One laid-off tech employee’s odyssey: 5 months, 25 interviews, 100 job purposes

“It’s been a complete emotional curler coaster. False begins and guarantees. Jobs that didn’t materialize. Quite a lot of ready and nervousness,” stated Erickson, who was laid off in September after six years at his earlier employer, Section Change Software program, a software-development startup in Golden, Colo.

Erickson, 56, is a former lawyer who began working within the expertise sector in 1997. “It has been wild,” he stated of his job search. “I went two-plus months with little or no contact from potential employers and recruiters, after which [had] a number of interviews in a single week.”

Including to his challenges was that at his final job, Erickson had what he calls a “do no matter must be performed” function and didn’t develop an space of experience that was notably “useful on this job market,” he stated.

After being laid off, Erickson spent his days making use of for jobs on-line, meticulously filling out kinds and tailoring resumes for every job. He additionally ran the family — taking good care of his 13-year-old daughter, Grace, together with the household’s two canines, two cats, hamster and hermit crab — whereas his spouse, a retired trainer, pursued a brand new profession.

It felt like “quite a lot of sitting and ready” for his subsequent job, he stated.

“I’d spend all day filling out purposes — a pair hours for every software for administration [or] director-level work — and match key phrases on my resume,” he added.

Complicating issues, he stated, was that a variety of job listings on LinkedIn seemed to be scams. One frequent scheme inspired job seekers to ship $50 to expedite the interview course of.

On prime of the stress of the job search, Erickson confronted tight funds and a well being difficulty. He was on unemployment and wanted to take out a private mortgage to pay the payments whereas his spouse, Wendy, who retired as a public-school trainer in June and has a modest pension, educated to grow to be a hair stylist.

And after being identified with a torn meniscus in November, Erickson has needed to delay surgical procedure, regardless of a proper knee that’s swelled to twice the dimensions of his left. The medical advantages at his new job will go into impact on March 1.

“Well being care was as vital as a brand new job. We misplaced our insurance coverage after I was laid off and we had to purchase it by way of the Colorado Reasonably priced Care program,” he stated, including, “It’s not near equal to what we had earlier than.”

Erickson thought-about gig work for Lyft Inc.
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and DoorDash Inc.
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in addition to contract work earlier than lastly catching a break in his job search: A promising third interview with Vantage in January satisfied him a job provide was forthcoming.

The gantlet of obstacles Erickson confronted was discouraging, however he had been by way of it earlier than. In the course of the dotcom implosion greater than twenty years in the past, he was laid off and scrambled to seek out work. He went again to working towards regulation, however he didn’t take pleasure in it.

This time round, Erickson benefited from a bit of excellent timing, having misplaced his job earlier than the wave of layoffs that left tens of 1000’s unemployed at Amazon.com Inc.
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Alphabet Inc.’s
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Google, Fb guardian firm Meta Platforms Inc.
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Salesforce Inc.
CRM,
HP Inc.
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Intel Corp.
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Microsoft Corp.
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and a variety of different tech companies.

Earlier than the wave of job cuts that began in late 2022, laid-off tech staff had been discovering jobs inside months, stated Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter Inc.
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By October, Pollak stated, 79% of laid-off tech staff discovered a brand new job inside three months, and 40% discovered work lower than a month after they started looking.

However by the top of January, the success charge had fallen to 55%, Pollak instructed MarketWatch. “If you’re laid off in December and January, that’s the hardest time to seek out work,” she stated.

These statistics are fluid due to the size of severance packages within the tech sector — 16 weeks on common, in contrast with a nationwide common of 9 weeks — and the plethora of consulting and freelance work obtainable to staff with tech expertise.

“Unemployment numbers are deceiving, in a manner. So long as tech staff take pleasure in monthslong severance [packages], they’re in no hurry to seek out work,” Tim McCarthy, co-CEO of marketGOATS, a platform that helps particular person traders uncover and spend money on skillful cash managers, instructed MarketWatch.

However there’s one other issue that comes into play for a lot of job seekers. Even if individuals age 55 and over make up a rising share of all staff — 24% in 2019, in contrast with 13% in 2000, in keeping with information from the Present Inhabitants Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics — lots of them face ageism within the office. That is notably prevalent within the tech business, at the same time as federal regulation prohibits discrimination in opposition to individuals age 40 and over in hiring or every other facet of employment.

Within the traditionally robust job market of 2019, one in 4 job seekers over age 55 reported difficulties discovering a job and 53% reported having skilled age discrimination within the office, in keeping with a ZipRecruiter enterprise survey that yr. In the meantime, employers had been blunt about preferring youthful candidates, even when older candidates had the identical talents. They primarily based that choice on perceived issues about older candidates’ bodily well being, tech expertise, wage necessities and willingness to report back to somebody youthful.

Erickson determined to hide his age throughout his job search, omitting the date of his school commencement from his resume and solely itemizing his most up-to-date three jobs. “Competitors is hard forward,” he stated.