Instant Interviews: 101 Ways to Get the Best Job of Your Life

Chapter 32. Forming Your Very Own Job Club

. . . And volunteering to be the program director!

Job clubs are informal groups that meet to discuss help-wanted things. Usually at members' homes one evening a week. The members exchange leads, talk about their interviews, and practice interviewing. Some have newsletters and even participate in job fairs.

As a lead source, many are excellent. The members are out and about every day and get job market intelligence you can't possibly find by yourself. And sooner. Members learn about jobs while they're hot. By the time they're publicized, they're cold and old.

The members are intensely into local hiring trends. While some are career candidates who interview for fun (whether they're working or not), most are displaced middle managers actively reinventing themselves for today's jobs. There are contests and other incentives.

But many job clubs are less than a waste of time. There's a large subculture of people who (for a variety of reasons) dwell rather than do. Many are highly educated and have been effectively unemployed for years. If education without an occupation could make you successful, I'd never have taken the bar exam.

Get enough of them in a job club, and you can charitably substitute the word job for social. So ask about who's there before you invest interview time. Interviewing is not a team sport. It's an individual athletic competition.

Please run from those kinds of associations—whatever they're called. We're building your confidence ...