Career switchers head back to class

Even before he was laid off, Jerry Dawson was considering a new career.

An industrial engineer for Qimonda, he was in one of those "midlife what-do-I-want-to-do-when-I-grow-up" self-assessments when he signed up for a landscaping design certificate program at the University of Richmond last September.

But what he had contemplated as "a Plan B" for early retirement blossomed into his own company, Imagine Landscape Design, after Qimonda shut down its memory-chip plant and his job "ended abruptly on Feb. 6."

If there's an upside to a down economy, it's the chance the recession is giving people to rethink their goals. Many, like Dawson, are heading back to school as they set off on a new career path that follows a long-held passion.

Others are retraining for jobs they hope will be more fulfilling and more recession-proof.

During his nine years as a mortgage banker, Jason Bazemore was in a career that had him doing "all the bad stuff you read about" that has ruined the economy, he said.

Now he's at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College studying to be a registered respiratory therapist. As a student therapist working in a hospital, his job is to help patients breathe -- and he finds it far more fulfilling than his old life as "basically a fancy sales rep."

The Reynolds program is so popular that all the slots are filled for this fall, and the college already has applications for sessions beginning in the fall of 2010 and 2011.

"The opportunity is there," said Nakia Austin, who is head of Reynolds' respiratory therapy program. "As soon as they graduate they already have a job."

Respiratory therapists work with a range of patients, but the need for more is growing primarily for one reason -- baby boomers are getting older, she said.

The 100 full-time students in the program this year range in age from 23 to 56, Austin said. One is a laid-off auto mechanic, others have left banking and finance careers, and there are "plenty from Qimonda," she said.

It costs about $8,500 for the four-semester program to become a certified respiratory therapist, with starting pay for graduates ranging from $42,000 to $47,000 for workweeks that are usually three 12-hour days. An additional two semesters are required to become a registered therapist.

Weighing how much time and money to invest in retraining can be a challenge for job seekers, say career counselors at area universities.

"People have to take stock of themselves," said Sue Story, director of the University Career Center for Virginia Commonwealth University.

She advises that they be realistic about their skills and background in assessing whether they want to train for a career simply based on job prospects.

There may be jobs in the health field, she noted, "but a lot of people are not suited for that kind of work."

She and her colleagues have been fielding many calls from jobless alumni and others seeking advice. They've also given résumé writing sessions at area libraries to help people who haven't had to write one in decades.

"It's a really tough time for everybody," Story said.

She recommends networking, including online social sites such as Facebook. "I think it's the only way to get a job," she said.

That's the advice Leslie Stevenson, director of UR's Career Development Center, also gives. She says people should let "anybody and everybody" in their social and professional circle know that they're looking for work.

With competition for jobs so intense, employers get overwhelmed by the volume of applications they're receiving, she said. A recommendation from someone they know helps them sift through those stacks of résumés.

Going back to school can be a way to network as well as learn new skills.

That's what Sarah Van Dam discovered in July when she took a one-week intensive workshop to get a Certificate of Fundraising and Development through UR's School of Continuing Studies.

She's not changing careers because of the recession. She said she wants to find work that will "be meaningful and make a difference."

"I like the whole idea of raising money for a good cause," she said.

She has degrees in art education and interior design from VCU, and she had worked full-time as a designer for 12 years. She switched to volunteer work while her two children were small and found "this is what I'm much more passionate about."

Van Dam, who has since found a part-time position with the VCU School of the Arts, thinks the skills she learned through the UR course and from her two degrees translate well to her new line of work.

That's also true for Dawson. The work he did as an industrial engineering technical supervisor for Qimonda is not so different from designing a landscape, he said.

Both jobs determine "what best to put where for optimum effect," said Dawson, whose engineering degree is from Georgia Tech.

When Bazemore, the respiratory therapist in training, was getting his degree in sociology at Longwood University, he really didn't know what he wanted to do, he said. He ended up in mortgage banking because it was a "hot" and lucrative field.

Bazemore, whose last stop was at Countrywide Financial, got out as the industry entered its meltdown. He was being pushed to that decision by the economy, but it was what he wanted anyway, he said.

He saw the fulfillment his wife, Sarah, got from her job as a special-education teacher in Hanover County, and he wanted work where he could make an impact as well.

If mortgage banking were still booming, it might have been hard to walk away for a new career that will pay substantially less, he said. But the recession made the decision easy.

"I was walking through a hurricane with a candle in my hand," he said. "I could get blown out at any time."

Contact Karin Kapsidelis at (804) 649-6119 or .