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Two years ago when career coach Malcolm Munro held a free seminar at his Clarksburg church, he was delighted when 24 people attended.

The Germantown resident found it harder to be happy Saturday when more than three times that number turned out to his free "Job Hunter's Boot Camp" in hopes of finding the key to a better job, or any job at all.

"If this was one of my workshops or keynotes I'd be over myself, but this is not good," Munro said as he prepared for the session at Clarksburg's Cedarbrook Community Church.

The 78 registrants ranged from strangers who drove in from New Jersey to a neighbor who until a week ago felt safe in his job as a Circuit City manager. Only about a dozen identified themselves as out of work when Munro asked them to raise their hands, but others feared they could be on the cusp of unemployment.

"I want to be ready," said Donna Ricketts of Frederick, who attended with her husband. "I mean, you can't be ready but …"

Ricketts said there had been layoffs at the Toyota dealership where she works.

Munro said he timed his seminar for January because he expects many companies will be cutting back as the new year gets under way. He spent Friday in Columbia preparing 60 laid off workers at a pharmaceutical company for their transition into the world of job-seeking when many had expected new opportunities from a merger.

"I'm watching their faces," Munro recalled. "Some are crying; some are angry. You watch the body language [arms crossed]. And I thought, ‘This is really depressing.'"

For those who attended the three-hour session Saturday, however, Munro had words of encouragement and direction. He worked steadily through a 43-page handout that ranged from the inspirational — identifying your "dream job" — to the practical — how to answer common interview questions.

One key theme was the importance of networking and sharing your job search with friends and even strangers since he said 60 percent to 80 percent of jobs are found through personal contacts, as compared to about 10 percent each for newspapers or the Internet.

Munro challenged attendees to meet 20 strangers a day.

"This is the scariest [method] of all, but this is where the success is," Munro said. "If you're afraid of this, you have to get over it."

It was advice that hit home for Michael Miller of Germantown, who coaches Munro's daughter in soccer and was laid off from a local biotech firm in November. Miller said he had spent hours on Web sites like Monster.com as part of a "very active" job search.

"It's the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do before I go to bed and it's gotten me nowhere," Miller said.

Miller said he was thinking his time might be better spent at the Starbucks where he knows former colleagues and others in the field congregate.

"When you're out there and you're not on your computer or reading books or whatever, you just feel this natural fire to talk to people and be a part of society," Miller said. "I just need to get outside my comfort zone."

The church sponsored the event as a service to the community.

"There's many people in this church who are jobless," said Cedarbrook business administrator Ann Barker, who attended the seminar to get a better idea of how to help. "This is opening up an avenue I think the church could expand on."

Munro, the author of six books who had spent several years working in human resources after leaving the U.S. Navy in 1999, said he hopes to hold more seminars in the future.

"There's not much I can do as far as staving off a bad economy," he said, "but if I have the skills to do this and I'm not, then it's a waste, so this is kind of a crusade."