Back at Work: News and Reflections on the Long Run

First, the News.

Registration is now open for the Emerging Economy Forum on Careers in Green Design and Construction. We’ll be featuring a dialogue with Dan Jay, CFO at Christner; Jason Loyet, Founder of Clean Power Design; Marjorie Melton, President of M3 Engineering; and Tony Ruebsam, Project Manager with SM Wilson & Co. A representative of Alberici / Vertegy will also participate on the panel.

This forum will be held at Alberici Headquarters at I-170 and Page on Tuesday, September 15, from 8 until 10 am.  A tour of Alberici’s Platinum LEED facility will be available for all who are interested after the program.  Due to space limitations, early registration is recommended at postmaster@greaterstlouisworks.org

The Sept 2 Emerging Economy Forum on Careers in Plant and Pharmaceutical Sciences is at capacity.  If you have not yet registered and would like to attend, let me know and I will put you on the waiting list for notification on Tuesday, Sept. 1.

Also, please note the following special broadcast and Bounce Back Talent Group meetings:

Sept 13, Sunday, 11:00 am

Special feature report on our June 23 Start-Up Connection will be broadcast on KDNL ABC Channel 30 following This Week with George Stephanopolos

Online: www.therisetothetop.com

Mobile Phones: mobile.therisetothetop.com

Episode also features an exclusive interview with Maxine Clark (Build-A-Bear)

Sept 14, Monday, 6-8:30pm

BounceBackStL for IT  Talent: “One Year Out: what we know works.”

Washington University West Campus Conference Center
7425 Forsyth Blvd., Clayton, MO 63105

Sept 21, Monday,  6-8:30pm

BounceBackStL Talent Workshop and Networking Event

“Your Job Search Tool Box: what you need to be successful in your job search.”

Opinions  Incorporated
716 Geyer Ave., St Louis, MO 63104 (in Soulard)

Follow Bounce Back all the time at www.bouncebackstl.net and on Twitter @stljobangels.

Reflections on the Long Run

Not being a runner myself, it’s easy to get a bit irked when my spouse bounds out of bed at 5 am every Saturday morning to go spend half a day in marathon training with the St. Louis Runners’ Club.  Does he really have to make so much noise in the kitchen before he leaves?

I was searching for a more positive attitude before I got up last Saturday when Tom Braun and Nancy Shoup and Ruth Markham came to mind.  They are three of the Bounce Back members who landed jobs in recent weeks, and while I used to think of them as professionals- in-transition, I realize now that they are actually distance runners.

Tom joined Bounce Back when he got laid off last winter, and between that time and last week (when he secured a new position), I never saw him that he wasn’t smiling — or close to it.  There were many moments of inner despair, no doubt, but you just knew when you looked at Tom that he was going to be a winner.

And every single time I saw Nancy at one or another Bounce Back event, she was always dressed-for-success.  Always.  It appeared to everyone around her that she was consistently on her game.

And what about Ruth, who made untold numbers of trips into the Deer Creek Career Center in Maplewood from her home in O’Fallon, working patiently with Frank Alaniz to polish all the resumes that were submitted for our Talent Portfolio?  You never heard Ruth whine about having to get up too early in the morning.

The unanswerable question is this: did Tom and Nancy and Ruth (and Brian and Elizabeth and Karl and Mark, who shared their experiences at the last Bounce Back meeting) already have the juice to finish the marathon before the sounding of the starting gun (the cursed ‘end date’), or did they develop that ability as a result of month after month of ‘training’ in the uphill job market of the economic downturn?

We’ll never really know, but we do know that they now possess one of the most important skills for the emerging economy: resilience.  Labor market experts say that churn and change and restructuring will be with us for some time to come, meaning that bouncing back will not be a single event, but a way of life for the most successful among us. That may not necessarily require changing jobs many times, but it will likely mean adapting to new roles and responsibilities on a frequent basis.

The outplacement folks say that interviewers now commonly ask, “What have you been doing with your time since you were last employed?”  I suspect that ‘training for the marathon’ would not be a good answer, unless, of course, it’s literally the case.  But, thinking figuratively, that is one of the activities that makes our Bounce Back members all the better prepared for what’s ahead.

This partly explains why the new Bounce Back St. Louis brochure will use the tagline “Partners for a Resilient Workforce.”  In the long run (pardon the pun), resilience is what it’s all about.

We’ll see you at the next water station.

Blair

Start Up Connection Featured on "The Rise To The Top"

The KDNL-ABC Channel 30 TV Show “The Rise To The Top” with host David Siteman Garland will feature the June 23rd Start Up Connection. For more about the show go to www.therisetothetop.com or on mobile phones go to mobile.therisetothetop.com. This segment will also feature an exclusive interview with Maxine Clark of Build-A-Bear.

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