Reinventing yourself after a layoff; finding your passion

After being laid off for the third time, Joyce Mueller decided she'd had enough.

As a United Airlines customer service and sales rep for 21 years, Mueller survived 9/11 and the company's bankruptcy. But when her job was outsourced to the Philippines, she vowed that was the end of being bounced around by an up-and-down industry.

"I can't keep going back and getting laid off again," she said. "It's too hard to go forward with your life."

Looking to change careers, Mueller went to Harper Community College's Career Center in Schaumburg, which provides job hunting help not just for students, but for anyone in the school's service area.

Like Mueller, more than 10 million Americans were unemployed this past year - about 2 million more than the year before. More than half a million lost their jobs in November alone, making it the worst month in 34 years. Industries like housing construction, auto manufacturing and finance are contracting drastically.

Increasingly, career counselors say, workers in declining fields are having to reconsider what they want to do with their lives.

While losing a job can be devastating, some local job seekers say finding a new career can be an opportunity to reinvent oneself.

The key to remaking yourself for the job market, experts say, is to assess your skills and interests, find a growing field that matches them best, then mold and market your skills to fit the needs of that industry.

It's happening all over. One local financial planner hopes to help people by going into health care. A former information technology manager is giving back by becoming an academic counselor for kids interested in IT.

Starting over can simply be a matter of retooling and emphasizing skills you have, or it may require new skills. The transformation might be quick or take years.

But consultants and job seekers emphasize that those reinventing themselves better have a passion for their new careers, or their jobs could be more secure but less rewarding.

For all those forced to reassess, career coaches offer the following tips - and examples:

Know thyself

Are you good with people? Or good with numbers?

To make you dig a little deeper with your self-assessment, career counselors typically recommend surveys to determine skills and interests.

The Internet is replete with self-assessment surveys, some quite good, others sketchy.

Sites like Illinoismentor.org or careerkey.org list legitimate surveys to determine your Holland type, which classifies people in personality categories like realistic, artistic or social.

There are also surveys to match your skills and values to potential careers, which can be linked at rileyguide.com.

Redo the resume

Steven Provenzano, head of Executive Career Services in Streamwood and author of six books on careers, says the important thing in the resume is to control how the interviewer perceives your skills.

Rather than focusing on a chronology of your work experience, your resume should lead off with a bold two- to four-word title that explains what type of position you are seeking, such as "sales/marketing" or "accounting/finance."

One woman who was an account manager in human relations topped her resume with "office manager," which translated her job skills into a growth area.

Next, a short profile should highlight your job skills. Mary Phemister, one of Provenzano's clients seeking a sales support job, wrote that she was skilled in account management, marketing plans and employee benefit plans, among other attributes.

After emphasizing what an applicant can bring to a future job, a resume can list past experience.

Provenzano also teaches clients to research by calling the company offering a job and asking to talk to the department manager in charge of filling it. Don't ask for the position, but explain that you're in a job search, and ask what the company is looking for, then see if you can offer solutions to their needs.

Go back to school

People who've been out of the job market for a while may need to brush up on their skills, Harper Career Center Director Kathleen Canfield said. Job seekers tend to overvalue their skills, but if they haven't stayed up-to-date with the technology in their field, she said, "the world has passed them by."

As a result, many job seekers are going back to school. While job listings at the Career Center are down, applications for enrollment in class are up 20 percent for the next semester.

Many students, like Joyce Mueller, the ex-airline worker, have to transition by continuing to work while retraining for another field.

While she works in sales for W.W. Grainger in Wheeling, a steadier business than the airlines, Mueller attends health care classes at Harper, with plans to go into nursing or radiology. She started last year, but since she can only take classes at night, it will take her five years before she gets her associate degree.

When United filed for bankruptcy, Mueller lost most of her pension, her company stock and much of her pay. At 48 and single, she is looking to replenish her retirement fund, but as career coaches counsel, she has realistic expectations.

"I'd like to work in a field that gives me the opportunity to support myself," she said. "I'm not looking to become a millionaire at this stage."

Switch sides

Jack Morrin has been through all this before.

Born and raised in South Chicago where the night sky glowed with the flames of steel blast furnaces a block away, Morrin went to work for U.S. Steel.

The plant employed 24,000 people around the clock, but by the 1960s and '70s, Morrin saw thousands of co-workers lose their jobs.

Morrin, who now lives in Schaumburg, was fortunate because he worked in accounting and labor relations. He had been a member of the union, and was able to translate his experience into helping management negotiate contracts at Snap-On Tools in Kenosha. For every cent of proposed raises, he could estimate what it would cost the company.

Morrin's ability to switch teams from labor to management, in effect, helped him reinvent himself while staying in the same field.

Have a passion

Sometimes, people start new careers that seem to have nothing to do with their previous work.

At Worsham College of Mortuary Science in Wheeling, students include a former business partner in Apple and a former high school music teacher.

Regardless of what field they came from, most students, like former teacher and euphonium player Jeremy Lehman, always had some interest in working at a funeral home.

Before making the switch, Lehman got to know a funeral director and learned from him what the business was about.

He believes the business is not so much about the dead as it is about helping the living through one of life's most difficult times. Like a musical performance, he said, you get one chance to do it right.

His pet peeve is people who get into the business not because they have a passion for it, but because it's "recession-proof."

"If that's why you're going into it," Lehman said, "you're going into it for the wrong reason."

Seek hot fields

Health care and education are two areas where customers just keep coming, so the need for more workers won't go away. Business services, primarily in human resources and information technology, and leisure pursuits such as gambling and amusement are top expected growth fields.

Certain fields are often listed as always needing people, like paralegals, but there are less than 200 paralegal hirings in Chicago a year, compared to thousands of nursing jobs, so applicants should consider the raw numbers when selecting a field.

For job forecasts, check out www.bls.gov/OCO, which forecasts outlooks for careers from A to Z, or careervoyages.gov.

Re-brand yourself

The Reinvention Institute, based in Miami, calls for letting go of your specific professional identity in favor a broader vision. You're not a construction foreman anymore; you're a business logistics manager.

Pamela Mitchell, CEO and founder, stresses the importance of translating the terminology of one field into something people who aren't in your field will understand.

She cautions that some careers may be "hot," but not for you, if your skills and interests don't match.

So research within your own industry, even if it's shrinking, to see what areas are doing well.

And don't forget the long-term plan. You have to balance interests with rewards, so if the time isn't right for the job you want, put yourself in position to meet people in the area you eventually seek.

In demand, well-paying jobs

•nurses

•office/general managers

•doctors

•elementary teachers

•accountants and auditors

•computer software engineers

•sales reps (wholesale and manufacturing)

•computer systems analysts

•management analysts

Source: Careervoyages.gov

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