Many people find their way to the U of U Alumni Career Services to help manage career change, downsizing, and job transition. Job Club is a key component of the ACS program and provides reassurance and support to its members. The purpose of Job Club is to keep job seekers informed, motivated, and connected.

Job clubs, sometimes known as networking, job-finding clubs, or “pink-slip” clubs, serve a purpose that is as important as providing job leads: helping the recently unemployed brush up on their job search skills and plan more effective strategies.

Often job hunters fail to understand that job hunting requires consistency. It can mean working on 30 or more leads, replying to ads, and developing 50 personal contacts. All of these activities need to be maintained and coordinated until a new job or position is found.

Some job seekers tend to burn out shortly after the onset of their job search, failing to realize that efforts might require weeks and even months of rigorous searching. Sustaining a vigorous job search is a compelling—and often frustrating—task. Most employment specialists agree that a successful job search effort requires three hours a day for those working and six hours a day for the unemployed.

How Can Job Club Help?

Consider Job Club a weekly tonic or pick-me–up that re-energizes, re-motivates, and re-connects people sharing the same concerns, mitigating the solitude and isolation of the job search. Job hunters can benefit from some kind of emotional support to guide them through a trying time of life—insecurity, vulnerability, and loss of identity. Job seekers benefit greatly by associating with others going through a similar transition and loss. The exchange of job leads, business cards, résumés, ideas, and information that occurs in a job or networking club can energize members and teach valuable career strategies and techniques. Members often team-up to offer support, motivation, and accountability.

Statistics show that job hunters with regular career counseling support find jobs faster and at higher rates of pay than those who don't. “Job clubbers” report that their efforts are strengthened by belonging to a group and their job searches are shorter.

Richard Nelson Bolles, author of the classic What Color is Your Parachute? and a strong proponent of job-seeking support groups, notes an 84 percent success rate when job-search techniques are conducted in groups, compared with a 15 percent lower rate when the same techniques are followed individually.

One of the main attractions to Job Club is that it does not follow a rigid set of rules or structure; rather, each gathering varies somewhat, following a model developed by psychologist Nathan Azrin, widely recognized as the father of job clubs. The model, which assumes weekly meetings, looks like this:

1. Members spend a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting sharing results and accomplishments of the previous week's job-hunting efforts.

2. Members ask the group for support in specific areas. This portion of the meeting is a problem-solving and brainstorming session. Members can ask for advice, support, leads, ideas, strategies, and direct assistance. It's in this section of the meeting that a professional facilitator may be the most useful.

3. The meeting ends with members stating their job-search goals for the upcoming week—goals that can realistically be accomplished by the next meeting.

According to Azrin, job club efforts will be more successful if:

• Job seekers have a specific goal or focus for their job search. Members should have a good idea of what kind of job they want.

• Job seekers are well acquainted with their own skills, abilities, and interests. Azrin says members should be able to articulate verbally and in writing at least five skills and abilities that they would bring to a job.

• Job seekers have considerable knowledge of the employers they wish to approach.

• Job seekers follow a particular pattern in the way they conduct their research.

The Alumni Career Services Job Club meets each Friday in Room 380 of the Student Services Building from 2-4 p.m. In addition, various professionals are invited to Job Club to communicate their expertise in anything from job search strategies to financial advice.

(Check out the Web site at www.alumni.utah.edu/career and click on “Job Club” to see a line-up of events.