The Abyss: The 2001 LAX Marriott Career Fair

The day I first saw the desperation, competition, and callousness of the "real world"

Economic turmoil is scary.

We all have a few days in our lives that stand out.

The vast majority of these days are either euphorically great or profoundly sad. I can remember many.

What confounds me, however, are the otherwise benign days that stick in our minds. Each has its unique reason for doing so.

The 2001 LAX Career Fair at the Marriott is one of those days. And the market volatility reminds me of it.

I graduated from college in May of 2001.

Back in those days, most upcoming graduates would get a job lined up during the school year. I didn't. I tried, but I couldn't get hired for a gig I was excited about. I thought I had a good shot at a consulting gig for a healthcare company, but they passed on me after the last interview.

Unlike many around me, I didn't have a strong network within my family to draw on. There were no family friends to help or guide me. I was on my own. And I tried. I interned every year, at a city org, a tech firm, NetApp, an online radio station (Soundbreak? I think?), and a short-lived online high school media company, School Sports.

As the year went on, I was running out of time and didn't want to take the jobs being offered to everyone. I went to all the on-campus career fairs I could find and started applying online for jobs, which, back in 2001, was a brand new idea. Monster.com was king in those days.

Now, don't get me wrong, there were jobs to be had. Back then, financial planning, retail banking, payroll sales (we've covered my experience with ADP here before), DeWalt tools (my sister took that job out of college and lasted less than a year), and Enterprise Rent-A-Car were always hiring. I just didn't want those jobs. Nothing against them, they're good jobs. Just not in the fields I wanted to be in. But I was running out of time and beggars can't be choosers. I was a beggar.

Looking back, I'm very glad I got turned down from several jobs I'd applied to.

I had heard of a large career fair held annually at the Marriott Los Angeles Airport—thousands of jobs and prospective employees. I bought a ticket and went by myself.

It was the first career fair I went to that wasn't a college fair. It was my first experience with unemployed adults.

What happened that day shaped my career.

People can, through no fault of their own, fall on desperate times . And they need help.

Up to this point in my life, I'd really just been around college kids and my peers. This career fair was the real world. There were hundreds of people in their 30s and 40s, suited-and-booted, looking for work. I would stand in line behind them and hear them talk to the hiring firms.

Many were well-spoken - at least I thought so in the moment - and way more qualified than I, and they were begging for work. It was hard to listen to. They would take anything, anywhere.

The working world was a lot harder than I thought. I'd need to be deliberate in how I approached it, and my goodness did I need to step up my game.

People are afraid when they are unemployed. We may not be seeing the best of them.

I thought people later in life had things figured out, and getting work was just something people did. I had seen my parents laid off several times, and those were hard times, but they were never unemployed for a very long period. That's not what I saw at the LAX Marriott. I saw dozens of people crying in the lobby after. They were older than me, had what seemed to be pretty good resumes, and many of whom were unemployed due to a layoff of a company going under - something they couldn't control.

Nobody at that career fair seemed to care about my degree.

They all held degrees from schools I knew well. And here they were, twenty years older than me, applying for the same jobs. I thought gaining admission to USC and competing there would put me ahead. I'd heard story after story about "The Trojan Network" when I was recruited to the school. It wasn't doing much of anything for me at that career fair.

I learned to appreciate the importance of hiring with purpose and the high stakes involved in interviews.

It was stressful for me at 21. I can't even imagine what it was like for those around me. Ever since then, interviewing and hiring have been so important.

I eventually found a great job working for a terrific man, Roger Stewart, at News America Marketing. They treated me well and looked out for me, even though I was a kid. I eventually asked him why he hired me. His answer was stunningly simple: "I look for athletes who volunteer on their own time." If you knew Roger, you'd know that was —and still is —his heart. I worked my ass off. That job fair was a big reason why I did. I had seen what it was like out there and was very grateful to have a good job.

The Trojan Network ultimately led me to my dream industry, which I wrote about here. The rest is history.

However, I will never forget that job fair. I saw into the abyss. I haven't been unemployed since, and it is praise I can't sing loudly enough to the Lord.