Turning the Volunteer Job He Loves Into One That Pays

Victor Alvarez will tell you that he has an “almost perfect” job.

“Each day I come home with as much energy as when I started the day,” Alvarez said.

As director of training operations for the state Employment Development Department in Mission Viejo, the 49-year-old Long Beach resident helps unemployed executives and managers build their job-hunting skills, while supervising a staff of 15 volunteers.

Because Alvarez loves to coach and inspire people, this job is a dream come true. But there’s a hitch: Alvarez works for free. Director of training operations is an unpaid position, and there’s no possibility this will ever change, Alvarez said.

To make ends meet, Alvarez has been living off investments and taking on occasional facilities management projects, because he has 14 years’ experience in that field. In 1999, his total earnings came to less than $20,000, he said. He needs to generate more cash flow, so has been searching for a salaried corporate training job similar to his current role, where, he said, “I can follow my bliss.” This time a paycheck must be part of the deal.

Even using the skills he teaches others, Alvarez hasn’t had much luck in his quest. He said employers are too quickly dismissing him as a too-green “newbie” because he’s only been at his training job for two years. He’d like to persuade them otherwise, but doesn’t know how to get a foot in the corporate door.

For help with this career dilemma, Alvarez contacted San Diego-based managerial guru Ken Blanchard, coauthor of “The One Minute Manager” (Berkley Publishing Group, 1993).

After reviewing Alvarez’s resume, Blanchard expressed surprise that Alvarez has had difficulties snagging a corporate performance coaching job. He said Alvarez has excellent qualifications for the role: an MBA degree, 14 years of corporate managerial experience, training skills and a great interest in helping others.

“There are companies that would love to hire you because you’ve been around the block a few times,” Blanchard said. “They’re desperately looking for people with your background.”

Blanchard offered to give Alvarez’s resume to two performance coaching operations and put him in touch with individuals in the field who could tell him more about the profession. But Blanchard also suggested that Alvarez sharpen his job-hunting focus. If he truly wants to do in-house coaching, he’ll need to direct all his energies toward it.

“The clearer you get with your goal,” Blanchard said, “you’ll find that people will show up to help you make it happen.”

Blanchard further recommended that Alvarez videotape himself while training, so prospective employers can see him in action. Alvarez also could join the Los Angeles chapter of the American Society for Training and Development, to network and keep abreast of developments in the field, Blanchard said.

Here are additional tips offered by Blanchard and other experts:

* Learn more about performance coaching. Corporate performance coaches assess, motivate and train employees. Although Alvarez trains individuals who are between jobs, he needs to gain experience coaching people in corporate environments. How can he do this?

Newcomers such as Alvarez should consider offering pro bono coaching sessions for targeted corporate clientele, suggested Paul Lemberg, president of Lemberg & Co., an executive coaching firm based in Escondido. This way, Alvarez could hone his coaching skills and begin building a professional reputation and referral network, Lemberg said.

To gain additional performance coaching skills, Alvarez can enroll in online classes such as those offered by Coach University (https://www.coachu.com) in Steamboat Springs, Colo., or the Coaches Training Institute (https://www.thecoaches.com) in San Rafael, Calif. He also may benefit from hiring his own performance coach for one-on-one guidance and encouragement. This would enable him to watch a pro in action, said Sandy Vilas, Coach University president.

Alvarez also should make sure he’s familiar with the assessment tools commonly used by corporate coaches to evaluate employees’ personality, work style and learning capacity, said David Goldsmith, a coach based in Santa Fe, N.M.

Because very little coaching business is generated from traditional advertising, Alvarez should work hard to develop sophisticated marketing abilities, said Steve Shull, a Los Angeles-based performance coach who has trained more than 1,000 people in the last seven years. Top performance coaches generate interest in their services through seminars, newsletters, public speaking, Web sites and article writing.

“The biggest tip I’d give to anyone going into coaching is to make sure they have the marketing skills to get in front of large audiences on a consistent basis,” Shull said.

* Consider adapting coaching to facilities management. Facilities managers oversee networks of buildings, supervise custodial services, orchestrate the relocation of hundreds of employees and handle property record-keeping, among other things. These jacks-of-all-trades are valued for their ability to smoothly run large networks of buildings and “put out fires,” be they a malfunctioning air conditioning system, electrical outage or other building emergency.

Many come to the field with engineering or architecture backgrounds, said Larry Harrison, director of facilities management for Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas.

Pay for facilities management jobs ranges from $40,000 to more than $100,000 annually, said Marlene Weisler, president of the International Facilities Management Assn.’s Greater New York chapter and a facilities manager for EarthWeb Inc. in New York City.

Alvarez said he hasn’t ruled out returning to this field. But he wonders whether he can find a position that places more emphasis on managerial duties than on technological chores. Though he’s familiar with computerized maintenance management system software, or CMMS, a widely used facilities management support technology, he’d rather spend his work hours leading a staff.

Experts such as Eileen McMorrow, editor-in-chief of Facilities Design & Management magazine in New York, say that, if anything, technology such as CMMS will become even more critical to facility managers’ daily operations. The technology enables building systems to “talk” to one another other and makes monitoring easier.

“What makes the field one of the most exciting today is the whole reinvention of how we work and where we work,” said Nancy Sanquist, director of strategic initiatives at Peregrine Systems, a San Diego-based producer of infrastructure management software.

Should Alvarez decide to reenter facilities management, he’d benefit from bolstering his CMMS skills and getting certification from IFMA in Houston. “[Certification] shows you’ve gotten to a certain level in the profession,” McMorrow said. “It makes you more employable and attractive to companies.”

Lastly, Alvarez might consider applying to facilities management organizations such as industry leader Johnson Controls of Milwaukee, which furnishes full-time staff to corporations; Graphic Systems Inc. of Boston; and Vanderweil Facility Advisors, also based in Boston, which helps clients assess and manage multiple-building portfolios. These companies boast large staffs of facility managers with diverse vocational and educational backgrounds, said Peter Cholakis of Vanderweil.

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Time for A Change

* Name: Victor Alvarez

* Occupation: Director of training operations for state Employment Development Department in Mission Viejo

* Desire occupation: Performance coach

* Quote: “If I could do anything, I’d work as a trainer or personal coach. But there just might be a conflict about what I think I’m good at and employers’ perceptions that I don’t have enough experience yet.”

Counselor’s Recommendation:

* Sharpen career goals.

* Network.

* Apply to performance coaching organizations.

Meet the Coach

Ken Blanchard is coauthor of “The One Minute Manager,” which has sold more than 9 million copies worldwide. He also is chief spiritual officer of San Diego-based Ken Blanchard Cos., as well as a business consultant and public speaker.