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Archived Weekly Features
This View by Nancy LeMay |
 Nancy
LeMay is a five-time Emmy winning broadcast designer who has
worked both in New York and LA, in network and local. She is
a teacher and a painter as well. You can reach her through her
website, www.Nancylemay.com
and by email at NancyLeMayCo@aol.com |
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Notworking, Networking
The State of California has been
counting me among the unemployed since the
end of December of 2001. So I’ve been looking for work for nearly
six months.
This is never a fun process and now is no exception.
My observation is that the Internet is not helping people find
good jobs.
I've gotten no feedback from any Internet-based job application
I've made,
nor has anyone else I've spoken with. People whose jobs range
from computer
IT specialists to placement counselors to TV producers, in LA
and New York-n
ot a single one of them has gotten anywhere using web-based
job hunting
channels.
But rather than share any more gloom and doom-although I'm tempted-let
me
offer a classic story of the intricacies of true networking.
It really is true that school chums and alumni associations
are great sources
for job referrals. When I attended a high school reunion in
New York last
October, I found out that one gal I went to school with now
lives in LA, and
is a Mac computer consultant. A few weeks ago I went to see
a presentation
she was giving at Apple. Her audience was diverse: a couple
of photographers,
an architect, several graphic designers, and a member of the
Cal State LA
faculty. The Cal State professor is a teacher of teachers; I
made sure we
exchanged cards because teaching is among the things that I'd
like to do now.
The professor invited me to come to her office to talk further,
and while I
was there she discovered there was an opening in the CSLA visual
arts
faculty. She gave them the resume and samples I’d brought and
began the
application process for me. LA’s wonderful High School of the
Arts has its’
facilities in the next building; when I stopped in their general
office I
found out there are five jobs open on their teaching staff.
I returned the
following day to apply for one of those jobs.
So there you are: my best job leads have grown from a reunion
I attended in
New York 9 months ago. Will they bear fruit? I’ll keep you posted.
More
evidence that it is impossible to plan or predict where the
next opportunity
will come from. Life’s journeys will always be circular. |
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