Recession Fading for O.C. Jobless : Economy: Many of the Newly Hired Are Making Less : Personnel Specialist: ‘I felt like employers were just collecting resumes. They weren’t that serious.’

In her darkest moments last year, after getting laid off from a job as human resources administrator for Endevco Corp. in July, Susie Lewis often walked up and down the Laguna beach, trying to fight despair.

It wasn’t easy. When she lost the job she had held for 4 1/2 years, Lewis also was on the verge of losing her 83-year-old mother in Denver to cancer. Lewis made five trips in her ’89 Oldsmobile to Colorado to visit her mother last year. In between, she sent out nearly a dozen resumes and job letters each month. What she got back wasn’t very encouraging.

“I felt like employers were just collecting resumes,” said Lewis, who lives in Laguna Hills with her husband, an employee of a commercial real estate contracting firm in Irvine. “They weren’t that serious.”

But when Lewis resumed her job search this January, after a month off following her mother’s death, she noticed a dramatic change.

“I definitely saw an increase in job ads, and employers were more serious about interviewing,” she said. “I got calls right away. I was quite surprised.”

For each job, Lewis sent out detailed cover letters that started out with “Good Morning!” instead of the usual “Dear Sir or Dear Gentlemen.” Lewis, who will only say that she is in her “mid-40s,” listed her personal traits--saying she was diligent and a good listener--and she made sure there were no spelling errors.

In early March, Lewis got her break. She answered a newspaper ad seeking a human resources assistant at Viking Components Inc., a growing Laguna Hills maker of memory components for computers. After two interviews, Viking offered her the job.

That evening, Lewis says, she took her husband out to dinner at a fine restaurant on the Dana Point waterfront--something she hadn’t done in recent memory. The next day she went shopping for clothes for the new job. “Oh, yes! It felt great,” she said.

Lewis says her starting salary at Viking is slightly less than the $33,000 she made at Endevco, an aerospace parts company in San Juan Capistrano. But she said the pay doesn’t matter. “I knew when I interviewed that I wanted to be here,” she said. “I’m with a company that’s young and growing.”

“For me, it’s a new beginning. I feel like I’ve started over again.”