Brush up 'schmoozing' skills to get job

NEWS-STAR-A Lerner Newspaper By JACK BESS Staff Writer

Personal finance, April 16-17,1991

There they were: Over a dozen adults holding gaily colored bal. loons, setting out from the Westin Hotel to meet people, exchange business cards and do some serious networking.

People find this a little awkward at first, says Mel Schnapper, president of Successful Job Hunting, Inc. But it's an important exercise in his workshop, he says, because it helps people push post the psychological barriers that inhibit their schmoozing skills.

"In today's job market, you have to be very aggressive," he says. "Jobs don't go to the best qualified applicants but to the people with the best job hunting skills. "

Schnapper is to job hunting what Leo Buscaglia is to hugging. A resident of North Town, this employment guru has offered career coun-seling for over a decade and now holds eight-hour workshops around the country. His workshops are not anything like encounter groups, yet Schnapper does try to provide experiences that will make his instruction more immediate and vivid than the average how-to-job-hunt paper. back.

"Some people will come to the workshop 15, 20 minutes early, sit down and read the newspaper," he says. "I confront them. I tell them, 'There's somebody sitting behind you. They may know about the job you want. You're missing an oppor-tunity to talk to them.'

"In job hunting you've got to use every second. Everyone around us is a potential source for a job."

Much of the discussion in Schnapper's workshops focus on the 4(parental messages" that keep people from asserting themselves in the job search. When trying to con-tact a potential employer, many people will simply give up if they have called four or five times and the employer has never called back, he says. People don't want to be pushy. They think the employer will become angry if they continue to call.

Schnapper advises people to con-tinue calling until they get through or until the employer threatens to have them arrested for harassment. They never make that threat, he says. In fact, many employers will be very helpful, if only to make up for not returning the calls.

There are other difficult yet promising situations that the ag-gressive job seeker can turn around, he says, If someone has been laid off, Schnapper asks, w shouldn't they seek help from t person who let them go?

"It's an unpleasant situation and peoples' instincts tell them to stay, away from the place," he says. I tell them the opposite is true. Doesn't their former boss know people who might be able to hire them? I want someone who's been fired to go back to their boss and exploit that guilt. Guilt is a precious thing to exploit. "

Workshops include such exercises as identifying forgotten accomplishments, exchanging business card.; interviewing and negotiating for a higher salary.