Day two. As optimistic as I was when I went to bed, I feel nauseous this morning waking up to the reality.
You know all the sayings..." time heals all wounds...keep the faith...theirs light at the end of the tunnel"...etc etc. They are all good, and their to keep you optimistic, but best thing in a situation is attitude and planning. Hit a problem head on, take the challenge as a personal passion, and move forward. Call in every favor you can, do ALL YOU can do, and NEVER give up girl!!! We are all pulling for yall!
I know and we are. Just the five-minute pity session in the morning. That and I need to eat something. Hmm, cheerios.
dont worry...CNN was in the shop i was just at to get my flat tire fixed.... the Obama's crons say the recession is over and we are going back to being filthy rich again YAY!
I'm sure you already know all this but... After Marc's last day, take a weeks break and take stock of everything, relax, tie up the loose ends from the old job. Cobra, etc, etc, whatever. Then take a week just to map out the plan and strategy. Find the groups, get your contact list/address book in order, decide on a plan for tracking the search, routine for applications, follow-ups, how you're going to do the book keeping for all that. Just get sooper organized and have the templates, routines and everything planned out. Stuff like putting together "form" letters for notifying/bumping close friend and family, regular friends, business contacts. Initial and then the periodic "bump" letter/email/whatever. Make it formal. Get up, get dressed, just like you would for work and follow a regimine/schedule like you would for a job. Spend 80% to 90% of your time and efforts on networking. That's about the probability of how you're going to get a job. Somebody knows of an opening and can at least give you a name or reference to someone doing the hiring. You're looking for direct contact to the hiring authority. Your chances of success are very low going through the "front door" of any particular company(like submitting a resume to HR) and almost nil on the big job sites. LinkedIn is good. Find a tutorial or spend the time to learn how to use it. Do the same for similar things. I wouldn't even post a resume on sites like Monster Jobs. Spend your 10% on scanning and submitting apps/resumes to places/leads from places like that but consider it sort of backfill. Look for regular meeting support/help/focus groups. Not only for leads but for things like how to effectively use linkin or the likes and what's most effective and non-obious side effects, pitfalls, etc. Things like csix.org down here in the bay area. I would expect there to be groups like that everywhere. Certainly keep in touch with the rest of your layed off peers and share leads and experiences. Be extremely wary of job placement services and research thoroughly before parting with any money. That goes for resume services too. Good news is that it looks as if the job market has bottomed a little bit ago and is actually starting to pick up slightly around here. go do a doughnut in the car every now and again!
Thanks, Dave. Thankfully Marc has tons of contacts in the industry and they all have high regard for him and his work. We spent yesterday taking stock of our financial situation and today after some caffeine and breakfast, Marc is talking to clients and business partner contacts. He's in telecom so all he does all day is network and talk on the phone. Our game plan right now is just to jump in and get as much done before it really hits us and we hit that wall. After that, we'll stick to a plan and grind through for as long as we have to. I'm still printing out what you said as a reference.
Well, we figured out that we'll have insurance coverage thru Cobra compensated by his company for six months and that in addition to his severance pay of 4 weeks salary he's also due a week and a half's vacation pay. Taxes get taken off the top of that so we don't have to worry about that. In the meantime, he's calling past associates and clients and seeing what's out there and we'll be going to Costco this weekend to stock up on non-perishables and paper goods. Figure we'll dust off some interview outfits and get those cleaned/pressed and take a trip to the barber. Got my diabetic doctor appointment scheduled for next week before his last day so I can get my prescriptions filled and also bumped up Madeline's 18 month check up as well. We're just trying to stay positive and be adults about this and do what we can while we have the resources so we can focus on job hunting the rest of the time. I'm planning on offloading a bunch of my car and mopar themed shirts and hats if anyone's interested. Figure I don't wear them and don't need them and they just take up space and collect dust. I'll make a new thread for that later. Thanks again for all the kind words of support. We're going to get thru this one way or another.
Best of luck Tam! and hope things work out with the job search! being unemployeed sucks royally, the past two months have been really frustrating!
That sucks, Avaya had a shitload of layoffs and I know 5 friends who were laid off from avaya. And another who has had amunity atleast 4 times and he just got notice 3 weeks ago that he is laid off. It's very hard to find someone with Marks experience and knowledge and when my buddy got laid off from Avaya I scooped him up very quickly to continue service with existing clients. I have been in the Tel/data industry for 20 years and 10 years owning my own company. I will keep my eyes peeled for anything worth mentioning, Utah isn't that bad either
Thanks so much. Right now he's calling up his contacts from City and County of San Francisco from when he worked for Lucent and some of his current project clients are interested in keeping him on the project if he can get a job with a vetted contractor. So there's some hope. Marc's established a solid reputation over his career and he has a decent-sized network. Just gotta make the calls and pound the pavement. In the meantime, I'm trying to power thru the rest of my coursework so I can get back in the job market to supplement. I've got past experience with database administration and project coordination and I'm flying through my current course in Oracle SQL.
Holy crap T. That's not good at all. It sounds like you both got a handle on it in the most positive way possible. If I hear of something, I'll let you know. Best of luck to you both, I'm sure Mark won't have any problem finding a job.
i hope he finds work in his field, but the probability of a company hiring a telecom only individual are very rare. most large companies use their IS/IT dept to run their telecom side because it comes very easy to people already used to administering data switches. i just got to siemens and my first project was removing all the nortel shit and replacing it with cisco. if i were mark and wanted to stay in the telecom field, i would try to sell it as a contractor to small to medium businesses. its def the way to go, easy to setup and will save the business a lot of money in the long run. i just moved a small law office in sacramento over to voip, saved them $200 a month in long distance charges.
Yeah, he's looking primarily at contractors. And probably the reason he's being laid off is that Avaya's getting desperate to keep up with Cisco. He started out working on Merlins, then Definity's and the past few years on the IP switches and SIP servers.
