What did Rowberry like about his job? "Sweating my butt off for eight hours made the time fly by." And "the camaraderie, with death at every corner, cooperation all around." And "I like to be kept busy. If I'm busy, I'm happy." She scribbles it all down.

Now, she tells Rowberry, "tell me a story about a time at work that felt great."

One Sunday after Thanksgiving, he says, "We were very busy and there was no room to park any more planes, but we still managed to squeeze in a large jet and it was so cool to see all of us working together like this well-oiled machine. Nothing could stop us."

She tells him to jot that down and save it for "the next time things get hard. It'll bring back the memories and all the good feelings along with it." She dug deeper. Rowberry, she determined, was not just a problem-solver, but a problem-preventer.

"There's much more here than 'I need a job.' Something much richer. You solve and even prevent problems through teamwork, and that's a story that says who you are in your bones."

The next step, of course, is telling it to the people who need to hear it. Because "you're a concierge who sweats the details to help them prevent problems and save them money. It's up to you to find companies out there looking to do that."

Tim Johnston shows up at the home of software test engineer Roopa Govindarajan, dressed in dark jeans and black T-shirt, loaded for bear. He has an intense passion about job-hunting, culled through years of recruiting for firms like Sun, AMD and Cadence.

"I'm a hunter-gatherer of talent," he tells Govindarajan, mother of two small boys and chronically overwhelmed by her joblessness. She tells him: "I was laid off from Citrix on Jan. 29 ... "

"Stop!" he blurts out. "Depersonalize the process. People say. 'I lost my job' and I'll say 'Where did you leave it?' It's not like losing your car keys. It's not about you having done anything wrong. You weren't laid off. Your position was impacted by a restructuring. This isn't the time to think of 'you' but of how people can help you."

Johnston is a bulldozer, plowing through his hour and leaving enough gems of advice for a job-seeker to ponder for weeks: "Companies don't hire; hiring managers hire."

Rethink the way you look for work. First, forget the past ("The whole 'why me?' thing. You'll never know. And it doesn't matter."). Second, flip things around ("Think about that interesting opportunity over at Intuit and ask yourself, who within that company sits up at 4 a.m. in a cold sweat wondering where you are?")

Your challenge, he tells Govindarajan, is to find that person first. "And that's where some of the black magic comes into play," he says. Like Khadilkar, he sees LinkedIn as an online Geiger counter.

Offline, she needs to stoke the networking fire: "Everywhere you go — day care, school, church, grocery store — let everyone know, not that you're laid off, but that you're currently between successes. Is there a stigma in that? No! Welcome to Silicon Valley."

He encourages Govindarajan to identify problems she has solved for past employers. "Now how can you take those experiences to the next employer and contribute value to the customer?"

Govindarajan says she'll try. But she's clearly dazed. A few days later, she admits, "I keep thinking I'm not competent enough, so I get intimidated competing with others. And the fact the market is so dry just brings my spirits down.

"Tim's emotional support was really helpful," Govindarajan says. "That will help me a lot to keep going. But right now I just feel like I need a break. I'm dead tired."

Abhijeet Khadilkar, 34

1. Be very specific about your skills on your resume.

2. Use LinkedIn to research potential employers and find employees to talk to.

3. Leave voice-mail messages for them, asking for 20 minutes of their time.