Out of work? Piecing together an income with freelance, consulting and part-time gigs? Networking through voluteerism?

You're not unemployed; you're "in transition." The economic freefall of the last two years has left many highly educated, highly qualified and highly experienced local professionals at a crossroads.

And hence, the regular 10:15 am Monday meetings of Professionals in Transition at the Main Branch of the Maplewood Public Library. This week's meeting featured two guest speakers, Gary Russikoff, a CPA based out of Springfield, and Al Torres a Career Coach from Livingston lead a discussion of how to best handle finances while unemployed.

Professionals In Transition is a support and networking group for unemployed individuals in many diverse fields including those formerly in finance, computer programming, marketing, human resources, restaurant management, graphic design, legal and scientific. Currently, the group is managed by Carmen Meades, who arranges for speakers; Deb Allesandro, who handles emails; and Marvarine Dawes, who coordinates with the library.

All are welcome to attend and about 20 people showed up for Monday morning's meeting.

Russikoff fielded questions about tax implications of cashing in a 401K or IRA. (You may be able to avoid taxes under certain circumstances. It's not ideal to do this,  but on the other hand, if it's a question of preserving retirement accounts or keeping the lights on and food on the table, well, you have to live.)

Torres repeated the old, but accurate saw "when you fail to plan, you plan to fail." He suggested that if you are unemployed, to take an accounting of assets and liabilities and then play out some "if this/then that" scenarios.  It's far better to do this when you're not panicked by drastic circumstances.  He pointed out that making good decisions on managing assets helps to reassert a feeling of control when your life may be feeling ungovernable.

Other questions fielded by Russikoff and Torres were about whether to set up a consultancy or work part-time;  filing taxes using Quicken and Turbo-Tax; and borrowing against home equity or life insurance policies for a cash inflow.  Both Russikoff and Torres re-emphasized that it's best to have "the conversation" about what to do under worst-case circumstances when you don't need to have that conversation.

After the presentation, group participants introduced themselves and gave an 'elevator speech'.  Based upon the group demographics, financial and marketing professionals seemed especially hard hit in Maplewood, with a healthy contingent from IT and Human Resources.  For the most part, Monday's attendees have been out of work for more than six months -- averaging a year or more of unemployment.

The group consensus was that time spent on the computer is good and that time spent on the computer is bad. Many attendees cautioned against spending large blocks of time trolling major job boards. They told tales of multiple resume submissions falling into a black hole.  Hours of work that leads to nothing, not even an acknowledgement.

On the other hand, most sang the praises of social networking sites, such as Linked-In and Facebook.  They told stories of how contacting  former co-workers and old friends  yields genuine and solid job leads. 

Torres, who seemed to have a million of these sayings, reminded the group that you wanted to go after the 'chicken not the egg'. In other words, he advised that instead of going full-force after a potential employer (egg), to instead cultivate the person (chicken) who has many contacts and will share them.

As we left the meeting we noticed many fliers that would be of interest to those on a job hunt.  The Maplewood Library offers Drop-In Computer Classes on Tuesdays, 1 pm to 2 pm, at the Hilton Branch Computer Lab, Call Timur Davis 973-762-1622, x5001.  Momentum, an organization for mothers wanting to make life changes meeting monthly.  Career Quest, run by NCJW, is a program that helps women become job ready. Also the US Census is looking for workers for the 2010 count.

Meetings are held twice a month. Please contact Carmen Meades  for more information.