Feeling fear-based? Help is just a group away.

	"There's a hiring freeze at the State. Don't even think about looking for work there."
	[At the time, in New York State in 1992, the freeze was a fact. Read on.]
	[from a life's worker:] "I'd just finished a small freelance project for the New York State Archives, and the head of the Archives called me in. There was a project that had been on the back burner for years; they never the right staff person to give it to. I was the right person. "So here was the state archivist himself saying he'd create a half-time position for me, in which I could dedicate twenty hours a week for a year to this pet project of his. Yes, he said, we can come up with the funding. Would half-time salaried employment with the state interfere with my freelancing? "Not at all, I said. "This was with a hiring freeze on, at the time, at the State. "No resume required."
	What an LWC group offers: LWC groups learn alternatives to reliance on resumes and public job postings. (In this vignette, not even the freelance project that got a foot in the door required a resume; it came through a referral from a happy client. Word of mouth.) LWC group members will keep reminding you that even in a hiring freeze, or immediately following layoffs, or a downturn in an industry, or a national recession, there are still projects to be done if only the right person can be found . . . and quietly engaged. Group members use "Know anyone who . . . ?" postings to the LWC community and beyond, to spread the word about what they're looking for. The group checks on the "elevator pitch" that a participant creates, working together to hone it and make it memorable—so that people who hear the Plan A pitch will remember it well beyond the figurative elevator ride. Then the participant gets an email or a message: "I thought of you yesterday when I heard about. . . ."

Other fear-based scenarios: