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After 11 weeks at eGain, they let me go. I pitched the story of my unique jog hunting tactics to the three top media outlets in the Bay Area. As a result, I received two hits – one of which was the Business Section front page of the San Jose Mercury News. This was a major coup and good source for job leads.

This page is no longer viewable through free Web searches. Below is a transcript from a news harvesting service.

San Jose Mercury News, Calif., Silicon Valley Dispatches Column

Mike Cassidy
557 words
8 June 2001
Knight Ridder Tribune Business News - KRTBN
English
Copyright (C) 2001 KRTBN Knight Ridder Tribune Business News; Source: World Reporter (TM)

LAID OFF `PR GUY' MAKES HIS PITCH: Remember how during the boom, tech companies made fools of themselves trying to attract workers?

Airplane banners. Concert giveaways. Mobile billboards parked outside the competition.

They'd do anything.

Tom Fox-Sellers remembers. So there he was Thursday, taking a page and standing in front of Pac Bell Park wearing a sandwich board with his resume on one side and a sign asking for work on the other.

These aren't the boom times anymore, are they?

"I've gone to all the usual job fairs," says Fox-Sellers, of Capitola, who besides the sandwich board seems entirely sane. "I've called just about everybody I know, including CEOs, saying, `Hey. It's me. Remember me?'"

These aren't the heady times. These are times when chief executives avoid calls from those looking for work. These are the times people forget people. Fast. Fox-Sellers, 28, lost his public relations job five weeks ago in a layoff at eGain of Sunnyvale. The search for a new job is getting old.

"So, I'm trying to explore new avenues," he says, "and get a new audience."

Yes, you say, but an audience that has time for midday baseball?

This is precisely why you are not in PR. Fox-Sellers figured a Giants game would bring prospective bosses from both San Francisco and Silicon Valley. And what better way to attract, say, a columnist, than the promise of sunshine and baseball. (Did I fall for that? I did.)

Not to mention the game would draw bosses who put baseball above most else.

"They're going to be willing to let me take off for a game, too," Fox-Sellers says.

Think of it as target marketing. Which isn't to say Fox-Sellers isn't a go-getter. He was working it, there at the foot of Lefty O'Doul Bridge. And like the beer men of old, he had a patter.

"PR guy. Who's hiring? Hey! PR guy here. Who needs one?"

And the fans, streaming to the turn styles, were buying. Well, listening, anyway.

"I'd give him a chance," says Melanie Pardini, 42, visiting from near Ukiah. Her friend Donna Moses had a different take.

"I think the guy is crazy," says Moses, 41. "I wouldn't hire him."

But there was Stacy Clark, 26, who works across the street from Pac Bell. Did I mention she doesn't work just anywhere across the street, but at Applied Communications, a big PR agency across the street?

"We're always looking for imaginative, creative, out-of-the-box people," she says, figuratively taking the resume off Fox-Seller's back. "And this would definitely fall into that category."

Who knows what will come of that? But it provided a little bounce. And there was a friendly face, too. Jan Tarzia, who worked with Fox-Sellers a job or two ago, happened by.

"What a great way to get noticed," says Tarzia, of Santa Cruz, who herself was recently laid off from Cisco Systems. So, will she go the sandwich-board route in her job search?

Honestly? No way.

Hey! Have an Only-in-Silicon Valley story? Contact Mike Cassidy at mcassidy@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5536.

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