Jun. 9--IN JOB SEARCH, IT'S ALL ABOUT FACE TIME -- EVEN ON A STREET CORNER: This is no time for hesitation, humiliation or second-guessing.

Michael Wadman has four little children at home. He needs a job. Yesterday.

So, rather than taking the conventional path after being laid off -- fiddling with a resume for a week, filling out unemployment forms or sending e-mails asking friends and family members to put out feelers -- he took his job search to the corner of Main Street and 200 South Monday.

"LAID OFF," his poster reads. "International business experience. BYU Grad." Then, his phone number.

"I'm not sure I've got the right things on my sign," he says, just the slightest edge of doubt creeping into his voice. "If I can just talk to someone, I can convince them to give me a job."

Wadman, 29, is just one of 71,000 Utahns out of work, according to the Utah Department of Workforce Services. The state's unemployment rate held steady at 5.2 percent in April. Economists figure things will get worse or flatten before they get better.

"It's just a matter of riding out the summer," Mark Knold, the department's chief economist, said two weeks ago. "We do believe the worst of the economic problems are behind us. But there is no imminent economic recovery in front of us, either."

Despite those grim facts, Wadman seems to be one of those preternaturally optimistic people. "Something's going to happen," he says.

A Layton High School graduate, he served an LDS mission to Peru, then majored in Spanish and minored in business at Brigham Young University. He's worked in sales and business management.

Two years ago, he moved his family to South America to start a chain of grocery stores in Lima. But the dream soured as investors went bankrupt and capital dried up.

Last week, the company's financial officer told Wadman all of it was gone. In a matter of days, he and his wife packed up and moved back to Utah. They're living in a rental house in Lehi.

So, as the workweek started, he stood in front of the One Utah Center in yellow shirt sleeves and a close-cropped haircut, hoping to catch a Salt Lake City CEO on his way to a hotdog or the bookstore. Just a crushingly firm handshake, his resume and his guts to recommend him.

"I lost all of my fears doing sales jobs," he says. "I don't care what anybody thinks."

He's looked at the classifieds. On Monster.com, he figures, he'd be one of millions. He wanted to be memorable. Then, inspiration struck. He read about it somewhere -- The New York Times, maybe. It was a story about a guy ("MBA MIT") standing on a sidewalk in midtown. Sixty leads in one day.

"His credentials were better than mine," Wadman says. So was the weather.

Still, after one hour, he'd passed out two reesumes, taken a call from an executive who could see Wadman from his office window and talked to a Channel 2 camerawoman and me.

He plans to be back tomorrow and maybe the next.

"I'll do this for several days, see how it goes," he says. He has a little money saved.

"I'm not too worried. But I'm going to need to find something soon."

walsh@sltrib.com

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