Pinpointing Options, Making Inroads: POAC Charts the Course

By Mark R. Smith, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The numbers have shot up of late at the Professional Outplacement Assistance Center (POAC). When that happens, Steve Gallison knows that there's some unrest in the hiring ranks.
Gallison, the long-time director of POAC, said "We're getting from 50 to 55 people coming to our weekly seminars these days. Normally, that number is in the low 30s."
The uprising started "about six months ago," he said. "It doesn't look like its abating. We get from five to eight people registering on our web site or via phone every day, mostly by word of mouth."
And that is, by-and-large, the primary function of POAC: to work with applicants who have been working at their jobs for many years, "but have not made the time or necessarily made the effort to market themselves," Gallison said, adding, "We've taught about 80,000 Maryland citizens how to do that."

For the People
Established in 1992 after Gallison sought the approval of state government to establish the program in response to heavy layoffs within the executive, professional, technical and managerial communities - and to thwart the possibility of what could have been a bad case of "brain drain" in the state - POAC is one-stop facility that moved from Airport Square to Columbia Gateway a year ago.
It operates under the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation's Division of Workforce Development and serves under the umbrella of the Columbia Workforce Center, along with the Department of Occupational Rehabilitation Services, the Howard County Workforce Development program and some veteran's representatives.
"It's a comprehensive, one-stop solution to being unemployed," Gallison said.
Federally-funded POAC, he said, is "the oldest and only service of its type in the U.S." and has offered as a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) "Best Practice" model. In fact, he and his staff frequently counsel the heads of DOL-referred programs.
Part of the reason for POAC's staying power is that "there seems to be a mismatch between the job seekers and employers today," he said.
"Today, there is access to many job boards and recruitment firms, but we're still trying to find talent," Gallison said. "We think that's because the talent has not received training in job acquisition. They have all of the tools, but don't know how to put the tools together. We show them how to do that in our three-day program," which is called Jump Start.
"So our job," he said, "is to serve the business community while serving the individuals. Then their home jurisdictions do the follow up and provide further support."

Conduit to Success
Walt Townshend, CEO of the Baltimore Washington Corridor Chamber (BWCC), has been a liaison of Gallison's since POAC's founding. Townshend noted that, while employers are placing ads for employees in newspapers every day, the center "might have just who they need registered already."
He's seen it happen on many occasions. "I've had chamber members, board members and their family members go through the program and find gainful employment," Townshend said, adding that many employers/businesses have trouble writing job descriptions, for instance. "But POAC has programs that can provide samples or assistance in creating appropriate description."
Toby Bray and Jim Sebastiano can support Townshend's observations. Bray went through the program in 2002 and now runs Clarity Services in Towson, a consulting firm that focuses on aligning marketing sales and product development functions for the software and technology development concerns.
What really helped him, Bray said, was when the state finally started to realize that it has a large base of knowledge workers, such as those who toil in the technology or finance fields.
"What POAC has done is illustrate that their customers, who are people like me, have different kinds of needs than most job seekers," Bray said, "and they helped me rethink my approach to finding work. So I looked back at what I'd done and who I'd worked for, and that provided me the catalyst to start my own business. And it wasn't because I had to. It was because I wanted to."
Just as the ways of doing business evolve, so has the art of the job search. "There are many job seekers in the market who think that sending a rŽsumŽ to a human resources department or posting it on the Internet is the way to find a job," he said, "and it just isn't anymore."

New Doors Open
Sebastiano, a former executive with Baskin-Robbins, attended POAC's training class in 1996 and still teaches seminars for there for Gallison that concern self-employment. That ties in nicely with his present lot in life as a headhunter for franchisers.
When he went to POAC he was looking for a job for the first time and hadn't written a resume in 20 years.
"I needed some direction and went to Steve for the same reason everyone else does. That was when I realized that I had options (Gallison calls it becoming a "flexpert")," Sebastiano said, noting that his initial collaboration resulted in his taking a job with Sandler Systems, a sales training company, for about three years.
Then, upon Gallison's advice "to never work for anyone again," Sebastiano bought a Money Mailer franchise that he ran with his wife for 18 months before turning it over to her.
Today, he lives in South Carolina, "but I still go up to Maryland, partially because I appreciate what POAC did for me," he said. "Everyone takes away something different from POAC. For me, it was understanding the vast amount of opportunities in the business world.
"Steve talks about how to look for a job, but it's not just about getting a job with a company," Sebastiano said. "He goes way beyond that. He points out the various options are that we all have in life."

On the Agenda
Today, the staff at the center is not only busy assisting what Gallison deemed its "temporarily" burgeoning base of clients, but is now working on establishing a POAC Executive Network.
The roster is already at "25 people and growing," he said, noting that these individuals have all been "'chief'-something-or-another" - next comes marketing these people for jobs and consulting work statewide.
On recent project of note for the center was reviewing 300 resumes for the National Cancer Institute's recent conference in Ocean City. Dealing with the information overload "is worth it, because of the type of work these people do," he said.
Having made such headway with its worthy cause, why hasn't POAC attained a higher profile?
"This is kind of a stealth program," Gallison said. "We're a public institution and work on the good wishes of organizations like the BWCC, economic development concerns, workforce investment programs and similar concerns in the state. But it's noteworthy to know that, if we were a business, we'd have to expand."
Despite these trying times, he's seen enough economic cycles to think that better news lies on the horizon. "We're still helping to place people, even though the economy has turned down," he said. "People always need competent employees. And we know a lot of them."