Looking for a job is like playing a game, but without the fun. It’s a long, elaborate combination of Life, charades and the decathlon, requiring you to accumulate leads, contacts and fresh ideas while paying your bills at the same time. And remember, it’s a game – there’s no guarantee that you’ll win.

Your resume will get a few seconds, tops, to grab some attention, and you’d better punch up that LinkedIn account, too. It wouldn’t hurt to volunteer for something – almost anything – because that shows that you have ambition and energy. Taking the right class would get your skills up to speed.

You need to make a good personal impression, too. If you’re divorced, maybe you should take off that wedding ring. You don’t want the hiring manager to think, “Well, she has a husband; I should give a single mom a chance instead.”

Playing the game creates a tumbling stream of worry that flows through the minds of hundreds of people every day in Greater Des Moines. Statistics would tell you that unemployment here is never much of a problem – but if you’re one of the unemployed, it’s a problem.

Jostling for jobs

“There certainly are jobs in Iowa,” said Colette Noble, “but when there are 300 applicants per job, there’s a lot of competition.” It’s a problem everywhere. According to the U.S. Labor Department, back in 2007 there were 1.5 unemployed Americans for every job opening. At the end of June, the ratio was 4.5-to-1.

Noble, 48, was laid off by CDS Global Inc. last Jan. 10 after 21 years with the company. Throw in a couple of operations, some struggles with the holder of her home mortgage and other problems, and she has had one rough year.

Her response has been to give the job search all she’s got. Noble attends a Hope2Work session at Lutheran Church of Hope once or twice a month; takes part in Unemployed in Des Moines meetings every other Thursday; and has gone to some of the Greater Des Moines Partnership’s biweekly get-togethers for job-seekers, known as Net2Work.

Then there were a couple of job fairs and some online classes. And she volunteered for four shifts at the Des Moines Arts Festival, where she reconnected with a few people who, you never know, might know someone who knows about an opening.

“I make a point to get out at least four days a week and do something,” Noble said. In her busiest week, she figures she spent about 60 hours looking for a good, steady, 40-hour position.

“At first, I thought, ‘I don’t want to hang around with unemployed people,’” she said. That perspective has changed. “Folks in this situation understand better what I’m going through,” Noble said. “There’s a sense of community; people want people to do well in Des Moines.”

Strategy session

One meeting of Unemployed in Des Moines at Smokey Row Coffee Co. this summer focused on LinkedIn strategies, which was not typical of networking events, but Cathleen Simpson appreciated the structure of it. “I’ve been to a lot of meetings, and a lot start as sharing, then turn into moaning and pity,” she said. “It’s important to stay out of that mode.”

Simpson came back to Iowa from Seattle in the summer of 2010 and started looking for work in September. She found something, but “confirmed that I’m not a commission salesperson” and when 2011 arrived, she was back to searching in earnest.

With people all over the United States desperate for a paycheck, some provincialism might be yet another factor to deal with. “I got a chilly feeling at first” from people in charge of hiring, Simpson said, and she thinks the word “Seattle” on her resume was a factor. “When I said I was an Iowa native, they warmed up,” she said.

One interview resulted in a job offer, but things didn’t work out. “I had told (the recruiter) that I needed to go to Seattle to finish some business,” Simpson said. “But he wanted me to start that day.” Someone else got the job.

At another place, she got a second interview for a contract job. “Then they ended up not filling the contract,” she said. Her word for it: “Disheartening.”

She started trying to find quicker, smarter paths to the goal. “If you can find a way to contact people directly in departments you would work with,” she said. “If you can get to those people making the hiring decisions who haven’t given the open job description to human resources yet.” She knew that some jobs are filled without ever being posted.

Then a chance happening led her where she wanted to go. She heard about a company job fair a few minutes before it was scheduled to begin, ran home and got ready, dashed over and sat for an interview. She stayed in contact every couple of weeks after that, got called in for a screening interview, then had the critical interview two days after that.

On Oct. 3, she started her new job in project management. “It’s been a long time coming,” she said. “I’m thrilled.”

And the gang at Smokey Row was thrilled for her, Simpson said. A dozen of them went out to dinner with her to celebrate.

Going to the fair

When there are no interviews to be had, no networking sessions on the schedule, maybe somebody’s holding a job fair.

Buccaneer, a Virginia-based information technology company with an office in West Des Moines, held a fair in July – the one Simpson scrambled to attend – and 168 people turned out. “This is the first time we’ve had an open job fair, and we weren’t sure how many would show up,” said Senior Vice President Mike Rozendaal. “We were pleasantly surprised.”

The company bought newspaper ads, notified local colleges and universities and used Twitter and LinkedIn to let people know about the fair. “We use LinkedIn a lot,” Rozendaal said. “It’s a good way to go for more senior positions.” The job fair was aimed more at call center jobs and other positions that require less specialized skills.

In August, IowaWorks of Central Iowa held a health-care jobs fair in the Wallace Building on the state Capitol complex and drew about 50 people. Mercy Medical Center – Des Moines was looking for everything from clerical workers to registered nurses, security guards to phlebotomists. A representative of Broadlawns Medical Center noted that the hospital had 10 or 12 openings posted on its website.

Bill Schooler – previously spotted at a Net2Work session – was there, but his goal was to find not some ordinary job, but an organization looking for a project manager. At 62, he’s a former president of Hartford-Carlisle Savings Bank and a veteran of real estate development and a business start-up.

He would return to real estate, but there’s not much there to return to, so “I’m reinventing myself for the umpteenth time,” he said.

Back to school

And then there’s school. Many people who sign up for classes at Des Moines Area Community College’s (DMACC) Workforce Training Academy have been away from school for a long time and safely settled in the world of work. But then came a layoff, and now they’re looking for a new place to start.

“They want to hold on to their career and find out how to move to a new path,” said Kay Maher, an employment training specialist with DMACC. “Their confidence level really takes a beating.”

One man who had been a truck driver for 30 years enrolled in the building maintenance program, then moved on to a business course. One thing confused him about this new landscape – when he made the dean’s list, he didn’t realize that was a good thing. Now “he’s looking at starting a business,” said Pam Gaddy, also an employment training specialist.

In the past fiscal year, the Workforce Training Academy served 135 students, and 78 percent of them were dislocated workers. “We get calls from people who are in panic when their unemployment benefits are running out,” Maher said.

The course offerings are practical, not theoretical. Deere & Co. was in the market for welders last spring, and “we can’t offer enough welding classes,” said DMACC media liaison Dan Ivis. “We held some at 2 a.m.”

For the typical office worker, however, the next move can be hard to figure out. Gaddy works with students to prepare them for job interviews, outlining the types of questions they might be asked and even holding mock interviews. “Mock” they may be, but sometimes those interviews have resulted in applications being passed along to real employers.
See? You never know when you’ll land on a lucky square.