One of the most unusual career centers in the country helped fuel the boom that sent Silicon Valley to the top of the high-tech world. Now in its 25th year, the Career Action Center is poised to take local companies and workers into the new millennium.
Despite receiving national recognition for its quarter century of accomplishments--the center was recently announced as the winner of the 1999 David Packard Civic Entrepreneur Award--many local residents aren't even aware of this gem tucked away in their own backyard.
"We just know we're an untapped resource," said Terry Krivan, director of community services and fund development.
Two years ago the center packed up from its original Palo Alto site, where it was bursting at the seams, and moved into a building on Bubb Road in Cupertino. Although local residents may not have noticed the change, the larger location has allowed the center's reputation throughout the region to continue to grow. Over the 25 years, Career Action Center officials estimate they've helped more than 100,000 people.
The center holds dozens of classes on finding work. It also offers one of the most up-to-date, complete career information libraries in the country, thousands of job listings, online searches, and access to industry experts.
A capital campaign undertaken three years ago to help finance the move also financed the development of a website and an expansion of the center's online capabilities. It also helped fund a new section of the center devoted to self-employed workers who are launching their own businesses. All this, center officials said, is positioning them to help even more local residents in the future.
It all started in 1973 when five female entrepreneurs started the Resource Center for Women. The center provided career information for women who were entering or re-entering the work force. The business owners were careful to build relationships with both their clients and employers.
"We were in there talking to companies convincing them of this great resource," Krivan said. The result was not only more women being hired, but a budding bond between the center and the companies.
As a result of its focus, the nonprofit agency has become one of the most unusual career centers of its kind in the country, Krivan said. Only a few similar centers exist.
Companies have provided not only job listings, but money to finance the center, as well as expert volunteers. Employers also hire center staff to train their employees, and to help exiting employees find new jobs.
Although the center began by helping women specifically, men were never excluded, Krivan said. To reflect that, the center officially changed its name in 1988 to Career Action Center.
Something else happened in the '80s: The pendulum began to swing away from the earlier hiring boom to a period of restructuring and downsizing. Center officials found themselves trying to help people cope with the loss of jobs. Soon the agency shifted its focus from being just another place to find a job to an information hub where members could develop a career.
"We focused on helping people over their entire work-life span," Krivan said. "The center is all about helping people in the whole cycle of their careers."
The result was the development of two concepts specific to the Career Action Center: career self-reliance and workforce resilience. "Career self-reliance is a lifelong commitment to actively managing your work life and learning in a rapidly changing environment," the center's website states. The concept of workforce resilience is similar in that employees take responsibility for their own careers and career advancement, but they are also committed to continuing education and their company's success. The center teaches both concepts at local companies; Sun Microsystems has a center staff member onsite to train and counsel its employees.
"People are very interested today in meaningful work and work-life quality," Krivan said. Through its array of classes and resources, the center's mission is to help people achieve those goals, she said.
That mission is tailor-made for Brian Tompkins. His company had downsized, leaving him with six jobs. Like something out of a Dilbert comic strip, company officials theorized that since they were producing less there was less work to do; later they even cut pay by 10 percent.
Deciding enough was enough, he started looking for a new job. A family friend referred him to the Career Action Center. He took a free tour and signed up immediately. The cost to join is $75 for three months, $100 per year, or to add a counseling session, $145; day passes are available for $10. The one-time Sunnyvale resident, who only recently moved to Santa Clara, took a class about posting resumes on the Internet, and signed up for a resume consultation.
"I came out with an amazing resume," Tompkins said.
He then paid the center $30 an hour to find job listings for him on the Internet. He received lists of dozens of jobs, as well as more than two dozen job sites where he could post his resume.
"The best thing about the Career Action Center was they could do all the Internet searching for me," he said.
Tompkins said he wound up applying for approximately 400 positions, and was getting six messages a day on his home answering machine. Before interviews, he used the center's library to bone up on the industry and the companies he would be talking to.
By Christmas he had a new job as marketing manager in e-commerce for V Tech making $10,000 more a year than in his previous job.
Tompkins is so enthusiastic about how the center helped him, he says he promotes it to anyone around him who will listen.
"For someone who wants a job and is just starting out they really need to go to the Career Action Center," he said.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
