Job Searching

Almost as soon as Guang-Yu Xu was laid off from his engineering post at a Silicon Valley Internet company last month, he visited LinkedIn.com and updated his job status from "current" to "past." Through their interconnected contacts, he soon heard from headhunter Robert Greene, one of more than 530,000 recruiters trolling the professional networking site for job candidates. Within a few weeks, Xu had three offers. He started at Mint.com, a personal finance website, two weeks ago.

In this crummy job market, Stephanie Yang figures any little advantage will help. Even double eyelids. So on a cold January morning, the 21-year-old college senior walked into one of dozens of plastic surgery clinics here and plopped down $730, the equivalent of one year's tuition. An hour later she came out with two big bandages over her eyes. When she removed the dressing the next day, Yang was aghast at her red, puffy eyelids.

Even in choppy waters, recruiters are still angling for the perfect job candidate. But employers don't have the time or resources to sift through all the applications churned up by the recession. California's unemployment rate hit 10.5% in February -- the highest in nearly 26 years -- while the national rate stands at 8.1%. To boost your chances of getting plucked, you'll need a top-notch resume.

Amber Medina has been looking for a job for five months, ever since her father, a metal-worker, was laid off and her mom began struggling to support the family of seven on her $15-per-hour job. But the 17-year-old has yet to find anything permanent, despite sending out resumes and visiting dozens of potential employers, including the clothing stores Old Navy and PacSun. "I'm looking for any job to help my parents," she said.

Jeanne Eslinger Branthover leans in and listens intently as a laid-off Wall Street executive describes how she's coping in a miserable job market. The woman, blindsided by her layoff from a big investment bank, tells how she puts on a business suit every day and diligently commutes into Manhattan to look for work. "Good girl, good girl," Branthover says. "At the end of the day, things are going to get better. You're going to get employed. It's just when, and don't give up on it."

Their savings in shambles from the economic downturn, jobless seniors are dusting off their briefcases and trying to head back to work. Many, like Jim Mitchell, a 63-year-old former sales executive, are finding a merciless job market where decades of experience aren't necessarily an asset. The Long Beach resident rises daily before dawn and dresses neatly in business attire to keep himself motivated.

It's been a grim year for layoffs and job cuts with nine straight months of job losses, worsening in September when U.S. employers handed out the most pink slips of any month since 2003. All told, 760,000 people have lost their jobs this year. The picture probably won't grow brighter any time soon. The job outlook for the near future is dismal, according to John Challenger, chief executive of the job outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

With Christmas fast approaching, Molly Oswaks has checked out stores in the Grove shopping center, boutiques in Larchmont Village and shops along 3rd Street. All across Southern California and the country, the search is on -- not for the perfect gift but for holiday jobs. And the news isn't good with financial uncertainty in the air. A sophomore at New York University from Hancock Park, Oswaks took this semester off and started looking for job openings in September.

Michael Westbrook, a fresh-faced 22-year-old with dreams as big as his native Texas, is standing in a chilly corridor at the Las Vegas Hilton, his future, as well as an empty ballroom, spilling out before him. He has spent nearly a quarter of his life in radio -- long enough to know he doesn't want to spend the rest of it doing traffic and weather. "I'm trying to get a minor league play-by-play job," Westbrook says earnestly.

Dan Nye landed a job as chief executive of a hot Silicon Valley company without even dusting off his resume. Nye was an executive vice president at Advent Software Inc. when Reid Hoffman, chairman of social-networking company LinkedIn Corp., came calling. Hoffman hadn't found him through a headhunter or a classifieds site but through LinkedIn's vast who-knows-whom online network. Through the whole process, Nye said, "I was never asked to produce a resume, and I was never asked for a reference."