Looking for a job? Join the club

CHESAPEAKE

A round of good news got the Thursday evening gathering off to a buoyant start.

One member announced she'd landed a job as a marketing director after an 18-month search. Another had become a part-time consultant for a vineyard.

Then it was Elisabeth Peterson's turn.

Not much going on with her, said Peterson, 48, of Virginia Beach, a former operations director at USAA whose job with the insurance company ended in September.

She still was working to turn her brainstorm into reality - a nonprofit foundation, Stay Smart Now, to help kids resist the pressure to ignore academics. She'd talked to a local company that was considering sponsoring the foundation.

"Elisabeth, that's huuuge," the founder of the group, Laurie Baggett, interjected.

Peterson shared both her enthusiasm and apprehension.

"It's so not me," she said, "but it seems to have fallen into my lap."

Then Baggett got tough: "Are you going to start blogging about it?"

Welcome to the It Factor Job Club, which dispenses cheerleading, prodding and practical advice to steer unemployed and under employed people onto new career paths. It has drawn recognition from the city of Chesapeake, and a member's successful job search was featured this month on ABC's "Good Morning America."

The interlude with Peterson typified the club's philosophy: Social networking and other online attention-getters are a must. Finding a standard business job isn't.

"They have opened up my eyes to great opportunities beyond corporate America," said Doug Huggins, 50, of Virginia Beach.

He was an in-house trainer for USAA. Huggins hopes to start his own training business and get into voice-overs to capitalize on his booming baritone.

"It's so much more than finding employment," Huggins said. "This job club really has the ability to reignite your passion for what a job and a career can be."

Baggett, 30, is a work-force consultant from Chesapeake. She launched the group last fall after Tory Johnson, the workplace contributor to "Good Morning America," put out a nationwide call for local job clubs.

And how did she come up with the name?

"In order to stand out in this job market, you have to uncover what makes you unique," Baggett said. "We all want to hear: 'She's it - just the person we have been looking for,' or 'He's it - just the solution we need to turn our profit up.' "

The group, which numbers about 15, meets weekly at Bean There Cafe in the Greenbrier section of Chesapeake. There's no charge for the 10-week session, except for the coffee.

Members don't have to live in Chesapeake. A handful in the current group are former USAA employees. But Baggett and the group's co-leader, Michelle Pippin, try to collect a group of people from a variety of backgrounds, such as investment planning, bookkeeping and graphic design.

The idea, in part, is to encourage a cooperative, not competitive, spirit. It has worked, they say. Members freely share tips and cheer one another's successes. When one recently complained that his resume had gotten no response, Huggins volunteered a computerized voice-over to get him noticed: "You want to do it? Come to my house, and we'll set it up."

The emphasis is on "accountability - almost like Weight Watchers for a job search," said Pippin, 32, a small-business coach from Moyock, N.C.

Most weeks, the members take turns reviewing their progress and problems.

The club has covered such topics as interviewing techniques and resume-writing and has heard from guests including recruiters and an image consultant.

Of the first group of 13, Baggett said, "everyone ended up landing" - though not necessarily in conventional jobs. One went into business with her husband; another went back to school.

The club has received an unusual endorsement from the city: Chesapeake's Economic Development Department prominently includes a link to It Factor on its home page. The department has forwarded job leads to the club and plans to work with it to put on a job fair next year, said its director, Steven Wright.

Johnson, from "Good Morning America," also praised It Factor, calling it among the most successful of the couple of dozen job clubs that have sprouted since her call to action. Much of the credit, she said, goes to Baggett.

"What she brings is just this unrivaled enthusiasm and extraordinary passion," Johnson said in an interview, "and that is even more important than having any kind of background as a career coach. When you're around someone like that every week, you can't help but snap out of your own funk."

At one point during a session this month, Baggett exulted: "You all are doing something. This is excellent. I'm loving this."

But she also talked tough, reproving a member who said he hadn't yet signed onto Facebook.

"You're killing me, dude," she said.

For Baggett, social networking is a crucial part of the search. "We can reach out to people that we never had access to in our lives," she said.

Think of LinkedIn as a business conference, Twitter as a cocktail party and Facebook as a high school reunion, Baggett advised. "That's how you've got to behave."

Without that insistence, said Jennifer Taylor, 27, of Suffolk, she would never have gotten on Twitter. And through Twitter, she learned of an opening that she snagged last month, as an executive assistant at New American Mortgage in Virginia Beach.

The club provided something else for Jennifer Nixon, 39, of Chesapeake - a shot of confidence. That, she said, helped propel her into a new job in September as a quality assurance specialist for VSD LLC in Virginia Beach, a government contractor.

"I felt like I was really contributing and helping out different people in the group, and that reminded me that I did have usable skills," Nixon said. "Just because I didn't find a job yet didn't mean I was not worthy."

Karen Clements, 44, of Virginia Beach was the member highlighted by Johnson on "Good Morning America." This month, Clements began work at Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia as food and funds drive coordinator.

Clements' success, Johnson said, underscored the practical benefits of charitable work. Clements, a former USAA administrator, had volunteered there for more than four years and encouraged participation from colleagues and friends.

Community service, in fact, is a requirement for It Factor members. Aside from expanding networking opportunities, Baggett said, it helps job-seekers psychologically.

"When you give to others, you feel better about yourself," she said. "A lot of times, they're hopeless and qualified. They've got to be hopeful and qualified. One way to get up their hopes is to go out and serve someone who is more unfortunate than them."

The club hasn't helped just the members. Baggett recently signed on as managing director for WaggleForce, Johnson's national network of job clubs. She will help train local leaders like herself. Her work at It Factor will continue.

The opportunity taught her a lesson that she might add to her playbook.

"I wasn't even dreaming big enough," Baggett said.

Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com