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How to help your friends' job search.

Whether you are employed or not you have to be aware that the unemployment rate is high. Over 8% looking as if it will hit 9 soon. But that means that over 90% of us are employed. How do you help the people you know who are looking for a job? How can you be their personal hero? First of all be a friend, be a real friend. One of the things that happens so often is that co-workers suddenly start treating the people who have been laid off as if they had some contagious disease.

Well they don't. They are still the people you knew and they would love a call or any mail from you. No one really should expect that a friend can provide a job -- that's really very rare. But what a friend can do is to really help the job seeker to be more effective as a job seeker and to get through that terrible time when you are going through all this rejection from all these employers trying to get to that one yes to the right job.

So what should you do besides being a friend? Ask the person what do they really need? What can you do to help them? Offer specific help that you think you can do well. Perhaps you really know a lot about their strengths and you can remind them of them. Maybe you are good at grammar and spelling and you could look at their resume. Maybe you are a big picture thinker and you could really look at what kind of ideas do you have that they might look for in terms of work? Maybe you can help them when they are preparing for that interview.

Then think about the connections you know. Are there people you know who might be in companies your friend is interested in? Are there people you know who might be in fields your friend wants to look at and learn more about? Make those connections. Do that electronically. Do that by telephone. Make the connections. Offer them some fun once in awhil. There are a lot of things you can do that are very inexpensive. You can take him out for coffee. You can suggest a free activity that both of you know you like. You can call him up, you can send him a funny joke, you can do a lot of things but remember they need to have a real life outside of their job search. You don't need to focus only on their job search with them but you can give them a break from it as well. Most important when you are doing anything like this with a friend keep your commitments. Don't offer more than you can really do for the person.