Tough climb to reclaim career

Posted on 02. Jul, 2007 posted by Bill in Employment News

Good skills and a good attitude no longer ensure steady employment, even when the economy is humming. This is part of an occasional series about job loss and the changing nature of employment.

More than a year of low unemployment in Illinois spells good news for job seekers.

Ask Diane Brown, who landed a project manager position in mid-March at JPMorgan Chase Bank in Chicago.

“I kept telling people it was my dream job,” said the assistant vice president. “I have a great team. I have a great boss. The work is so up my alley.”

Her new job couldn’t have come soon enough. It follows six years of unemployment and under-employment that drained her savings and taught her invaluable lessons about the strength of her character and white-collar employment in the 21st Century.

Her story is not a cautionary tale because, by all accounts, she did everything right. She searched diligently. Her work and educational credentials are top-notch. She avoided bitterness.

Instead, it’s a look at what happens when the illusion of control that white-collar workers treasure slips away. Being capable, flexible, hardworking and personable doesn’t ensure steady work.

“I always viewed employment as a contract situation. You could be let go at any moment or you could walk in a heartbeat,” she said. “The difference now is even though I believed it before, I had never experienced it. Now I know it’s true. It’s a reality instead of hypothetical.”

College-educated workers lose jobs more often today than they did 20 years ago, and the jobless recovery that followed the 2001 recession hit information technology professionals like Brown especially hard. Nearly 10 percent of college-educated workers lost jobs between 2001 and 2003, up from less than 7 percent in the early 1980s, said Princeton University economist Henry Farber.

The recovery in Illinois didn’t kick in until last year, when total unemployment fell below 5 percent. It was 4.8 percent in May. But even when unemployment is low, the rate at which better-educated workers lose jobs is higher than it used to be.

“There’s a lot more churning going on,” said Richard Price, research professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. “Globalization is a small piece of it. Businesses have gone from making things to buying each other, and that has produced these large-scale changes in the predictability of jobs at all levels.”

Brown grew up in New England, where her father was as a heavy-equipment operator and her mother was a federal government computer operator. Their view of employment was uncomplicated: You worked, you saved, you retired.

When she cashed her first paycheck from a hamburger stand to buy burgers for herself and her high school boyfriend, her mother angrily told her to bring her paychecks straight home.

Her parents’ lessons stayed with her. Her indulgences as a working adultâ€”Pendleton suits, subscription tickets to the symphony and the operaâ€”were well within her means.

“I’m paid well even for a man,” she used to joke when she worked at IBM Global Services in Schaumburgâ€”an ironic comment about her good salary and the pay inequity women face.

She managed teams of up to 70 people and multimillion-dollar budgets, while providing computer services for Fortune 500 companies. When the company downsized in early 2001, she took a voluntary buyout. After 12 years at IBM, she looked forward to “that thrill of walking into a new position and hitting the ground running.”

She got more thrill than she bargained for. Five months later, the Sept. 11 attacks deepened the economy’s downward spiral. Projects were canceled, positions frozen.

“A lot of what I interviewed for disappeared,” she recalled.

Jobless stretch grows
The longer she went without work, the harder it seemed to get her career on track again, Brown said.

“You have moments where you ask yourself whether all you’re going to be able to do for the rest of your life is hourly work.”

She met with so many career coaches it seemed there was nothing left for anyone to teach her. Hunting work was more than a full-time job. It was a lifestyle. She couldn’t afford an “off day” or passing up a chance to be somewhere she would meet people.

“Job search is marketing,” she said. “You are the product. People can’t buy it unless they see it.”

She started liquidating savings in 2002, a traumatic necessity. “It was hard to sell my stocks. The 401(k) was harder.”

She took a warehouse job at a Carol Stream publisher, packing customer orders. She liked the challenge of making odd-size books fit into boxesâ€”like working a jigsaw puzzleâ€”and the $8.75-per-hour job meant more than income.

“You keep getting the message you don’t have value, all that experience, all that education really isn’t of any value,” said Brown, whose credentials include a DePaul University master’s degree.

“Then you get this job and people are happy you’re there. When you’ve gone for a long time without a job, it’s really important to work.”

She sold telecommunications services, worked for Kelly Services, sold clothes at Chico’s and did administrative work for a mortgage company. She won an award at Mary Kay Cosmetics for assembling a team of 14 to pursue corporate gift accounts.

But she missed the fast-paced corporate life. Her lowest moment came in 2005, when she was laid off from a contract job at Oracle after a permanent position her boss had earmarked for her got cut.

“Everything was great, and then instantly it was gone,” she said.

When an interviewer asked, “What’s the most significant thing you’ve learned over the last four years,” she answered instinctively: “How strong I am as a human being.”

There was an awkward pause. “Well, I meant technically,” he said.

Raised Catholic, she never doubted her belief in a “caring God,” but she began to question why he allowed suffering. “I can’t say I’ve really come back spiritually to some settled point of view,” she said.

Preparations, network help
In early January, down to six months of savings, she consulted a Realtor about a contingency plan to put her home on the market if her fortunes didn’t reverse. She was talking with three prospective employers, including Chase.

Some of the tension is gone from her face now when she talks about the last six years. Her smile extends ear to ear when she laughs.

She hopes not to leave JPMorgan, but she feels better prepared for whatever the future brings.

Her home computer contains a professional network of 600 contacts she developed during her search, and she doesn’t intend to let them lapse.

“Networking isn’t about trading business cards,” she said. “It’s about being very genuine, very generous and trying to help people.”

Her network sustained her when she got laid off last year from a software start-up. “I felt as if I were being cradled by warm hands,” she said.

“These aren’t people I’m going to cry on their shoulders. These are professional relationships. I had more than one person say, ‘My Rolodex is open.’ Extremely busy people made time to counsel me.”

Now she’s contacting each of the 200 or so people at the “core” of her network to tell them about her new job. She’s arranging lunches and dinners. It will be the first time she sits down with many of them without needing their help.

“It’s a way to say, ‘You’re valuable even when I’m doing well.’ “

EmploymentDigest.net

Tough climb to reclaim career

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