Where do all the unemployed people go?

After a random meeting with several would be Masters of Social work students in an intake meeting at UT, I helped for a thrice weekly GRE study group. At our first meeting I realized after listening to these strangers throw common names around, that they all knew each other from somewhere. It then became clear, they were all unemployed.l They were part of a huuuuge unemployment club called launch pad austin. So newly employed savvy Susie joined said club. Which is how I found myself at 9:30 am on Friday morning taking notes about the secret ins and outs of marketing yourself online, while eating a banana and trying to absorb bucket loads of info.

The club meets at the Monarch Events Center in the Lincoln Village Shopping center. They have many mini clubs, worksheets, motivational tips and tools, which basically just tell people to get up off their butt and DO something. Volunteer, join a club, get a hobby. Hell yes, I say! My brain feels much better not turning to mush. What I learned? If you use Linked In. Well...USE it. Make numerous connections. Update your profile. Change your resume. Tweet the hell out of twitter, hash tags and all. Make face book private. Get your resume up on the web . Google yourself.

I ended up hours later in a free resume workshop produced by Workforce Austin. once a month on Fridays a bunch of passionate unemployed folks, who were waaay too qualified to be sitting int hat office, rolled in to hear very nice woman talk about the rights and wrongs of resume writing. Then we were paired up. In my group...Several dell superstars, a marketing whiz and a super smart computer programmer. They had three page long resumes, with templates from the 90's. they were too smart, too qualified to be sitting in a room with me I was easily the youngest person there.

It made me think. not just about how sad it is that these uber qualified people had been let go recently, but also about how there was no one in the room younger then 35. What do the 20 somethings think? Do they live off of unemployment? Do they take another 8 /hr job until they figure it out? Were they somehow taught these skill sin school? Or do they all work steadily, but in jobs I wont allow myself to fall back on? Or are they all working normal, adult , well paying jobs-- and I am still in the dark?

I am going to knock out a bad ass resume in the next few days and build a bad ass linked in and twitter page. Really bad ass. You will want to hire me. I'm just not sure what I want to be hired for. Hopefully that knowledge will be aquired soon.

Next blog.... Why I turned down my first Internship.