Beverly Shepard is offering a finder’s fee.
Not for a lost pet.
Not for the home of her dreams.
But for a job.
Shepard is offering her friends a finder’s fee of up to $6,000 to help her find a job.
Why $6,000? Because that’s what she paid a professional search firm 14 months ago - to no avail.
An award-winning marketer with degrees in journalism and law, Shepard and many other employees were laid off from The Virginian-Pilot in January, but she saw the possibilities of some lay-offs coming once the company was put up for sale more than a year ago.
That’s when she started looking for another position. Shepard hired an Arizona-based search firm that failed to turn up even a single interview.
“I have a box full of workbooks but little else,” she says.
In addition to working with the search firm, she has spent more than eight months working on her own. She has distributed countless resumes, made hundreds of phone calls and sent a steady stream of e-mails.
Meanwhile, people say friends will help for free. But Shepard says that the reality is that most people, while well-meaning, are simply too busy to make a concentrated effort. Besides, if they’re successful, why not pay them?
“I’ve paid strangers,” she says. “Why not pay friends?”
A buzz started when Shepard posted her offer on her LinkedIn profile and sent emails to her friends. One friend posted her offer on his own Linkedin account. Another friend started a blog about Beverly’s efforts.
The fee is based on a percentage of the salary for the job Shepard accepts, with a job paying $120,000 and above paying 5 percent or a $6,000 fee. An $80,000-a-year job pays 1 percent or $800. She has placed conditions on the offer, such as “applies to full-time positions (40-hours with benefits) only,” and “must actually accept and start work on the job.”
But Shepard is willing to move anywhere in the U.S., and she’s open to a wide range of jobs in marketing, corporate communications, business development or public relations.
The offer expires on April 30, “an incentive to work fast,” she says.
Shepard was one of about 599,000 Americans laid off in January when her company eliminated its entire marketing department, where she was marketing manager. According to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, the number of unemployed persons increased by another 851,000 people in February. New national unemployment statistics are expected in about two weeks and forecasts predict an even gloomier future. The country’s current unemployment rate is 8.1 percent.
Beverly Shepard is a former president of the Atlanta Association of
Black Journalists and a recipient of a Voices of Vision award from
Glory Foods/the National Council of Negro Women. She has worked
for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cox Enterprises, Inc. and The
Virginian-Pilot. She is an award-winning marketer and holds
journalism and law degrees from the University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill. She is Vice-President/Marketing for the Norfolk,
Virginia area chapter of the American Marketing Association. Beverly,
a native of Jacksonville, N.C., has lived in Atlanta (GA), Virginia
Beach (VA) and New York, (NY).
To get The Details, Contact Beverly at: Beverly.Shepard@gmail.com.
