Job-Hunt Tip From the '30s: Make In-Person Connections

In 1938, Lillian Brownstein Chodash had already spent 15 months looking for work. One morning she rode the elevator to the top of an office building in her Jersey City, N.J., neighborhood and started knocking on doors. She worked her way down nine stories, fielding rejection after rejection.

From the Wall Street Journal | Aug 21, 2011 | By JOE LIGHT

"I was in heaven," says the 91-year-old Ms. Chodash, who now lives Boynton Beach, Fla.

How Ms. Chodash and her contemporaries found work during the Great Depression seems a far cry from the job hunters of 2011. Back then, the search was done in public and could be physically demanding. Some of the most poignant images from the 1930s are of throngs lined up to apply for jobs.

Outside of occasional job fairs, today's unemployed are virtually invisible. That's because job seekers are already in isolation, surfing the Internet and online job sites for work.

Interviews with historians and Depression-era job seekers suggest that the formula for finding work hasn't changed much. Then, as now, those who relentlessly work at making personal connections have better luck landing jobs.

A growing body of research is showing how today's job seekers are often getting it wrong. They are firing off resumes by the hundreds, trying to make far-flung electronic connections before focusing on their closest, physical-world relationships.

The unemployment rate peaked at 24.9% in 1933, according to the U.S. Labor Department, while unemployment stood at 9.1% in July. Still, the jobless rate has stubbornly hovered above 8.5% for more than two years.

While surveys show that personal connections are a primary source of hires, today's job seekers devote little time to their networks: Only 9% of their job search is spent contacting friends and relatives to find work, while 51% is devoted to finding ads and sending out applications, according to a paper presented at the Brookings Institution this March by Princeton economist Alan Krueger and Columbia Business School's Andreas Mueller.

Over time, job seekers tend to get more discouraged and actually spend less time searching, said Mr. Mueller. "We found that the job search was a very depressing activity. They're sad when they start out, but the longer they are unemployed, the more depressing the episode of job search is," he said.

Meanwhile, about 27.5% of external hires come through a referral, more than any other source, according to staffing consultant CareerXroads.

During the Depression in Philadelphia, almost 55% of manufacturing workers found jobs through personal connections and another 35% simply by personal initiative such as knocking on doors, says University of Pennsylvania history professor Walter Licht, who analyzed interviews of 1930s-era job seekers. "Personal and family connections were critical," he says.

Brunette Crawford Nelms found a job in 1931 as a fourth-grade teacher in Hickory Flat, Miss., after a cousin spoke to the hiring committee on her behalf, says Ms. Nelms, who is now 101 years old.

Personal connections are also what worked for modern-day job seeker Nancy Preyor-Johnson, who lost her job in June as a communications coordinator. That same day, she broadcast her need for work on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, resulting in a deluge of potential openings and offers to help her make connections, the 31-year-old says.

On Monday, she plans to start work at a San Antonio nonprofit, a job she found through an acquaintance who saw her tweet. "If you don't get the word out that you're looking, people won't know and can't help," she says.

If a job hunter didn't leave the home during the Depression, they were hard pressed to find work. For today's job seekers, the hunt often takes place in isolation.

Ken Peltonen used to rebuild airplane engines in Washington State and has been out of work for eight months. The 61-year-old says he rarely sees friends or interacts with the outside world other than through his computer.

Mr. Peltonen tried visiting offices directly to drop off his résumé, but thought it was a "waste of gas," he says. Now, he sends out several applications a week to online openings. So far, his personal network hasn't yielded any fruit: "They're all trying to hold onto their own jobs," he says.

In 1932, Bert Bernheim would walk into the small town of Lexington, Miss., every day asking every neighbor or passerby along the way if they had any work, says the 97-year-old. Mostly, the jobs amounted to minor chores, like pulling up tree stumps, that paid less than $1 per day.

"I tried to get a regular job, but that was impossible," says Mr. Bernheim, who now lives in Memphis.

While Mr. Bernheim says he was willing to take any work he could find, today's job seekers seem more picky. According to an analysis of surveys of 6,000 job seekers, the minimum wages that the unemployed are willing to accept are very close to their previous salary and drop little over time, says Mr. Mueller. That could help explain in part why they have so much trouble finding work, he says.

After Helen Hart, now 101 years old, and her husband lost their jobs in 1932, they moved to her father's farm near Enid, Okla. He agreed to give them room and board as long as they worked at his hog farm, she says. From there, the couple found a job working at an uncle's farm. "People complain today. They don't know what work is," Ms. Hart says.