It's a Club Whose Members Would Just as Soon Quit : Jobs: Networking groups boost the morale and release the creative energies of a diverse, often highly skilled collection of people looking for work.

By MICHAEL S. ARNOLD

Aug. 9, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

SAN GABRIEL VALLEY — Question: What kind of club might you join in hopes of quitting as soon as possible?

Answer: A job club for unemployed professionals.

A recent meeting of Networking Experience Unlimited in West Covina--one of two such job clubs sponsored by the Employment Development Department in the San Gabriel Valley--features a room filled with well-dressed men and women ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s.

Their name tags show them to be lawyers, bankers, marketing executives, aerospace engineers, even an airplane stunt pilot. Despite their eclectic backgrounds, these professionals have something in common--they are all unemployed.

“I am a recovering unemployed,” jokes Mike Wilson, a former church administrator from Whittier.

“It’s a shame when even the Lord has a layoff,” another member adds.

Their levity masks the hard times the 160 or so members of the West Covina club--one of six EDD job clubs for professionals in Los Angeles County--are suffering through. With about 70% of the group holding college degrees and a fair number with graduate training, most of these professionals never expected to be out of a job.

“It’s not only inner-city youth that are being thrown on the trash heap,” said Hal Colebaugh, a former Foreign Service officer who was laid off his last job as a corporate human resources manager two months ago. “There’s a lot of older professional talent that’s going unused.”

Trudy Huyck, the department coordinator, calls these professionals “the new unemployed.” Overqualified for most of the scarce jobs available, underqualified for a few, they face an unwelcome choice between taking deep cuts in rank and pay and--unless they are willing to start from the bottom in a new field--not working at all.

Richard Macias hasn’t worked in two years since losing his electrical design engineer’s post, and $50,000 salary, at Rockwell International. “As professionals, you take our tools away and we can’t do anything,” said Macias, 52, who spent eight of his 28 years at Rockwell working on the Apollo space missions. “I send resumes out and I get letters back saying, ‘I’m sorry, you don’t have the qualifications.’ I sent people to the moon, OK?”

Financial difficulties aside, the psychological blow of being suddenly, unexpectedly unemployed is one of the hardest rebuffs. “I think the feeling that’s probably most felt is depression,” said Keith Askin of West Covina, the club’s president and, as an unemployed banking trust officer, also a client.

“There was a time when we used to think that if you were unemployed, there was something wrong with you,” Colebaugh said. “I think all of us are kind of with our mouths open at what’s happening.”

Unfortunately, even with access to the clubs’ resources, jobs are hard to come by. In June, the West Covina group listed 479 openings but only about 20 members actually found work. Pasadena’s Professional Resource Center placed just 20 of its 200-plus members in the same period.

Still, the clubs provide two important benefits: a support group of fellow unemployed professionals and, with their do-it-yourself emphasis, an outlet for the creative energies of their frustrated members.

Members must volunteer at least four hours per week, though some clock up to 40. Each member serves on one committee, responsible for such tasks as maintaining employer databases, sending out resumes and training members for interviews.

Coordinating the West Covina Club’s Sept. 21 “reverse job fair,” which is expected to attract several hundred employers and is open to members of other job clubs, keeps volunteers especially busy. The Pasadena club is planning a similar fair--in which the unemployed play host to prospective employers--for October.

“The purpose of the club is more or less to support each other, to provide information, to stimulate those of us who may have run down in their looking for a job,” said Jim Nicoson, a former contracts negotiator from La Crescenta who joined the Pasadena club in June. “It kind of rejuvenates you, gives you some leads.”

But Nicoson was having a tough time convincing skeptics during the first day of orientation for new recruits.

“For me personally, I don’t think it had what I needed,” said a woman who identified herself only as Evonne and said she was an information systems manager laid off three weeks ago. She doubted that she would continue with the weeklong training, which includes sessions in resume writing and job search techniques and videotaped practice interviews.

“I don’t need someone to sit and baby me. I don’t need someone to hold my hand and boost my morale,” Evonne said after the session. “I know I’m OK.”

She certainly wasn’t heartened when one of the trainers, an unemployed insurance brokerage manager from Pasadena, told the group that “many companies have never heard of PRC and don’t know that there’s a vast network of excellent personnel out there.”

In fact, a lack of public awareness that the employment department runs these clubs might be the biggest obstacle to their success. “Most people, when they think of the EDD, think of unemployment assistance,” said Gerry Kennedy, coordinator of the Pasadena group. “If they think of us for job services they think of us as a source for unskilled labor.”