Adding the human touch to your jobs stories

By Flickr user Dean Meyers

It’s a big week for job-related data, with several key reports due out this week. Wednesday is the Challenger job cut report and Thursday the Monster employment index, leading up to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly Employment Situation report on Friday.

That’s the source of the national unemployment rate and you’re probably familiar with it. But if you haven’t delved around amid other BLS reports, the site is well worth a look.

Reporters regionalizing the ongoing jobless story will want to pull up the Local Area Unemployment reports, which include numbers for 7,300 areas nationwide.  The latest report is less than a week old and can help you pinpoint unemployment rates for specific regions within your territory.  There’s also a database that lets you run custom reports as well as state-by-state tables that include discouraged and marginally employed workers - a key part of the employment picture.

OK, now that you have the numbers, you need the people to flesh out your stories.  Even though there are nearly 15 million out-of-work Americans, they can be tough to find on deadline.  That’s especially so now that people collecting unemployment insurance often can file online instead of appearing at state offices.

Here are a couple of suggestions that have reaped results for me:

Workforce commission offices.  You’ve probably tried this as well and it’s a good source of job-seekers getting help with resumes and other job-search tools.  The  National Association of State Workforce Boards also will give you some ideas of how to tap public-private partnerships for access to people these programs have helped.

My only worry using a method like that is the natural tendency of entities to put their best foot forward.  If you ask them to hook you up with some job-seekers they’ll probably push you toward their success stories – outliers, not people undergoing a typical experience.  That’s why I prefer the often onerous process of making direct contact with the “human interest” subjects in my stories.  Here are some tactics:

Message boards. If there’s an interest or a cause, there’s a discussion forum or 20 out there.  I’ve located ‘real people’ on grass-roots sites like the Unemployed Friends and NoJobSurvivor.com.

Play with online keyword searches to see what similar sites pop up for you. Message boards for unions, activist groups, workers coalitions and the like often will lead you to appropriate people.  Check out the forums at sites for industry trade groups, and company-specific boards at Yahoo! and the Motley Fool, where former employees sometimes still post their woes.

Do keep in mind that unemployed or marginally employed workers have hobbies too; I once found a good interview subject on an RV-related message forum.

Social media. Typing in keywords like “unemployment extension” or “Tier V” will net you plenty of Twitter feeds run by people worried about benefits.  (Tier V is the hoped-for next level of unemployment insurance which proponents say if passed would help those who have exhausted their 99 weeks o benefits.)

Similarly, search for “unemployed” or “job hunting” in the Facebook engine and all sorts of interesting things pop up.  I don’t claim to be a Facebook expert or to understand exactly how all of these groups operate, but they certainly provide thousands of RP leads at the touch of a keyboard.

Churches. Desperate to find an interview subject on a weekend, I pondered what avenues might be accessible on Saturday and Sunday and “religious groups” popped into mind.  Turns out that many, many churches nationwide have developed “jobs ministries” or career support groups or other structured programs for out-of-work congregants.  With one lucky phone call to a church office in Dallas, I found a group leader willing to send my request to hundreds of people on his e-mail list, that very afternoon.  Tap into your local houses of worship for a ready-made pool of motivated job hunters and the people who help them.

Meet-up groups. Meetup is the networking site that facilitates connections among people with similar goals or interests, be it running, antiquing – or job-searching.  Again, just type in “unemployed” or “career” or similar keywords and you might be surprised at how many support groups pop up in your region.  A polite note to the group organizers might get you entrée to their e-mail list, not to mention local networking events, group meetings and other places that unemployed or under-employed workers are meeting up.

Obviously, when using the above methods, courtesy, discrection and respect for message-board rules and moderators is a must if you don’t want to burn your bridges or embarrass your news organization. But tactful inquiries on public sites can  really help lead you to some interesting, authentic tales that help illustrate the local impact of the abstract jobs data.