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

“It’s been a total emotional roller coaster. False starts and promises. Jobs that didn’t materialize. A lot of waiting and anxiety,” mentioned Erickson, who was laid off in September after six years at his earlier employer, Phase Change Software, a software-development startup in Golden, Colo.

Erickson, 56, is a former lawyer who began working within the know-how sector in 1997. “It has been wild,” he mentioned of his job search. “I went two-plus months with very little contact from potential employers and recruiters, and then [had] multiple interviews in one week.”

Adding to his challenges was that at his final job, Erickson had what he calls a “do whatever needs to be done” function and didn’t develop an space of experience that was significantly “helpful in this job market,” he mentioned.

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 canine, two cats, hamster and hermit crab — whereas his spouse, a retired trainer, pursued a brand new profession.

It felt like “a lot of sitting and waiting” for his subsequent job, he mentioned.

“I would spend all day filling out applications — a couple hours for each application for management [or] director-level work — and match keywords on my resume,” he added.

Complicating issues, he mentioned, was that quite a few job listings on LinkedIn gave the impression to be scams. One widespread 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 subject. 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 develop into a hair stylist.

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

“Health care was as important as a new job. We lost our insurance when I was laid off and we had to buy it through the Colorado Affordable Care program,” he mentioned, including, “It’s not close to equivalent to what we had before.”

Erickson thought of gig work for Lyft Inc.
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-3.50%
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. During the dotcom implosion greater than 20 years in the past, he was laid off and scrambled to search out work. He went again to training regulation, however he didn’t take pleasure in it.

This time round, Erickson benefited from a bit of fine timing, having misplaced his job earlier than the wave of layoffs that left tens of hundreds unemployed at Amazon.com Inc.
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-2.42%,
Alphabet Inc.’s
GOOGL,
-1.94%

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-1.89%
Google, Facebook mother or father firm Meta Platforms Inc.
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-0.96%,
Salesforce Inc.
CRM,
-1.17%,
HP Inc.
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-1.12%,
Intel Corp.
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-1.84%,
Microsoft Corp.
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and quite a few different tech companies.

Before the wave of job cuts that began in late 2022, laid-off tech staff have been discovering jobs inside months, mentioned Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter Inc.
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-1.59%.
Through October, Pollak mentioned, 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 out.

But by the top of January, the success fee had fallen to 55%, Pollak advised MarketWatch. “If you are laid off in December and January, that is the toughest time to find work,” she mentioned.

Those 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 way. As long as tech workers enjoy monthslong severance [packages], they are in no hurry to find work,” Tim McCarthy, co-CEO of marketGOATS, a platform that helps particular person traders uncover and put money into skillful cash managers, advised MarketWatch.

But there’s one other issue that comes into play for a lot of job seekers. Despite the truth that individuals age 55 and over make up a rising share of all staff — 24% in 2019, in contrast with 13% in 2000, in accordance with information from the Current Population Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics — lots of them face ageism within the office. This is especially 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 some other side of employment.

In 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 accordance with a ZipRecruiter enterprise survey that 12 months. Meanwhile, employers have been blunt about preferring youthful candidates, even when older candidates had the identical skills. They primarily based that choice on perceived considerations 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. “Competition is tough ahead,” he mentioned.