Forty Plus Mixes Group Support With Job-Seeking Skills
By SHERRI CRUZ
In front of about 25 people, a slightly nervous Francine Allaire glances down at her hand-scrawled notes.
Among the things she reveals to the audience: She’s a software sales manager who used to work for Oracle Corp. and now is looking for a job.
With only 30 seconds for the whole spiel, Allaire ends with a tagline: “I am Francine, and I am the queen of deals.”
Allaire was rehearsing her job pitch during a recent meeting at Forty Plus of Orange County’s Anaheim office. The 30-second pitch, designed to help group members package themselves, is one of the things Forty Plus teaches.
Forty Plus is a national nonprofit group for unemployed executives or those changing careers. The group’s program includes two weeks of training in which job-searching skills, such as resume writing and interviewing, are taught.
Steve Doughty, president of Forty Plus’ Orange County chapter and a chief executive by trade, espouses what might be expected of any other job assistance resource: “It’s not the best qualified who gets the job. It’s the best prepared.”
But members will tell you one of the most important aspects of the group is the emotional support they get from other jobseekers.
“Looking for a job on your own is a struggle,” said Joe Neill, a “graduate” who recently found a job in a longtime passion, sailing.
Kathleen Graves, a corporate attorney who joined last August, said when her job search stalled it was easier to motivate herself being among others in the same boat.
“Here you’re kind of held accountable to the people,” she said.
Forty Plus shows how the economic crunch of the past couple of years also squeezed upper management.
Members, many whom are friends, come to the offices of Forty Plus to swap tips and learn how to get back in the job search game. They learn the group’s curriculum and help teach courses.
The group’s Anaheim office is run like a co-operative. Members elect other members as officers and a president. They oversee the group while they look for jobs. Dues go toward paying for the office, which has computers, Internet access, a fax, copy machine, coffeemaker, reception area and conference room.
The club has been on a roll producing graduates, which could be a sign of the bettering economy. Predictably, membership in Forty Plus grows as the economy slides. About 20 members, including former software sales manager Allaire, have started working again in the past couple of months.
In fact, Allaire may have set the record for the shortest stay, said Joseph Krueger, a Forty Plus alumnus who handles the group’s marketing. He’s the founder of The Marketing Machine in Irvine and does volunteer work for Forty Plus.
Coming back to Forty Plus as a mentor after finding a job isn’t unusual.
Melanie McCarthy, founder of Huntington Beach-based Mac Experienced Resources Inc., is an alumnus and one of the group’s directors. She also is a volunteer instructor.
“I’ve been reading resumes for 15 years,” said McCarthy, a former recruiter.
As former executives, many Forty Plus members have seen their share of resumes, too. But many members don’t know how to market themselves, according to McCarthy.
“They have to slant it in the right way,what is the reader looking for?” she said.
Membership in OC’s Forty Plus ranges from 40 to 80 people. It now has about 45 members.
At one point OC membership swelled to 200 members with layoffs in aerospace. Most people find out about the group through an ad or word of mouth.
The story of Forty Plus’s origins gleaned from an old newspaper article goes like this: Henry Simler started the group in 1939 to help the executives fired by Remington Rand Corp. after the company bought Simler’s American Machine Co.
Some of the group’s founding advisory members: Thomas Watson of IBM Corp. and James Cash Penney, of JC Penney Co.
By definition, Forty Plus used to serve people 40 years of age or older. But the name largely is irrelevant these days and even is good for a laugh. Some say Forty Plus is for those who put in more than 40 hours a week. Sometimes it’s mistaken for a dating service.
Once Forty Plus solely was a guy thing. Now there are women. The only requirement: Members should have been a manager at one point in their career.
But for the jobless, joining isn’t cheap,there’s a $475 initiation fee and $65 for the first six months, which drops to $35 after that. The average membership is about four months.
After a member gets a job, they can sign up as a life member for $250. The OC club has at least 100 life members.
Barry Sullivan, one of the newest members, is a former software salesman. On a day earlier this month, he was dressed in a blue suit (everyone dresses as if they are at work).
After 15 years of selling accounting and other software, Sullivan was put out of work when software makers started selling their products directly.
Learning how to market himself again was daunting, Sullivan said.
But joining Forty Plus helped bolster his attitude, he said.
“It’s more psychological,” Sullivan said. “You feel like: ‘I’m not so unique. I’m not alone.'”
His plan is to learn job-seeking skills this month, spend the next couple of months looking for a job and be employed by April.
Dave Fletcher, a past president of the organization, lost his job and had no one to blame but himself.
It turned out to be in the best interest of the company he was president of, a maker of water treatment gear, to sell to a larger company in Wisconsin. Fletcher’s option was to move to Wisconsin or stay here and look for a job. That brought him to Forty Plus.
While job hunting, Fletcher also teaches the group’s 30-second pitch course. On a day earlier this month, he was encouraging students to get up in front of the class.
A white-haired man in a suit was visibly nervous during his pitch. Although he has credentials as a former information technology director at a large media company, his fingertips pressed together in the shape of a triangle and his lips trembled as he spoke.
A visitor that day, a redheaded woman with dark-rimmed glasses, gave an impromptu 30-second pitch. She said she wants out of the health and beauty industry because it is too volatile. But she wondered aloud: “It might be a little too late.”
Almost in unison, her fellow jobseekers shot back: “It’s never too late.”
But she did not sign up that day. Typically, Forty Plus candidates sign up after six months on their own, according to the group.
During the meeting, Doughty, the group’s president, performs a ritual. He pulls a member’s photo from a bulletin board,the current member board,and moves it to the graduate board. It is standard practice that grads bring doughnuts to a Wednesday meeting, as well as offer inspirational words to members.
Recent grad Neill brought in his box of donuts. The tall, white-haired, gregarious 59-year-old former building construction manager was laid off six months ago. At first he said he was distraught.
“It feels terrible,” he said. “It feels like a disaster striking your life.”
With experience at KB Home and others behind him, Neill said he sent out more than 60 resumes with no luck. He suspects “having too much experience”,being too old,was his greatest obstacle.
“It feels lousy,” he said. “I’m 59, but I only feel 30.”
At Forty Plus, Neill held down the title of facilities manager,the guy who fixed things around the office, bought the toilet paper and cleaned up coffee spills.
“I was there 40 hours a week,” he said
Then it occurred to him that he needed to change his game plan. After talking to a Newport Beach shipyard owner, he thought he could turn his passion into work.
Neill loves to sail. He said he has taken every sailing course offered, was in the Coast Guard for 22 years and is part of the Sea Scouts, a group that teaches scouts of all types to sail.
With a referral from the shipyard owner, Neill said he talked to Bud Martin, owner of Martin Yacht Sales. Martin said he would sponsor Neill for his yacht broker’s license and hired him.
And late last week, Neill learned he had earned his license.
Ryan Grady also brought in doughnuts one recent Wednesday.
The former aftermarket auto parts entrepreneur said he tried finding a job without any help.
“You quickly learn what you don’t know,” he said.
Grady said he considered a headhunter but said, “The reality is headhunters don’t work for the people in transition, they work for the companies.”
So after a contact told him about Forty Plus, he said he signed up.
He joined one of the “partnering” groups, about six to eight people who get together once a week for about an hour to coach and track one another’s job seeking efforts.
Grady also delved into the Forty Plus notion of networking, which isn’t going to meetings and handing out business cards. It is offering services, working for free,volunteering, Grady said.
He said he picked out companies that were interesting to him and called them.
“I’d like to learn,” he told them. “Offering to help someone else,that usually pays dividends.”
And it did. Grady said he ended up getting consulting jobs that kept him afloat.
In December, Grady started his new job as general manager of Seattle-based Flexcar’s Los Angeles operation. Flexcar offers a car-sharing program for commuters and businesspeople.
Ironically, Grady found the job in Forty Plus’s least favored method,through an ad on Monster.com.
Still, Grady said he considers his eight months at Forty Plus time well spent.
“Forty Plus is a pretty well-kept secret,” he said.
Now he has the option of becoming a life member so next time he’s out of work or chooses to change careers, he can brush up.
“That’s probably what I’ll do,” he said.
