While younger professionals might not realize it, a common element of job hunting in decades past involved joining dedicated “networking groups” where people would band together to share job hunting ideas, review progress, access moral support, and get direct feedback from their peers around their job hunting approach.
Back in the eighties and nineties, for example, there was a very popular group called “Forty Plus” that had chapters all over the country and that was relied on by thousands of older job hunters as a source of peer support and inspiration. On top of this, there were also dozens of private and church-sponsored groups in every major city devoted to helping people who were unemployed — and I myself ran such a group called the S.A.F.E. Club (Serious About Finding Employment) for over 15 years for those who might remember it. Heck, even after social media took off, there were still many online groups like Linked:Seattle that tried to rally like-minded people together to help one another with job hunting and other types of business endeavors.
Interestingly, however, almost all of these groups seemed to utterly disappear after the year 2010 or so. They all just sort of … fizzled out. Whether this was due to the rise of social media, increased demands on peoples’ time, changing job market demographics, or other factors is hard to pin down exactly. But it was a stark and sudden change given how prominent such groups had been in decades past. During my initial 15-20 years in this field, I could easily point somebody to dozens of groups that existed to support job hunters and help combat the isolation of the unemployment process. Since that time, I’ve literally had almost no referrals I could even make.
But here’s the kicker. In the past few months, I’ve seen signs that such groups might be making a comeback. As just one example, I’ve had multiple clients inform me of a group called Never Search Alone that is spinning up volunteer chapters all over the country. I also came across another organization called the Open Water Group with a similar charter — and recently spoke to another private group called One Connection Away that is geared toward Pacific NW Marketing professionals and that has recently been resurrected by its founder, Kelly Evans, after a bit of a break.
Going forward, I’ll be curious to see if this renaissance of job search support groups continues, given the many positive benefits they can potentially provide to those in transition. If you happen to know of any such groups not mentioned above — or are a job hunter who might be interested in joining such a group — please don’t hesitate to let me know!
