It happens in every recession, and this one is no exception: out-of-work professionals, and even some corporate executives, drive taxis or make cold calls to make ends meet.
"I tell people that it's not going to be forever," said a New York career coach, Deborah Brown, who said that the number of professionals who have sought her advice has doubled since Sept. 11. One of her main tasks, she said, is stroking egos and telling executives that it is all right to accept a lower-level position until the job market opens up. "But the truth is, some callers are embarrassed and feel like a failure," Brown said.
Paul Hahn, who lost his job in May as a senior consultant for the Computer Sciences Corp, did painting and electrical work for a while until finally landing a "real" job, driving a limousine for Hunterdon Connection Limousine in his hometown of Flemington, New Jersey.
He made six figures plus bonuses in his old job, analyzing the computer systems of clients like the Bank of Montreal, Phillips-Van Heusen and AT&T and making recommendations. "I was totally in shock when I was laid off," he said. "We stopped our house projects and put off any thought of vacations. We even agonized about having another child."
He had been with the company only three years, so his pension was not vested, and the company returned the money he had contributed to his 401(k).
The final insult was a class he attended at the outplacement firm that his company had selected. The woman running the class was just out of college and excessively perky. "Hey, guys," he says she told Hahn and his colleagues, "what a great opportunity for a career change."
Now he calls his early-morning customers the night before, arrives at their homes 15 minutes early, rings the doorbell and wakes up the whole house, and carries their suitcases to the car. Most people are friendly on the way to the airport, but some can be obnoxious. One man said outright, "I don't want to talk, okay?" he recalled.
He makes, on average, US$35 a trip, including a tip. For this he has to wear a suit and tie.
Before getting his driver's job, Hahn, 36, considered working the aisles of a big retailer like Staples or Home Depot, but was unnerved by the thought of running into former colleagues. But it would not bother him a bit if he picked up an old associate, he said. In fact, whenever an executive rides in his limousine, he talks himself up and hands out his resume. "I wasn't meeting them any other way," he said.
A manager no more
Efrat Mansdorf has also taken a step down in the job market, though the step seems more like an entire stairway, she says. Mansdorf, 26, was a project manager with iClips, a New York Internet company that produced streaming media for the Web sites of clients such as NBCi, the Internet division of NBC and Yahoo.com. Her duties included managing budgets and schedules and supervising a staff of five.
A major perk was having so much responsibility at her age. "I interviewed and hired people, and I made the typical big Internet salary," she said. Then, after six months on the job, her department was shut down last May just before the company went out of business. "I was so frustrated," she said.
She took it easy for a month or so, taking up biking, enrolling in a Spanish class and catching up on errands. Then Mansdorf went job hunting. She landed a couple of project-management interviews, but they did not lead anywhere. Her friends with secure jobs could not understand why someone with her background could not get back on her feet. Finally, in August, she was hired as a "research consultant" at the National Finder's Service in New York, a company that helps recover assets for individuals and companies that are unaware of their ownership, like money left to heirs in a will.
"I have a master's in communications and four years' management experience," she said. "Someone in junior college could do this job. It's all phone work, and each call is the same. There's no room for creativity. What I'm doing requires zero management skills."
She took the job thinking that the job market would pick up soon. Six months later she is still there. On the bright side, her hours are flexible and her boss, knowing her ambition to return to the corporate world, has no objections to letting her off for job interviews on short notice.
Anybody can get a pink slip, even a job recruiter. Andrew Sequeira, who worked for BroadBand Office, a Falls Church, Virginia, provider of voice and high-speed data services, found that out when the company filed for bankruptcy protection last May and laid him off along with scores of others.
Sequeira, 35, who was responsible for hiring a national sales force for BroadBand Office, was the company's sole recruiter at one point after it started slashing jobs. As a pre-IPO company, it needed to show substantial revenue to go public. "My job, getting the right people in place so the company could get that revenue, was pretty important," he said.
All that is behind him now; after moving back to New Jersey, his home state, he was hired last December to sell commercial and industrial signs for JHM Communications in Phillipsburg.
He does not hide his dissatisfaction. "I'm on commission, and I'm not critical to this company's operation," he said. "I supported two vice presidents and six sales managers in my old job, and I dealt with salespeople who had a high level of technical knowledge and were pretty sharp."
Now he visits sign franchise companies and tries to arrange subcontracts with them.
How to eat humble pie
Not surprisingly, many former managers down on their luck are reluctant to publicize their plight. Mickey, who insisted that his last name not be used, is a former Wall Street trader who is now driving a taxi in New York. His firm merged with another last spring, he said, and he chose to leave. "You can tell the Wall Streeters when you get into a cab," he joked. "We're the ones listening to Bloomberg."
Not many professionals are able to find humor in their descent on the career ladder, though. Brown, the career coach, recalls a client who felt compelled to clarify her situation to everyone she met. "I'm an administrative assistant, but that's not really what I do," she would say, according to Brown. "I'm a marketing executive."
Many clients, like a former director of a New York area outplacement firm who now waits tables, use the same phrase in trying to come to grips with their reduced circumstances, she said: "I never thought this would happen to me."
Take Hahn, the limousine chauffeur. He has not gotten any job offers from executives in the back seat, but he was recently offered a job at Levi, Ray & Shoup, an Illinois information technology company, on the same level as his old one at Computer Sciences. While his story has a happy ending, he is keeping the limo job part time. He has to, he said, to make up the salary difference.
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