Engineer Should Rethink Plan to Find Steady Job

Despite California’s bullish economy, there are people like Robert Grace, 57, who struggle to land full-time jobs. Their stories are as unique as they are, but have some things in common.

As in Grace’s case, they may send out hundreds of resumes. They may apply for Internet-posted positions and network exactly as the career books advise. But their phones do not ring and their mailboxes become weekly receptacles for rejection form letters. Such an unyielding cycle can lead them to wonder what is wrong with them and their job-hunting tactics.

Grace, of Los Alamitos, contacted Career Make-Over regarding a particularly challenging plight. For the last 10 years, he had only been able to secure sporadic short-term contract work as a consulting engineer. Though, by his estimate, he had sent out about 700 resumes in recent years, contacted headhunters, responded to newspaper ads, mailed out introductory letters and networked, he hadn’t received a single full-time, permanent job offer.

Since 1995, Grace added, he had only been invited to three or four interviews. None had netted him the employment he longed for. So Grace and his wife of 21 years, Betty, a beverage company employee, mainly subsist on her $35,000 annual salary.

Grace consulted Toronto-based career advisor Barbara Moses about his daunting situation. He told Moses that there were some health-related factors that impeded his career. In 1977, he suffered a back injury while employed at a Southern California defense firm; he could not return to work for three years and still can’t do heavy labor, he said.

Moses asked Grace if his engineering design skills were up to date.

Grace admitted that he needed to upgrade his auto-CAD skills (particularly in 3-D modeling) to qualify for many of the positions he sought. But he said he lacked the funds to take such classes. Moses urged him to reconsider enrolling in the courses, despite their expense. Doing so would be a financial investment in his future, for it would enhance his employability. However, if Grace was unable or unwilling to do this, Moses said, he might wish to look into other lines of work that would utilize his managerial skills.

While commiserating with Grace and acknowledging that his challenges were many, Moses said that to get back into the full-time job market, he had lots of work ahead. He had to be willing to make sweeping changes in his job-hunting tactics and mind-set. First, he would have to come up with a single vocational goal to pursue.

Grace had said that he’d like to “be part of a management team, in engineering or production,” but Moses told him this goal wasn’t specific enough.

She suggested that he start researching engineering management positions and learn more about their requirements. Then he could tailor his resume to the role. He could list four or five skills he possessed that were most needed for the work and highlight past achievements and current talents that set him apart from other job seekers in the field, Moses said.

Without such a clear-cut presentation of his expertise and experience, employers would have a difficult time matching him to available openings, Moses said.

“You need to have a resume that plays up your strengths, because you’re competing against people who are younger, more technically savvy and cheaper than you are,” Moses said.

Moses told Grace that the resume he’d been circulating was confusing and unfocused. “I read it, and, frankly, I didn’t have a clue to what you did,” Moses said. “It just lost me.”

Gayle Oliver, president of Atlanta-based Execume and author of “Execume: It’s More Than a Resume, It’s a Reflection of You” (Empower-U, 1999), who also reviewed Grace’s resume, agreed: “It’s a pretty convoluted representation. I’m still trying to figure out what he does. He doesn’t show where his expertise falls or what his core competencies are . . . and he’s got his employment history grouped in ways I don’t understand.”

The resume, which was supposed to be a marketing tool for Grace, contained grammar, punctuation, capitalization and phrasing errors, Oliver noted. And in it, Grace had made unnecessary disclosures that could turn off employers, such as “eliminated due to production,” she said.

Because Grace hasn’t had stable, full-time work during the last decade, he should consider portraying himself on paper as a seasoned consultant, Moses and Oliver said.

He can do this by drafting a functional resume that groups together his short-term assignment accomplishments, Moses said. During a follow-up session Grace held with Moses, he told her he had begun making her suggested revisions. Grace can improve his interviewing tactics too. Grace said he wore $850 suits purchased years ago to interviews, though employees at the workplaces he visited--including his interviewers--dressed more casually. Moses suggested that, for future interviews, Grace dress more in accordance with workplace fashions.

“As humans, our nature is to hire people like ourselves,” said Margaretta Cullen, executive vice president of human resources at TMP Worldwide in New York. “It might be one thing to go to an interview in a well-cut mod Italian suit, but if he’s going to interviews [at casual workplaces] in a traditional, conservative suit, people may think, ‘He won’t be happy here.’ ”

While on the interviews, Grace should attempt to impress hirers by demonstrating knowledge of their companies, said Rosemary Forest, a publicist and former resume-business owner in Beech Island, S.C.

“Ask questions like, ‘Is this the only location where your alpha gizmo is produced or does your New York location also make it?’ ” Forest said.

Grace can learn about firms he’s interested in by visiting their Web sites and, if they’re publicly held, can request annual reports from their investor relations departments, said Betsy Kyte Newman, founder and director of Consulting & Career Services in Cincinnati.

Last, when on short-term assignments, Grace should strive to prove himself an above-average worker, for employers may then consider him for full-time employment, said Shelly Field, president and chief executive of the Shelly Field Organization in Monticello, N.Y., and author of 25 books on business and careers.

If Grace discovers ways to help an employer cut costs, increase productivity and bolster sales, he can propose a new full-time position that would enable him to tackle these goals, Field said.

“It is normal under such circumstances to feel bitter,” Moses said about Grace’s long quest to find full-time work.

She encouraged him to consider visiting a low-cost career counselor for additional guidance. With such individuals, Grace could voice his frustrations, receive feedback about his presentations and job-hunt pursuits and get compassionate support.

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Time for a Change

* Name: Robert Grace

* Occupation: Short-term engineering contract worker

* Desired occupation: Full-time engineering manager

* Quote: “Excuse me if I sound down, but I just received three more ‘thank you, but no thank you’ cards stating [that employers] found someone more qualified for the position. How would they know he or she was more qualified than me? They [didn’t even] interview me.”

Meet the Coach

Barbara Moses is president of Toronto-based BBM Human Resource Consultants Inc., an international organizational career-development firm. She is the author of “The Good News About Careers: How You’ll Be Working in the Next Decade” (Jossey-Bass, 2000) and “Career Intelligence:

The 12 New Rules for Work and Life Success” (Berrett-Koehler, 1998).

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Inside

* Chronically underemployed? Conduct an assessment. W4