If you’ve been job searching for a long time and you can’t even get an interview, it might be time to change your goal. Instead of looking for another restaurant industry job, you might consider becoming a franchisee or starting your own business.

          “When you know your résumé is good, it’s well-written, it’s getting to the right people and no interviews are forthcoming, you have to start asking questions,” says Dante M. Vespignani, who started to rethink his job search after sending 200 résumés and getting only two interviews. “You have to ask yourself, OK what am I doing?”

          Vespignani worked as director of franchise operations for a large fast-food chain. He was laid off in the 1990s. Since then he worked for a startup restaurant company which opened multiple locations, then closed.

          He started another job search. He faced rejection, even after offering to take a pay cut and accept a lower level job than he had worked previously.
          “They are not going to want to talk to you if they realize you have been around a long time,” Vespignani says. “If you are interviewing under your level, they think that you will not stay.”

          He also faced ineptitude, and the realization that his latest job search really was fruitless, when he interviewed with a junior-level staffer who did not know the name of the vice president who headed her department.

          “This is the light bulb that goes off when you are 50-plus years old: You have been in this career, you cannot get back into a corporation,” he says. “You have to sit down and say, I’m going to control my destiny. If you are going to succeed or fail it’s up to you, not some 20-year-old HR person.”

          A few months ago Vespignani stopped looking for a job. He began talking to The Entrepreneur’s Source, a business and franchise coaching organization. After undergoing training and paying a franchise fee, in November Vespignani became a franchisee of The Entrepreneur’s Source (www.esourcecoach.com/dvespignani). He coaches business owners and helps people shopping for a franchise decide which franchise system they should buy into.

          He says becoming a business coach is not that different from franchise development.

          “The food business taught me those skills, how to deal with people, marketing, reading P&L statements, HR.”

          His advice: Develop a plan, and take your time to decide whether you want to become a franchisee.

          “You sit back and say, I need to evaluate where I need to be in the next five or ten years,” Vespignani says. “If I am going to be retiring in the next seven years, what do I need to do to create the income I need to retire?”

          Also, he says, be sure to include your spouse when you develop your plan to change careers.

          “If your significant other is not buying into your dream, then it’s not going to work,” he says.

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