The New England Job Show

By Mary Bermel, Owner, Bermel Interactive

Marketing Consultant and NEJS Volunteer

An article in the WSJ entitled Coping With a Job Loss – Again got me to thinking about a former employee of mine who, at the ripe old age of 28, was laid off 4 times.  Yes, 4 times by the age of 28.  Make no mistake, this was a top performer whose drive was matched only by an acerbic wit.  Oh, and did I mention an Australian accent that left clients hanging on to her every word?

As I recall, the retail apparel store she managed closed, followed by – are you sitting down – a Brisbane-based maker of snow for which she was a marketing manager.  (I think the Saudis now boast a huge indoor ski hill thanks to the technology from that bastian of all-things-winter, Australia).  Next, while she was on a sabbatical in the U.S. working on my team, the telecom company that had granted the sabbatical riffed her.  Most recently, I laid her off as part of a 1,500 reduction in force at Yahoo and was myself laid off within minutes of completing said duties.

She was less upset than annoyed, confident that her job had been rudely yanked from her rather than lost.  She quickly got on with the business of finding her next job, a skill set she surely has honed after 3 – er, 4 –  successive layoffs.  Despite being an Aussie, less than a year in NY, she managed to find a new role rather quickly, largely because her attitude was resilient, focused on moving on.   She had no reservations about telling everyone who could help of her predicament.  She used the web to market herself, search for jobs, connect with people who could help.  And in the midst of all of this, she wrote a small book about what to do when you are laid off appropriately titled “The Redundancy Club.”  Though short, I have no doubt it is inspirational, practical and full of cheeky and sarcastic comments that will make for good reading, especially if you appreciate  self-deprecating humor.

It’s easy to say successive layoffs build resiliency but we know that’s not true.  It’s easy to say a younger generation is better equipped to deal with the web-oriented demands of today’s job market.  That’s probably true.  That said, the lesson from her story for me is twofold:

a) Adapting to today’s job market and moving on requires all of us to develop a new set of skills.  We should value the usefulness of those skills and pass them along to others and of course, to our children.

b) Adaptation and moving on is also about a mindset.  At the end of the day, attitude is perhaps the greatest human freedom.