MEDIA : Publisher Says County Has Plenty of Jobs; His New Magazine Lists Them

The state says more than 80,000 people are out of work in Orange County. But publisher Christian Dunk says there are plenty of jobs.

He has put together a new Costa Mesa-based magazine, the Job Finder, which lists openings. His first issue lists about 100 jobs, most of them in sales.

“A lot of companies need bodies,” he said. “Sales, telemarketing, door-to-door sales, drivers. There is constant turnover in these jobs because people get burned out.”

Dunk has hooked up with two distributors to get his every-other-week publication into the hands of Orange County job seekers. Auto Trader magazine is distributing Job Finder on its 1,500 convenience store stands, Dunk said. And Advanced Distributing Co. is placing it in about 300 grocery stores. The magazine’s cost is $1 if you get it in a convenience store, but it is free in supermarkets.

Not surprisingly, Dunk is also placing the magazines in the county’s six unemployment offices.

Dunk, 35, is a former professional tennis player. He took a job for six months as an ad salesman with Coaster magazine in Corona del Mar to learn the business. He said he raised about $100,000 from investors to start the Job Finder.

Dunk’s magazine is similar to Los Angeles’ Working World. He figures that his niche is in providing local ads for job seekers. The Job Finder lists ads by four separate regions in Orange County.

Advertisers in the first, 20-page issue, which hit the stands Thursday, include L.A. Cellular and Newbridge College in Tustin. Dunk is setting himself apart from other classified ad publications by selling space cheaply: $40 for a short item, $400 for half a page. That compares to about $250 for running a short item for two weeks in major newspapers.