Danielle M. Dayries has been a prominent consultant in New Orleans for over a decade, helping laid off employees continue their careers. She also manages the New Orleans Outreach's Power Ties program, a program that gets professionals, on a volunteer basis, in touch with 8^th graders. Power Ties gives the 8^th graders experience in writing resumes and show them how to effectively apply for jobs when they finish school. Selected from hundreds of career consultants to run this program, she organizes it multiple organizations in New Orleans including the Young Leadership Council and the Junior League of New Orleans.

Dayries is often requested to speak at Loyola about career related issues, and manages an internship program with students from Tulane, Loyola, University of New Orleans, Xavier, and Delgado. Last year she spoke at Tulane with Volunteers of America, training graduating volunteers how to communicate their volunteer experience into a resume for reentry into the workforce. She also provides career consulting to the graduating students of New Orleans Video Access Center(NOVAC).

Dayries is adamant that paying for outplacement services is well worth it for employers. "Outplacement consulting has been growing so rapidly that it's becoming a standard offering to employees in many industries. Research has now been done on the relatively new idea and the statistics show that a good outplacement firm adds value for the money, and greatly increases employee retention. This effect is increased in hard economic times like the present, because workers are constantly worried about losing their jobs.” The research does indeed show this. More than 2/3rds of 265 U.S. employers with layoffs during the past two years offered outplacement services to their departing employees, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. 86% of surveyed organizations reported outplacement support provides value for the money, according to a HDA outplacement survey[i].

Danielle M. Dayries & Associates only offers "non-cookie-cutter” service – completely personalized documents and job hunting strategies. She stresses, "A lot of large outplacement firms just send out mass resumes and mass cover letters, and employers know how to recognize these documents… They may be slightly cheaper, but they don't work. The employer pays less originally, but they pay for it later when the services don't work, the laid off employees can't get a job, and employee retention declines.”

The arrival of Danielle. M Dayries & Associates is good news for anyone in New Orleans that has a job. With outplacement consultants such as her come greater job security for employees, greater employee retention(and thus better quality work from the employees) for employers, and overall a better business world for New Orleans.