Playful 'pit bull' doggedly determined to find new job

Having lost her job on the day before Thanksgiving, 42-year-old Judi DiPillo of Mount Prospect has learned what 8.1 percent of the nation knows. You don't just look at all the "help wanted" ads and choose the job you want. You don't just ship your résumé to your top five and see who makes you the best offer.

You need a new approach, and DiPillo has one. She begs me to treat her like a dog.

"You know those 'Pet of the Week' features? If they can do it for animals, they can do it for people," DiPillo tells me, suggesting this newspaper profile one unemployed person each week, starting with her.

Issues such as space, manpower and liability make that "Unemployed Person of the Week" feature unlikely, but it is true that people often take home the homeless puppy featured in "Pet of the Week" instead of all those pugs that don't get a free plug. A longtime volunteer with Adopt-A-Pet, DiPillo once used her dogged determination to get this newspaper to write a story that resulted in a new home for an abandoned cat.

"I'm a great catch. I'm just getting lost in your data bases," DiPillo says. "Right now, there is no way to get yourself to the front of the pack. There's no way to get yourself noticed. The usual process of applying online and networking doesn't cut it anymore."

In her desire to be the lead dog in the job hunt, she certainly is as perky and playful as most puppies.

"I'm small. I'm cute. I can definitely entertain a room," says the 5-foot-1 blonde.

OK. This man will bite on her dog story. First, let's look at her breeding. She's a mutt.

Her dad, part-Italian/part-Jewish, worked as an operator at a sewage plant. Her mom, all-Irish, was a middle-school custodian. DiPillo says her birth certificate reads "Rose Marie," but that her Jewish grandmother thought the name sounded too Italian and not enough Jewish, so they renamed her Judi.

The DiPillos raised four kids (DiPillo says she and her little sister were "accidents"), retired and moved to Florida.

"I'm born and raised Jersey all the way," says DiPillo, who grew up in Iselin, N.J., and graduated from what is now the College of New Jersey. "Jersey is still home."

So much for breeding. Let's move on to her training.

DiPillo has all her papers - a bachelor's degree in education, and classes in MS Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and a litter of other software programs.

Her resume says she won three "service recognition awards" while working as an administrative assistant for a large Chicago insurance company. She's worked in credit, financing, taxes, law and real estate until her last job with a large architectural design firm.

"I loved that job. I was so good at it," DiPillo says, noting she has fond memories of her last gig even if they did lay her off via speakerphone when she was home with a migraine.

So why does DiPillo keep ending up back with the strays?

DiPillo was a casualty of "last in, first out" cuts at the architectural design firm, says an executive vice president there who praises her work.

"Unfortunately, I keep picking companies that lay me off," DiPillo says, zipping through a history of corporate mergers, ownership changes and downsizing. "But I'm smart and I'm so loyal. I'm dedicated to the cause."

DiPillo moved to the Chicago suburbs to be with her longtime boyfriend, an accountant who works in Vernon Hills. He met her through business when she answered his phone calls.

"After six months of talking to him on the phone, he said, 'You sound really cute,'" DiPillo says. They met in Atlantic City in 1991, and he talked her into leaving New Jersey.

"I'm his pit bull," she says. "If we get home late, he says, 'You go first and check for burglars.' If there is any pit bull job to be done in our house, he sics me on it."

And now DiPillo is looking for something so many thousands of others in the Chicago area also are searching for - attention. Adopt-a-Jobless Person may not catch on, but she says she'll keep looking for ways to distinguish herself from all the other bulldogs in this market.

"I love it," she says, suggesting that we mess with her photo so that it looks as if she is posing in a doggy kennel. "I just don't want anyone writing in that I should be spayed or neutered."