Recruiter and Lakewood Chamber Aid Professionals

By Michael L. Diamond
Asbury Park Press, Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Most young professionals know the feeling. You're at a business event, and you look around only to see a group of older executives chatting away as if they were long-lost friends.

You try to summon the courage to break in, but there doesn't seem an appropriate time. The conversation just goes on and on. You stand there, nodding, feeling so, you know, young.

Laurie Romano, 26 and an employment recruiter for Barbara Davis Employment Services in Red Bank, has seen it happen all too often, and she thinks she has a solution.

She and the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce have started a group for professionals in Monmouth and Ocean counties who are 40 and younger to make contacts, share war stories and learn what it takes to survive in today's workplace.

It's a concept that business people say is overdue. They say that the Shore needs young workers to become business savvy, learning, for example, how to network, particularly as the giant baby boomer generation reaches retirement.

Young workers "need to learn these skills or they're not going to be taken as they deserve to be," said James Farrell, a board member at the Lakewood chamber and chief financial officer of Single Throw Inc., an Internet marketing company in Wall.

The idea isn't unique. The Western Monmouth Area Chamber of Commerce, for example, started a similar organization about three months ago.

The Lakewood group plans to meet once a month at the Belmar restaurant 507 Main. Membership in the organization is not required to attend.

About 30 people made it to the first event Wednesday. The theme: speed-networking. The rules: You meet another professional, network for a few minutes - enough time to ask basic questions - and then move on to the next table.

Attendees might not have made a big sale by attending such sessions, but they began to build a comfort level with others that will be needed down the road, whether they wanted to sell services or find a new job, which is the point of networking, longtime chamber members said.

Those who attended said the group was welcome. Just out of college, they have had a skeptical eye cast on them by older workers, and some feel brushed aside simply because of their youth.

"I think when you are a young professional, you want to be able to prove yourself on the job, prove you have the right skills to be able to do the job," said Christie Koenigsmark, 26, an account manager with Jewell Marketing Associates Inc. in Asbury Park. "When you have a young face, you have a lot to prove because people can take you less seriously."

The toughest thing about the workplace is "being so young, trying to prove yourself, that you can do the job," said Jackie McCall, 24, a coordinator in the shipping department at Lakewood manufacturer Church & Dwight.

So it shouldn't have been a surprise when Romano recently attended a Lakewood chamber event and didn't see any of her peers. Instead, she saw older professionals who already knew each other and had settled into their own groups.

Any young person who wanted to be included would have to force their way in, a difficult task, particularly for those accustomed to communicating by e-mail and text messages, she said.

She decided to start a group just for young professionals; hoping young people would attend, widen their contact base and share their experiences.

"I want young people to be taken seriously," Romano said. "Hopefully we'll be recognized as the professional, career-minded, educated group that we are."