Career Success after a Layoff: Part I - My Experience

Recently, I had the privilege of being one of several people featured in an article, Income Loss Persists Long After Layoffs, written by New York Times correspondent Michael Luo. Mike chronicles the effects of the economic recession on people’s lives around the country. Click here for Mike Luo’s bio.  He is also the reason Staingirlz.com finally got started.   

Mike had found an article written about a now disbanded group, Professionals Network of Florida (PNF). In 2001, I co-founded PNF to help educate and support displaced professional workers from 9/11. Mike interviewed some of the founding members to examine our financial and professional situation today compared with our pre-9/11 status. The result of Mike’s investigation revealed that I was the only one of the group to have actually surpassed my original income level after leaving my job of 19 years.

I really didn’t like that my name and salary were going to be on the front page of the New York Times for literally the world to see. But Mike convinced me that my experience was important since I was the one success story of the group that might give people hope. I still wondered if my success was mostly just extreme luck, and what other people could realistically take away from the article for themselves. Since then I’ve thought very long and hard about the real reasons for my success. What I’ve come up with is that unless you are an engineer who works hard with an interest in developing Department of Defense products, there may not be many similar opportunities in this country with the potential to sustain this level of continued employment.

I think a vitally important reason that I’ve maintained employment and increased my salary since I landed my current job in 2002 is the unique combination of the discipline and the industry I’m in: I am a software engineer of highly complex, safety-critical, world-class Department of Defense products. I should also clarify that I could have moved to stay with my employer and could have avoided being laid off in the first place. But at the time, moving away was not an option. I was contacted by several companies, but unfortunately they were not local. It took me about eight months to find the local position I now have. And it turns out that I’m working on the exact products and doing the exact same work I was doing at the company I left!

There are many reasons why this industry and work have continued to maintain opportunities for experienced workers in this country. This will be the topic of my next post. I also believe that employee traits are very important.

Here are some professional attributes that make highly valuable employees:
• Persistence, hard work, and going above and beyond the call of duty when it’s most important.
• Consistently producing high quality work in a timely manner.
• Maintaining professional integrity.
• Commitment to being a strong team player.
• Having an upbeat, enthusiastic, can do attitude.

These attributes will only help you in any job. However, I do tend to think that these qualities have less and less influence on employment opportunities in these strained economic times. Most of the people I have ever worked with have these virtues so I tend to assume that most people do and that these traits are nothing exceptional. But Staingirl Elle’s professional background is more varied than my own. Her perspective is that these characteristics do still make a very big difference for employees. I hope she is right because these are things that we CAN control.

Part II of this series will focus on what I think is a very interesting set of reasons for continued employment opportunities with Department of Defense contractors. Part III and beyond will impart generic job hunting strategies I learned while looking for a job after 9/11.