Thank you to everyone who came to our first Jobnob Happy Hour yesterday at District Wine Bar.  We had an overwhelming response with over 300 people coming out and two news crews: one from ABC News and one from NBC News.  You can watch the NBC videos “Will Work for….. Free”  here:

And here is a link to the ABC News clip  “People Stand in Line to Work for Free” http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/business&id=6802255

Now that we know that there is plenty of demand for this event, we will be doing a monthly Jobnob Happy Hour in the Bay Area- you can check out the website for more details at www.jobnob.com/happy-hour.  The best thing to do is sign up for the list and we’ll send out an email each month with details of the date and time.  We’re not sure quite yet when and where the next one will be, but it will be in approximately a month.

For this first one, the number of people who showed up was more than we expected for our first event, so we apologize to anyone who had to wait in line (or anyone who showed up but didn’t come in because you didn’t want to wait in line).  We learned some lessons from this first one that we will implement for the next ones.  The first is that we need a bigger venue, so hopefully there will be no more waiting in line next time and it won’t be quite so crowded.  Also, we got feedback that the start ups weren’t doing a good job of buying the job seekers drinks, so we’ll try to fix that too.  And lastly, both job seekers and companies want to see the list of who is coming online before and after the event.  We didn’t get people’s permission this time around to publish the list, so we didn’t want to suddenly do that.  But next time we’ll figure out a way where people can see who is coming from our website.  Of course if you attended and have any other feedback, we’d love to hear it.  You can use the contact form on the website to send us a message or send a message to contact at jobnob dot com.  Thanks again everyone and we are looking forward to the next one!

It’s no secret that these are tough times and that it’s hard to get a job.  So we at Jobnob were thinking about what we could do to play our part in making things better.  Because we are invovled with jobs and careers, we’ve been talking to a lot of unemployed people lately and we noticed that we kept hearing the same thing over and over again.  People who have been out of work for a month or more have searched all the online job boards and submitted resumes.  They’ve worked their personal and professional networks.  They’ve spent hour after hour, day after day trying to track down leads on new jobs.  But after a certain point, they still haven’t gotten a job (let alone an interview) and they aren’t sure what else to do.  And need we mention that looking for a job is a lonely business.  It can be depressing to send off resumes and never get an answer back.  And while at the beginning of a job search you can fill your days, it’s hard after you’ve been looking for a few months to do that every day all day.  And there is the mounting fear that the white space on your resume since your last job is growing larger and larger. If you finally make it to an interview and the interviewer says “What have you been doing since your last job?”  you can’t exactly answer “Looking for a job, dumb ass!”.  So what is an unemployed person to do?

Enter the Jobnob Happy Hour!  This Thursday, May 7th at 5:00pm at District (216 Townsend, SOMA) we are having a Jobnob Networking Happy Hour to bring together unemployed people in the Bay Area with start ups.  See in this economy, it’s not just the job seekers who are having a rough time- so are the start ups.  It’s particularly hard to get funding right now which means that many start ups are either cash strapped or are just really conserving cash.  That makes it very hard to hire people to do all of the work that needs to get done (and of course there is a lot of work!).  So we thought that we would bring these two groups of people in need together and see if we could benefit everyone.  So what’s the deal?  The start ups are going to buy job seekers drinks and the job seekers are going with the understanding that they are willing to donate at least 5 hours a week to a start up.  So come and have a glass of wine and jobnob with other Bay Area start ups and job seekers.  Please RSVP online if you are coming at www.jobnob.com/happy-hour

So why would an educated, experienced job seeker want to work for free?  Well, first of all, there’s that issue of the white space on a person’s resume.  It really is hard to explain to an interview what you’ve been doing, and if someone is working with a start up then they can keep their resume up to date and hopefully gain some skills and learn something in the process.  Also it helps to grow their network and keep them connected.  Just having a reason to get up and get dressed one day a week instead of staying in pajamas all day long can be good for the psyche. And of course we are hoping that if a start up gets funded that they would be able to hire and pay the volunteer.

So if you are a start up who needs more hands on deck or if you are a job seekers who wants to try something new, come to District on Thursday at 5pm and jobnob!  PLEASE RSVP ONLINE AT JOBNOB HAPPY HOUR