Longtime Manager Revamps Job Search
For the past year-and-a-half, Jack Iannaccone's "job" has been looking for a job.
He worked for a pharmaceutical company for more than two decades, and was living the American dream, a manager making a six-figure salary.
Now, says consumer correspondent Susan Koeppen in Part Two of the series, "Early Show Job Squad," every day is a struggle to find a new job, in a market that's one of the worst since the Great Depression.
The last time Jack passed out his resume, Ronald Reagan was president, "Bette Davis Eyes" was song of the year, and Jack's wife, Jennifer, was just about to give birth to their oldest son.
Things have changed since then: Jack's oldest is now a fighter pilot, and his younger two children are living at home.
The company Jack helped grow started sending its work overseas, and Jack fell victim to downsizing.
"You realize," he says, "that all the stuff that kept you busy every day was all of a sudden no longer required, apparently."
At first, Jack was hopeful about a new job. But weeks turned into months. His severance came to an end. His savings started to dwindle.
Jennifer is now working two jobs, and they feared having to sell their home.
"The children worry," Jack observed. "I mean, they're concerned. They don't show it too often, but I can see it in their eyes."
"We've have gotten through tough times before and we will get through this," Jennifer says, encouragingly. "I tease him and say, 'I will get a third job if I have to.' I don't want to --- or we will find a smaller house. He'll find a job."
To help Jack on his mission, The Early Show sent in our "Job Squad" -- three professionals to help Jack get back on track:
First task? Redo that resume!
Lisa updated Jack's resume by maximizing his experience with bullet points right at the top. And, by eliminating some dates, she minimized his age.
"For Jack and those who are senior," Lisa explained, "we want to reduce the age discrimination factor. We will take much of his experience for the past 10 to 15 years and then, anything beyond that, you create a whole new section and call it 'previous experience' or 'additional experience,' and then you can take off the years."
And, in the age of Internet searches and job-seeking Web sites, Lisa added keywords to the bottom of Jack's resume, terms such as "operations director" and "quality assurance."
"Companies are getting over-inundated with resumes, too much for the human eye to go through in a day," Lisa points out, "so (they) got together with the IT world and created scanning software to actually scan the resume. ... Today, if your resume goes through the scanning process and you don't have X percent of the words they're looking for, your resume could easily get kicked out, not even looked at."
With his resume updated and polished, Jack's next step was finances.
"We're at a point," Jack told Nick, the financial planner, "where we're basically making ends meet, but we're digging into our savings now to meet our obligations."
It was time Nick to step in and give Jack and Jen a new financial outlook.
"As we talked about, the idea of a financial plan is the goal for you to be able to take care of your family," Nick said.
He got to work crunching the numbers and found that, by refinancing, the Iannaccones could stay in their home. And Jack could make half the salary he once did and still maintain his family's lifestyle.
"That's very helpful," Jack understated.
There was one last Job Squad member for jack to meet: Lisa, the image consultant.
"You know you want to look young, you want to look fresh, you want to look hip!" Lisa told him.
For Jack, that meant trying on different looks and getting something new: a brand new interview suit, in this case, from zappos.com.
"That is corporate chic!" Lisa said approvingly.
Jack also gave up something old -- his moustache -- which made him look older.
"If you do it it'll take 10 years off you," Lisa assured him.
With his updated look, Jack still needed to update his presence online.
He started a blog, which Lisa called "a really great way for people to find you."
On his blog, Jack writes about himself, his job experience and his search for new work.
"What you want to do," Lisa advised, "is use a lot of words in there that pertain to your industry, so that, if a job recruiter is going through and looking for someone in your industry, they'll type in certain keywords and it'll take them to your blog!"
With his three-month-long Job Squad training missing complete, Jack is now -- rewired to get rehired!
On The Early Show Tuesday, he told Koeppen and co-anchor Harry Smith he's "really prepared now to pursue that new career, that new job. So, it's been very helpful."
"You need to be flexible," Jack continued. "Wit the challenges out there today in the market, you really need to be flexible about certain things. You have to expand your horizons. A new look, and maintaining a positive outlook, are the things you need to have."
Jack says he's had "some opportunities. I've gotten close once or twice, Just hasn't happened yet."
"He has said," Koeppen told Smith, "that the key is getting the foot in the door, to actually get face-to-face with somebody. So he's doing a lot of networking."
"That's the biggest challenge," Jack confirmed, "to get in front of a human being to do face-to-face discussion. I've always felt I do well in personal interviews -- it's hard to get in front of that hiring manager or that human resources person."
Jack admits he had his "good days and bad days" psychologically but, "You have to manage your life. You have to get away from the computer." The answer, Jack concluded, is "getting out there, networking with people, staying abreast of what's going on out in the industry."