Finding silver lining in State Farm layoffs

<p>When State Farm Insurance, for decades one of Sonoma County's premier employers, flips the switches to “off” at its Rohnert Park campus on the Sunday night of July 31, co-workers Greg Jones and Brad Collins officially will be out of work.</p><p>Given the cheerless reality, both men are rather surprised to be so eager for Monday, Aug. 1, to roll around.</p><p>“We're losing our jobs and we're so excited we can't sleep,” said Jones, 49, who has worked more than half his life for State Farm, loves the firm and hoped to stay with it until retirement. “I'm more excited than ever because it's a new beginning.”</p><p>Though heartsick that the insurance company is folding its tent in Sonoma County and moving to Bakersfield, Jones and one-year State Farm employee Collins, 28, have ambitious plans for their first day in the ranks of the involuntarily jobless.</p><p>At 7:30 a.m. that Monday, the pair will host the first gathering of what they envision to become a 21st century employment network that utilizes technology and Sonoma County's emphasis on community connections to link job seekers with the people who create employment opportunities or are in the know about them.</p><p>Jones and Collins call their nascent organization the North Bay Networking Group. They conceived it during conversations with other State Farm employees who didn't choose to relocate to Bakersfield and now aspire to deepen and widen the linkages that may help them find new work in this area.</p><p>“There are a lot of great people in that (Rohnert Park) building who are staying in this community,” Jones said. Collins interjected, “This thing has just blown up beyond State Farm.”</p><p>The two of them credit the technical, career-development and interpersonal skills they've learned at State Farm with preparing them to advance the art of community networking in Sonoma/Marin.</p><p>“State Farm has been incredible to us and it's given us the tools to do what we're doing right now,” said Jones, whose leadership positions with the company included a stint doing recruiting in Silicon Valley.</p><p>He and Collins said their fledgling group has helped several State Farm employees find new positions. Collins himself is a beneficiary, having found a job that will have him selling insurance in Mill Valley.</p><p>As the pair prepares for the networking group's first public event, they're firming up partnerships and seeking additional relationships with Sonoma and Marin County employers, recruiters, enterprise incubators, service clubs, human-resource professionals, business groups, colleges, employment agencies, career coaches, existing job networks and others.</p><p>“We're not in competition with anyone,” Collins said. “We're out to enhance what's already out there.”</p><p>Santa Rosa career coach Susan Cook, who'll speak at the Aug. 1 event, met Jones and Collins when State Farm brought her in to consult with the employees who are neither moving to Bakersfield nor retiring. She said it was Jones who recognized that there's currently not much in the way of employment opportunities networking in Sonoma County.</p><p>“What he has done, remarkably I must say, is that he's found that this is not only a huge gap but a huge opportunity,” said Cook, who witnessed how Jones' enthusiasm for a new network fired up fellow State Farm employees.</p><p>“One of the things this is has done is it's created a lot of emotional electricity for people,” she said.</p><p>Sarah Dove, the director of Sonoma State University's School of Business and Economics Career Center, recently expanded Jones' networking prospects by introducing him to Sonoma County Alliance, a coalition of local business, agriculture and labor interests. She finds merit in his quest to expand the pool of potential connections for soon-to-jobless State Farm employees and others seeking work or advancement.</p><p>“He could definitely do something,” Dove said.</p><p>Jones and Collins' endeavor relies heavily on LinkedIn, the business-related Internet social networking site that claims more than 100 million members. The partners are guided by authors Bob Burg and John David Mann's “Five Laws of Stratospheric Success” in their book, “The Go-Giver.”</p><p>Jones acknowledges that he thinks it is possible the networking group could become a business for him. “It's not 100 percent altruistic,” he said, “but it is about growing our community.”</p><p>Though more than 100 of State Farm's 450 employees accepted invitations to go along on the move to Bakersfield, Jones said a transfer was never an option for him and his wife, Kelley, a respiratory therapist with Kaiser.</p><p>Jones that as much as he loves State Farm, “I love the North Bay even more.”</p>