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From HPAlumnipedia

...(Lee Hecht Harrison) Career Centers and Other Agencies

From the HPAlumnipedia (www.hpalumnipedia.com) on Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 06:57 • Page last modified: 12/12/2007

HPAlumnipedia > Leaving HP > Leaving: LHH

Worthwhile

Alan Silverstein, Fall 2002:

I think HP was generous in buying us each three months of free career counseling, and job search training and help, from LHH. (Note: The details of this service differed between 2001 and 2002 layoffs, I'm relating my own experience.) You could wait up to 30 days to start the "LHH clock", and thereafter you could use the LHH center for three months. After your time was up, you were still welcome to attend weekly "brownbag networking" sessions and monthly social/networking gatherings, at least in Fort Collins, but you lost all other services.

Since I was busy I waited a while to sign up. Then I started attending sessions without expecting much, just to see what I could learn. I also signed up for a single one-on-one session with a consultant, and deferred doing any others "until I had something to work on," specifically, a resume. I procrastinated this for nearly two months!

Well while your mileage certainly will vary, I'm here to tell you that the LHH folks are (or at least in Fort Collins in 2002, were) excellent, and that the time you spend at the center can be very valuable -- though it's definitely a "self help course". The more I got to know the consultants, the more impressed I was with their backgrounds, skills, and advice. They helped me put together a decent business card, resume, and biographical sketch, which I chose to assemble under my personal website. (Although later, based on good advice about identity theft, I took them back off and said "upon request" instead.) I also took just about every seminar and mini-module offered, and I found them worth my time.

Steven Andersen, Feb 2004:

We received the word from Lee Hecht Harrison (HP's outplacment career counseling firm) that they are closing the Roseville LHH career center in mid-February. The LHH representative mentioned that they are also closing the other LHH "HP career centers" in Cupertino, Houston, etc. ...Apparently HP has funded far more LHH outplacement assistance than the average company that works with LHH. Come mid-February we will be using the much smaller LHH office in Sacramento.

Attitude

Alan Silverstein, Fall 2002:

I heard from some people that they were disappointed in LHH because it was "just platitudes," or because the consultants didn't actually write their resumes for them. My take on this is that career/job introspection, preparation, and search is a self-driven occupation. The LHH centers are there to help, not to own your problems. (Although there are other agencies (see below) who will gladly take your money and perhaps offer more individual or comprehensive services.)

Furthermore, as someone wrote recently, "Every day you can either make excuses or make calls." Attitude matters a lot. Even if you are not an extrovert like me, you can choose to see the whole process either as a pain or as a fun game (or both...) It's foreign, it's challenging, but it's still a form of engineering -- it's problem solving, but in a whole new space -- well, unless you already have a lot of marketing/consulting experience!

One-On-One Sessions

Alan Silverstein, Fall 2002:

Unlike the people WFR'd in 2001, we got as many sessions as we wanted with LHH consultants during our three months. I urge you to take advantage of this, and with different consultants too. It's OK to visit with them to talk about life, the universe, and everything, even if you don't have specific task you'd like to accomplish, such as finishing a resume. I discovered the consultants have a lot of hidden experiences and skills in "life coaching" and are prepared to be helpful in more than the obvious ways. The consultants can also offer you practice sessions, such as interviewing or doing a network meeting.

Shoulds

Alan Silverstein, Fall 2002:

Finding myself in the fortunate position of not having to hunt immediately for more income, when I started at LHH I figured it would be "just for fun." I quickly learned a number of things I "should" do...

• Only 25% of white collar jobs are found through "applicant pools" and 70% are found through "known candidates", so keep your network alive, don't become invisible.

• Have good answers ready for questions like, "what are you up to?" and, "what are your plans?"

• Never turn down an offer to help you, always find some way to take advantage of other people wanting to help (and many do).

• Never tell anyone you are on a paid sabbatical or you are not interested in working for a while, it makes them jealous and/or crosses you off their mental "needs help" list.

• It takes one month of job searching for each $10K of annual income you want to replace, so start planting seeds immediately.

• Don't get complacent, or later you will suffer.

Taking all these lessons to heart, I reluctantly "got more serious" about my time at the LHH center. This did not make me happy, only stressed out, because while I was learning a lot, I was also busy, worried, and emotionally conflicted. I felt bad for not enjoying my free time more, yet guilty for not living up to my own high aspirations for genius-level creation or location of new careers or jobs.

Thanks to some of the LHH consultants, after a while I became more aware of my fears and expectations. ("Expectations are resentment in training.") I learned to be patient, to give myself "permission" to take the process slower and have more fun each day, and to practice surrendering to infinite possibilities. It's a real balancing act, even zen-paradoxical in some ways. Nothing good happens unless you make progress, yet it's not worth stressing out over the details or the rate. Your job is to create options and find doors, yet there are so many doors, and you want to choose wisely which one you push open and go through...

Other Agencies

Alan Silverstein, Fall 2002:

At LHH I was advised to avoid "employee-pays" job/career agents (headhunters). Other discussion I've seen has supported this, although meanwhile some friends have had generally favorable results with, say, MacKenzie Scott. I also learned to distinguish between "contingency" and "retained" agencies. Although these types don't matter so much to the employee, they do establish a context for the type of support you might expect.

Curt Gowan, Dec 2006:

There are lots of people who pretend to be headhunters, but are actually trying to charge you thousands of dollars to access the "hidden job market."

HPAA members report that paying someone by the hour specifically to coach you and help you with your resume can be money very well spent – but you should never pay anyone thousands of dollars in advance to get you a job.

• Here are links to articles that members have suggested. "What's the difference between career marketing companies, headhunters, employment agencies, temporary help services, executive counseling services, and job listing services?" http://www.hpalumnipedia.com/wiki/Companies_involved_in_job_hunting

• If you are considering hiring a careeer consultant, be sure to use the techniques for evaluating a company or opportunity elsewhere in the HPAlumnipedia.