hard as you should,” Feeney said.

During one recent afternoon in the network office’s suite near many of the South Bay’s aerospace firms, Feeney and two other laid-off aerospace employees, guided by club coordinator Cheryl Dotson, studied videotapes of Feeney’s mock job interview, looking for ways to sharpen his technique.

Earlier, this small group of new club members--which included financial analyst Melvain L. Sturdivant, 42, of Carson and engineer Gerald L. Morris, 46, of Manhattan Beach--had attended a weeklong orientation session and updated resumes.

The network is run jointly by the EDD and seven of Southern California’s major aerospace employers. Dotson said about 1,000 displaced workers have registered with the office since it opened in October, and about half have found new jobs.

Assistant manager Marie Quinn said a increasingly important thrust for the aerospace office is “to open other avenues, to help these people look at getting into other fields.” That is not an easy concept for career aerospace workers to accept, she acknowledged.

“I’m not yet ready to make a change,” said Morris, who spent 15 years solving design problems for the same firm. “But I know (the aerospace downsizing) is going to be permanent, so now is a good time for me to start thinking about where I should be going and what I want to do next.”

In every office there are some happy endings, the kind of success stories that keep the others going. For Robert Stackhouse, 55, of Simi Valley, it came 11 months after a corporate takeover cost him his $63,000-a-year position as director of contracts for a defense firm. Earlier this month, after a “bleak and discouraging” search, he started work for an international consulting firm--a position he found through a tip from a former job club member.

“I’m glad it’s over,” Stackhouse said of his experience with unemployment. “But I will continue to do whatever I can to support the job club here.”

RESOURCE: EDD OFFICES WITH JOB CLUBS

* Los Angeles County

Aerospace Human Resources Network Office, 3601 Aviation Blvd., Suite 3000, Manhattan Beach (213) 536-9355.

1116 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood, (213) 856-3689.

120 W. Avenue I, Lancaster, (805) 945-6611.

11049 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood, (818) 509-5600.

1207 E. Green St., Pasadena, (818) 304-7900.

933 W. Glendora Ave., West Covina, (818) 962-7011.

* Orange County

233 E. Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton, (714) 680-7800.

1001 S. Grand Ave., Santa Ana, (714) 567-7144.