Back to the 9-to-5—Finally

From the Wall Street Journal | July 28, 2009

By ALINA DIZIK

Last December, with unemployment at 7.2%, The Wall Street Journal
enlisted eight people who had lost their jobs to write about their
hunts in a new blog called "Laid Off and Looking." All eight had M.B.A.
degrees; five had worked in finance at big banks. They had been
unemployed for a median of nine months.

Since then, it's gotten even harder to find a job. Unemployment is
9.5%, and the monthly hiring rate is at its lowest level since the
Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track in 2000. There are now
about six unemployed people for every job opening.

Despite that, four of the eight original bloggers, and three
additions, have landed full-time jobs. But they made compromises, many
of them significant. Five took pay cuts of as much as 80%; at least
three cuts exceeded 35%. Four changed industries. Four went from
big-name employers to smaller firms. Two relocated. Some say blogging
helped their search.

Of the rest, one has a 40-hour-a-week consulting gig-but it doesn't
have benefits. Other bloggers declined jobs they felt required too many
compromises. Dawn Jordan, who was laid off from Bank of America Corp.
in November 2008, rejected two offers to work at startups that would
have required as much as an 80% pay cut. "I'm willing to work for a
bargain but I'm not willing to sell myself out," says Ms. Jordan, who's
now starting her own nonprofit business.

As the job market has tightened, tradeoffs have become even more
necessary. Professionals are still able to land jobs, says Rob Saam, a
senior vice president at outplacement firm Lee Hecht Harrison, but
"more of them have to make more compromises."

Here's what it took to get back in the workplace:

Big Pay Cut

Matthew Vuturo, 27 years old, was working as a
strategic planning manager at VR Mergers & Acquisitions in Tampa,
Fla., until January 2008. He says he lost his job after the business
was acquired. To help make mortgage payments on his Tampa condo, he
spent almost 10 months handling overnight deliveries at a FedEx
warehouse; he also consulted part time. He went on about a dozen
interviews and lost track of how many jobs he applied for.

In March, his mother stumbled across an opening online; she'd been
helping Mr. Vuturo's brother, a recent college graduate, find a job
too. It was for the director of sales and marketing at GPI Prototype
& Manufacturing Services Inc., a firm with about 25 employees that
makes and develops prototypes in Lake Bluff, Ill.

Three weeks later he got an offer-at a 50% pay cut from his old job.
Mr. Vuturo quickly accepted the offer on a Friday and started the
following Monday. "For the last 18 months all I've been doing is dying
for something to do," he says.

His Tampa condo has been up for sale since June. For now, he has
moved back to a home outside Chicago that his parents own and live in
part time. He's making less than he did when he graduated from business
school, but hopes that will change in the next few years.

Mr. Vuturo says blogging impressed interviewers. He put it on his
résumé and says that it "sparked interest," though many of the contacts
didn't lead to job possibilities. "There wasn't one real good lead that
came out of the woodwork," he says. Among the contacts he turned down:
MTV, which wanted to feature him in a reality-show episode about being
unemployed.

Pulling Up Stake

Flexibility on profession and location paid
off for Brian Fetterolf. After getting laid off from a real-estate
investment-banking job in Chicago at Macquarie Capital Advisors, a unit
of Macquarie Group Ltd., in March, Mr. Fetterolf, 38, spent nearly four
months searching for a new position. "I had about 1,000 conversations
with 250 to 300 people."

He made it clear that he was willing to go back to his earlier
career-before getting an M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and
working in investment banking, he spent eight years as a lawyer. He was
also willing to relocate with his wife and three children.

Through law contacts, Mr. Fetterolf in July got a job as in-house
legal counsel at TriState Capital Bank, which has 90 employees. It
means moving his family to Pittsburgh, near where he grew up. Selling
his Winnetka, Ill., house is "not going to be easy," he concedes, but
his family is looking forward to being closer to their relatives.

To land the job, he had to convince TriState he wasn't too senior
for the role and was willing to do the work himself. He managed about
15 people in his old job and isn't managing anyone in the new one. He
says he needed to show he'd "like doing ground-level heavy lifting."

He took a 10% reduction in base salary and expects to earn at least
50% less in bonus. But he says he anticipates getting equity in the
company.

Going Small

When she got laid off in June 2008 from
Citigroup Inc. in Atlanta, Karen Reid knew she didn't want to move. She
had been with the firm six years, most recently logging 70-hour weeks
as a vice president of global banking. She had moved to Atlanta from
New York to be closer to friends and family; she'd bought a house and
wanted to stay. Ms. Reid, 39, hoped to find a job in Atlanta in finance
at a big company, but found such firms weren't hiring much. So she
began looking at smaller firms. "I really didn't want to leave," she
says.

Six months later, she found a vice president of finance position at
Conisus LLC, an 80-employee Atlanta firm providing oncology marketing
information on behalf of drug companies.

Four months into the job, Ms. Reid says she does "miss the global
reach and being really tuned into the capital markets" and is making
about 45% of what she used to. But she enjoys the shrunken bureaucracy
of the smaller company and less-hectic schedule. "I'm going home right
now, and it's 5:30," she says.

Still, she isn't looking to be in this job forever. She has talked
to the company's chief executive officer about a promotion to CFO, and
says she may want to work for the private-equity firm that owns Conisus
in the future. Ultimately, she wants to take on an assistant treasury
role at a global public company.

Ms. Reid listed the blog on her LinkedIn profile. She says it helped
her expand her network, and prompted a few recruiters to contact her,
but none that led to the job she got.

Entry-Level Vetting

Amanda Sundt, 36, lost her senior
marketing manager job at Orbitz Worldwide Inc., the Chicago online
travel company, in November. Over the next month she contacted about 15
recruiters. Though she heard back from about half of them initially,
only one followed up after that. She also contacted former co-workers
and friends of friends. She landed interviews with about nine potential
employers and estimates she spoke with more than 120 people about
potential opportunities.

In interviews, Ms. Sundt, who has 14 years of work experience, says
she was vetted as if she was seeking an entry-level position. "I got a
lot of those stupid interview questions like, ‘Where do you see
yourself in five years?' " she says. Once on a Friday evening, a
recruiter called to tell her to devise a company marketing plan for an
interview the next morning. She spent the whole night preparing a
15-page PowerPoint presentation. She didn't get the job.

After 4½ months, she landed a job as the chief marketing officer at
iExplore Inc., a 20-person adventure-travel Web site based in Chicago.
She applied through an online job board and says she took a slight pay
cut.

Ms. Sundt says blogging did help her search. She brought it up when
asked about her social-media experience and says her interviewer was
impressed.

New Job Culture

When Spencer Cutter, 40, lost his
investment-banking job in April 2008, he was burned out. He had been
with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. for nine years, most recently as a
senior vice president.

"When you work in investment banking, you get sucked into it," he says.

He didn't want to return to the long hours or the constant pressure.
He considered going into the wine business or teaching math. While
mulling his next step, he became a stay-at-home dad for his now
2-year-old son; his wife works in marketing and business development
for a handbag designer.

He says the blog helped him stay dedicated to finding a new career.
"I had to be committed to it and be prepared for the consequences if
what I wrote ended up cutting off other options," says Mr. Cutter, who
wrote in one post that he "was probably never really cut out to be an
investment banker."

In March, he spotted an opening online for a business-development
job at Bloomberg LP. He had several interviews. He didn't mention the
blog there and says it didn't come up. The offer took two months to
materialize; Mr. Cutter says he often lost hope that he was still being
considered.

He started the position July 13. He makes about 20% of what he
earned as an investment banker, including bonus, but he enjoys the
"less competitive and high-strung culture," he says. "Let me go
somewhere where I don't make a lot of money but can be home at 6
o'clock to see my son."