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Job search diary: lessons for laid-off manager

Ex-manager discovers approaches to job search and learns importance of aggressive networking

By Kimberly Blanton, Globe Staff, 7/6/03

(First of a series describing a laid-off manager's job search.)

Most people don't really have a clue about the proper way to look for a job. In that way, Brian McGrath, unemployed at age 31, was like everyone else. He was luckier than most, however, in that his former employer hired a personal career coach to counsel him, prod him, challenge him, and cheer him on in his search.

McGrath is an ideal job candidate. He has 10 years of solid experience in real estate analysis, so solid he was among several people chosen by his former employer to stay on and liquidate the business and turn off the lights. He is a stable family man, well-spoken, and his movie-star good looks are no liability.

But in the past, he lucked into jobs without breaking a sweat. In the current, shrinking job market, his professional career coaches at Keystone Associates tell him those haphazard tactics, tactics often informed by little more than gut instinct, no longer work. Competition is fierce for a relatively few positions coming on the market, and techniques, some painful - such as self-promotion and resume-polishing - are key to getting jobs, even to getting a prospective employer to take notice.

Globe Staff Photo/Janet Knott Brian McGrath has solid experience in real estate analysis, but his job search tactics were ineffective.

''You don't know the best approach, because you just don't spend your life'' job hunting, McGrath says. ''When I am trying to make a company more profitable, I don't think, 'Now, do I network with people for my next job?' Maybe that would've been helpful.''

Working with Keystone, he has learned that networking is the best way to find work, that resumes are not for listing jobs but for illuminating accomplishments, that he should not send out hundreds of ''blind resumes.'' He has even learned that his eyes should not wander during an interview. He absorbs and incorporates much of the professional advice, yet has resisted some of it, namely that he should broaden his search outside the real estate industry.

McGrath got far more warning of his impending joblessness than most people do. His previous employer, Meditrust Corp., a real estate investment company, notified him 2 years before his layoff - at a time the economy was still red hot and jobs were plentiful. If he had been more realistic, his career coach, Keystone's Lou Gaglini suggests, McGrath might have started looking earlier, while he was finishing up at Meditrust. McGrath's job at Meditrust included analyzing the viability of healthcare providers seeking to finance properties and the cash flow of the properties themselves. To persuade him to stay on and help sell off the real estate when Meditrust decided to focus on its hotel business, management made him an offer too attractive to turn down: big bonuses each year he stayed on. (The Meditrust name no longer exists; the company was merged and its name changed to La Quinta Corp.)

The retention bonuses were great, effectively doubling McGrath's annual compensation and vaulting it into six figures. But, Gaglini says, if he had been advising his client back then, ''I would have said, 'Absolutely you should have been networking more as this day was coming. It would've served you well.' I think he knows that now.''

Laid off Nov. 15, 2002, McGrath started his search slowly. First came the holidays and a little job-hunting before he and his wife, Meredyth, took a February vacation in California to visit his parents at rented winter getaways in Palm Springs and then Newport Beach. The trip was so nice they extended it from one week to two.

The newly unemployed often procrastinate. ''I talk with so many people who, when they're let go, say, 'Great, now I can build the deck on the porch. Now I can paint that room.' And when they come in my office, they say, 'I can't believe how busy I am,' '' Gaglini says. ''People have been working hard for much of their lives, and they look at this as an opportunity to take a deep breath.''

McGrath's latest interruption was joyous but unavoidable: twins, Brady and Colin, were born in May - baby brothers for Ashley, 14 months old.

On a recent morning in the dining room of a small apartment in a Medford two-family which the couple rent from Meredyth's grandparents, the McGraths discussed the stresses of mixing a bigger family with Brian's employment search. Although extended family provide plenty of baby-sitters to help her with the twins during the day, family demands can make it difficult for her husband to escape to Keystone's offices in Burlington, where he can settle into a cubicle and concentrate on the search, Meredyth said.

''As much as I need him at home, which I did and still do,'' says Meredyth, holding Ashley in her lap as the twins stirred in a crib, ''it was hard. I was torn.''

Brian McGrath's goal is to find another challenging job in the real estate industry, one that he likes as much as the Meditrust job and that puts him back on an upward career path. With his search now in full swing, the most difficult lesson he has learned is how to network, which he often does. Now he is obsessed with unearthing new contacts - he views every party or wedding as an opportunity. ''I got a couple of good leads'' at a recent wedding of his wife's cousins, he says. Finding a job requires ''a lot of detective work, sleuthing, uncovering every rock.''

When he started out, McGrath says, he networked mainly with friends and acquaintances. Now, he dives into networking with people he doesn't know. ''I thought it [networking] was important but I didn't know it was 80 percent of how people find jobs,'' he says. Without Keystone's advice, he said, ''I wouldn't have spent that much time [networking]. I would've been searching the paper. I wouldn't have spent as much time trying to find contacts.''

Networking also requires that, rather than send a ''blind resume'' to a company advertising a position, he find someone inside the company who will deliver his resume personally. This was Keystone's recommended tactic, and it has paid off. Last month, McGrath was notified he was among three finalists for a position as a real estate asset manager in the affordable housing industry - he's still waiting to hear about the final outcome.

He believes that networking got him further than he might have gotten on his own. After he passed the initial screening and the interview with a placement company, McGrath secured a second interview when the cousin of one of his college friends helped him in. He already knew the cousin from an earlier vein of networking for a completely different job. The friend's cousin contacted the person doing the hiring to recommend McGrath as a good candidate and ''a great guy.''

Networking is the goal in every step in the job-hunting process: ''It differentiates me from the other candidates,'' he says, ''because they probably don't have a connection with them.''

Keystone's Gaglini also persuaded McGrath that it's not only what you've done but also how you portray it on your resume.

No one had ever told McGrath that the most important item in a resume is the ''summary'' - he didn't even have a summary. But a punchy summary - a short profile of a candidate's salient features - gives them an edge, Keystone tells clients. A good resume ''draws out your strengths through your job description,'' Gaglini says. A well-written snapshot will ''tell [the recruiter] whether or not to continue to read this one.''

McGrath's old resume merely listed his jobs - senior financial analyst, budget analyst, etc. He rewrote it, listing his accomplishments. For example, instead of ''assisted the chief operating officer in implementing the corporation reorganization plan'' - his first description - he spruced it up on Gaglini's advice. Now it reads: ''Participated in the successful implementation of the corporate reorganization.''

To McGrath, the self-promotion feels a bit uncomfortable. He took Gaglini's advice and elaborated on his master's of science in finance from Bentley College. His resume now volunteers that his 3.8 grade-point average earned him membership in the Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society.

But, says McGrath, ''It's not my nature to brag about myself.''

Part 2: Job search diary: manager declines only offer in eight months

Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.

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