I’m not sure what I expected when I walked into Workforce Renton Tuesday afternoon. Actually, that’s a lie. Considering the description of the class I was attending ended with a thorough explanation of their first-come, first-serve policy, with no seating allowed five minutes before the start and a strong recommendation for being at least one hour early, I did have a vague mental picture involving Department of Motor Vehicle-proportion lines full of zombies just waiting to snap me into a pair of shackles and a shredded checkered fleece.

So, I wasn’t entirely sure I was going to stay for the Skills and Abilities Analysis workshop. Having left for class only 30 minutes before, I half-hoped it would be full when I got there. At least, I would have found the place, scoped it out and decided whether attending Wednesday’s “Effective Resumes and Cover Letters” would be worthwhile.

Because, I’ll be honest – looking through the list of workshops when I started this adventure in unemployment, I didn’t see a single subject that I hadn’t already learned years ago. Titles like “How to Write a Resume” and “Conducting a Job Search” quickly brought to mind hours of mind-numbing business school presentations, while “Interviewing Techniques” resurrected the horrifying memory of a co-worker and I confined in a hour-long interview questioning a candidate with extremely fuzzy teeth.

There wasn’t one workshop that seemed geared toward today’s job hunting challenges. Nothing titled, “Costuming and Sucking Up 101: How to Stand Out from Eleventy-Billion People Who Look Just Like You” or “Modern Investigation Methods and Duct Tape Application: Introducing Yourself to Other Candidates Who Better Meet the Qualifications for this Position.”

But here I was. Pulling into the Workforce Renton branch to learn how to identify skills and abilities I had already identified. But seeing the application crusade of ’09-‘10 hasn’t gotten me anywhere, anytime fast – it’s not like I have a lot to lose. Except a slightly inflated sense of pride, maybe.

The parking lot was packed. I squeezed my Mazda into a space at the back, grabbed my laptop bag and headed into the building; trying very hard to brush away the images of being swallowed by a mob of competitors.

The lobby was silent. There was just one person in line before me. It was quieter than the library, but the branch was absolutely full. Every seat was taken by job seekers working in an open-area computer lab, or waiting for personal conferences in a section of less than 10 chairs. It was nice.

The front desk attendant called me forward and asked me to key in my Social Security number. She handed me a class ticket and told me someone would start the session momentarily. Two minutes later, I was in a brightly lit classroom filled with computers, a projector, stacks of handouts and about 20 individuals, all but one of which had been laid off.

For the next three hours, we got to know each other a little bit, and appreciate the variety of our experiences and interests. Our instructor was a human resources professional who’d been laid off 14 months before getting her current position – an opportunity that specifically came as a result of volunteering for the organization first. Positive, supportive and knowledgeable, she walked us through interactive activities and exercises, that as expected, reinforced things I already knew. But unexpectedly, the class helped me filter down all my skills and abilities to the absolute most relevant and effective few, revealed a few tools more effective than job boards, and gave me three hours of networking with a great group of potential contacts.

Finally – a job hunting day that produced something!