Working Stiffs Need Not Apply to This Club : Employment: State-sponsored Professional Networking Group offers support and leads if you’re out of a job, but be prepared to wait.

Anthony Davis had been content to spend his career tucked away in laboratories, designing, building and testing laser systems.

Whenever he peeked outside, “people would always be saying, ‘Get back in that laboratory and lock the door,’ ” said the 31-year-old Davis, who had never even considered a management career.

Nevertheless, his hidden leadership skills emerged earlier this year when peers in San Diego-based Professional Networking Group elected him acting president of their volunteer organization.

“It makes me feel good as a person that I can lead,” said Davis, who describes himself as “the guy who always sat in the back of the room.”

While the well-dressed and highly educated group of professionals Davis presides over mimics the motions of countless other business and professional organizations, it also holds an important distinction.

Membership in PNG, which is sponsored by the state Economic Development Department, is restricted to professionals who have been out of work for several months. Those who are lucky enough to find jobs must promptly tender their resignations to make room for the ever-increasing numbers of unemployed professionals who want to join.

Davis acknowledges the irony of the situation.

“If I was getting paid for this it would be the perfect job,” he said. Davis lost his job with a San Diego-based high-technology company more than a year ago. As is the case with all of PNG’s members, Davis is working hard to become a PNG alumnus.

Membership in these state-sponsored networking groups ranges from about 60 at a smaller group in Monterey to more than 400 at chapters in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Four chapters in San Diego County (San Diego, El Cajon, Escondido and Chula Vista) have a combined membership of 450, and each has a monthlong waiting list.

Chapters include out-of-work lawyers, chief executives, advertising industry executives, computer programming experts and corporation managers. Chapter bylaws require that members spend a minimum of four hours each week on networking and chapter activities. Membership is strictly voluntary.

Davis acknowledged that it’s incongruous for out-of-work professionals, many of whom had exhibited a healthy disdain for government programs, to be drawn to one created by state bureaucracy.

Yet membership at the 23 chapters statewide is at record levels, according to Barbara Hartz, the program’s coordinator. The first chapter was created in 1959 in Berkeley as part of the EDD’s recognition that mid- to upper-level managers and professionals have different needs when it comes to finding new jobs, Hartz said.

Most members have been out of work for six months or more when they join, and the group serves as a support network for them, Hartz said.

Despite PNG’s transitory nature--new arrivals seek to become alumni as quickly as possible--many members find themselves dedicating an increasing amounts of time to group projects.

This past Thursday, for example, one PNG committee was planning a fund-raiser, another kicked around the names of potential speakers for upcoming meetings, and the computer committee wrestled with a knotty problem that threatens to stall the addition of an important data base.

In each case, group members were trying to improve the organization that, for many, offers their best hope of finding a tip that will lead them to a job.

That kind of dedication is to be expected, said John Ehrmantraut, a human-resources manager at Luce Forward Hamilton & Scripps and chairman of PNG’s San Diego Employer Advisory Board.

“This group has a lot of talent,” Ehrmantraut said. “A lot of people in it have had very responsible positions, and they’re very aggressive. If they had the resources, I’d bet that they could run a business that’s very similar to one of the better headhunting groups.”

Not surprisingly, tempers occasionally flare during the meetings.

When state regulations stalled a planned improvement in a data base that members use to help find jobs leads, David Satinover, a lawyer who joined PNG in September, angrily described EDD personnel as “an anchor” that was slowing the group’s progress.

Later, Satinover said emotions run high because, “in this group, you find people who are making a sincere, earnest effort to get themselves back into the market.”

Steve Arnold, 42, a divorced father of three and a former print services supervisor at Franklin & Associates, a San Diego-based advertising agency, is typical of group members who become increasingly involved in the organization.

Arnold, who has been seeking a full-time job since 1990, initially planned to concentrate on his search and spend just the state-mandated minimum of four hours each week on PNG affairs. While Arnold continues to look for a job, he has been spending upward of six hours a day at work on PNG’s upcoming fund-raising event.

Arnold, an advertising executive who knows the value of first impressions, hopes that the fund-raiser will generate enough cash to produce a slick new brochure that PNG members can use in their job searches.

The Oct. 24 event--at which PNG members will auction their services to local companies--is giving members an opportunity to showcase their professional skills, Ehrmantraut said.

“These people are a sign of the times,” he said. “There are more people in this level unemployed than ever before . . . and it’s taking them longer to find new positions . . . because most major industries and companies are operating in a lean and mean environment today.”

Because of state regulations, money raised at the event will be turned over to the Employer Advisory Board, which will use it to fund activities to bolster PNG’s ability to find jobs for members.

But the fund-raiser is also “a real self-confidence builder,” said Alex Dupont, 32, a USC graduate who spent much of the past decade in Europe, where he worked for the United Nations.

Dupont, who successfully petitioned San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor to support the auction, also corralled former “PM Magazine” hostess Pat Brown and 91X deejay Jeff Prescott to donate their time as masters of ceremony.

He said he was skeptical at first about joining PNG but is now a willing convert. “It’s not some new-age, weird, California-type experience,” Dupont said.

The group camaraderie was evident in a brief exchange last week between Dupont and Arnold.

Arnold said he’d remember his PNG friends when he found a job. “And you have to remember that we all, eventually, will find jobs,” he said.

“You say that in the same way we’re all going to eventually die,” Dupont quipped.