Skilled Job Seekers Find an OPEN Door to New Employment
Peter Leon doesn’t mind the commute from his home in Simi Valley to his new job in Pasadena. After being laid off twice during the last two years, he’s thrilled to have a suitable job anywhere within driving distance.
Leon worked 18 years as a graphic artist for Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo before being let go in 1997. He rebounded by landing a teaching job at Courtesy Career College in Chatsworth soon thereafter, but was laid off again in December 1998.
The five months since have been spent trying once again to return to the work force.
The job search ended last week when Leon was hired as a graphic designer and artist for Dacor, a manufacturer of kitchen appliances.
There were times during his recent unemployment, Leon admits, when he was ready to quit the job hunt altogether. It helped, he said, to have the support of other people in the same boat.
Those people are members of the Outstanding Professional Employment Network, or OPEN, a volunteer-run job club sponsored by the Employment Development Department office in Simi Valley.
The network, founded in 1985, is made up of highly experienced and skilled workers who have been laid off due to downsizing. All members are required to volunteer a minimum of four hours a week helping their counterparts find work.
“We had quite an array of people--buyers, graphic artists, engineers, human resource people, executive secretaries and on and on and on,” Leon said.
“OPEN is a very by-the-moment kind of group--you stay there until you get hired,” he said. “A lot of people got jobs very fast because we were shown what we were doing wrong. We were told even what clothes we should wear to an interview, how our demeanor should be.”
OPEN serves as a support and educational group, providing lessons on job searching, resume writing, interviewing and other employment and job skills. Resumes are distributed to employers and temp agencies through a periodic bulletin and are published over the Internet.
With about 90 current members, OPEN is one of 38 California chapters of Experience Unlimited, an organization originally established to assist aerospace workers who had been laid off during the industry’s massive downsizing.
“In the early ‘90s, [unemployed] aerospace engineers were tripping all over each other,” said Madeline Brockwell, the Employment Development Department liaison to the job club. “The state realized that most people get jobs through networking, so they said, ‘Let’s set aside some space so these people can get together to meet, and we’ll provide them with workshops.’ ”
At its peak in the early 1990s, the Simi Valley-based group had around 250 members. Now the size has shrunk and the membership has changed from predominantly engineers to professionals from a wide range of industries.
Current members include a budget analyst with 10 years’ experience developing and administering multimillion-dollar budgets; a CPA with more than 15 years’ experience as a chief financial officer; and a strategic planner who designed a $30-million cost-accounting system for ARCO.
“We’ve got everything from CEOs, to CFOs, to attorneys, to human resource managers coming in from every industry, and they have a lot to share,” Brockwell said. “The majority of workers are probably in their mid-40s through their 60s. It’s usually people who have been in the working world for many years.”
Brockwell said an average of 10 to 15 members find jobs each month.
In addition to receiving the resume bulletins, employers are invited to periodic mixers to meet the OPEN members. The next mixer is scheduled for 10 a.m. to noon Friday at the East Valley sheriff’s station in Thousand Oaks.
