ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Help Wanted, Given : Laid-Off Employees Find an Array of Helpful Services

Private businesses fishing for a few good workers. Counselors eager to soften the blow of abrupt job loss. Even a mediation center willing to provide free services to laid off county workers who could soon have landlord troubles.

All have come forward in recent days to help victims of Orange County’s bankruptcy, offering their services to laid off workers through the county’s new outplacement assistance center at the old county courthouse.

The center, which opened Jan. 3, provides workers with job- hunting help, including books on resume writing and how to cope with the emotional trauma of job loss, listings of available jobs across the country and the assistance of human resource specialists willing to read cover letters and offer suggestions.

“There are a lot of very talented people who are being laid off,” said Tom Fitch, a Heritage Park branch librarian who is helping staff the new center. “While it’s an awful time for the county, it might be a real boon for private industry. They can get some great workers.”

Some businesses are thinking along those lines too. At the center, listings of job openings are piling up on ringed binders.

On Wednesday, a Bay Area company phoned in information about 90 computer-related jobs “in and out of California.” O’Rourke Engineering, a Carlsbad-based company seeking to fill an opening for its Santa Ana office, mailed in a listing.

Susan O’Rourke, the engineering firm’s owner, said she has trouble finding qualified traffic engineers in Orange County. When she heard about the layoffs, she saw an opportunity to recruit.

“I hate to say something good could come out of (the layoffs). But it could benefit us and it could benefit them,” she said. “We know we’d be getting skilled employees.”

O’Rourke said the company is looking for “people in Orange County, who are qualified and know other people in Orange County.”

“It’s always been hard to find traffic engineers. Orange County has a lot of them. We hope none of them lost their jobs, but it would be nice for us,” she said. “If they’ve got traffic engineering and transportation-planning experience, we’d love to hear from them.”

Pac Bell also contacted the county this week and has scheduled interviews Jan 20 for part-time clerical workers.

“I’m going to be marketing the laid-off workers,” said Robert M. Bendel, a job specialist with the county’s Re-employment Center, a federally funded office that usually helps find jobs for laid-off aerospace workers and the general public and has joined efforts with the new placement center.

Wednesday, Bendel posted flyers about the job interviews at the placement center, along with a notice about a Feb. 15 job fair expected to draw 60 companies.

The center includes books such as “How to Get a Better Job in This Crazy World,” and “Career Shock” on surviving job loss.

When the county’s library chief, John M. Adams, decided to put together the placement center, his staff sent out a call to branch libraries for resources and copies of all job listings. Librarians also called every Orange County city to get their job listings, said librarian Donna Laffoon.

“We said, ‘Send us everything you can possibly spare,’ ” Laffoon said.

Outside organizations also have pitched in.

Workers at the UC Irvine’s Women’s Opportunities Center dropped off stacks of flyers about its services--which include job-seekers’ clinics, job search support groups, and courses on self-esteem and resume writing.

Straight Talk Inc., a nonprofit counseling clinic based in Cypress, is offering “bankruptcy fallout support groups” at three county locations and will also bring a counselor into county offices to conduct the sessions.

And the county’s employee assistance program, which has always offered free assessments of county workers and referrals to counseling, will do the assessments for laid-off workers as long as they need them, said Joanne Larson, director of programs for Employee Support Systems.

Employees running into trouble with creditors or landlords demanding rent payments have somewhere to turn for free. Wednesday, the Irvine-based Mediation Center offered to mediate any such disputes free of charge.

The one irony: The mediation center is a nonprofit group partially funded by the county and is waiting in line with other vendors to be paid.

“Our last invoice that we submitted hasn’t been returned as of yet,” said administrator Louise Fox. “We’re just like everyone else waiting to see if we get the full amount.”