5 posts tagged “unemployment series”

I started writing a series called 'I Know What I Did Last When I was Last Unemployed' to share some of my experiences since I was unemployed for a really long time in the last downturn.

I had the good fortune of being interviewed by Jason Hiner, the Editor-in-Chief at Techrepublic, a CBS company now on those experiences. He did really well in structuring the time to bring out of some very relevant intangibles in a short 15 mins that highlights my 3 years.

2009.03.19

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..... you are a Business, Man!

This continues to be a part of 'I Know What I did the Last Time I was Unemployed' Series.

This is one of my favorite quotes that I use often whenever I speak since it seems to say it all. I tactically bumped into it when I was looking for jobs in the last downturn.

Here are the basic parallels that I drew then:

• Product - You

• Brand - your reputation

• Price - Your compensation

Note: Free, like on the Internet, is a good business model as a tactic speaking from experience. It enables you to build relationships and get your customer to 'try before they buy'. I worked for free for the Founder and CEO of EarthClass Mail, Ron Wiener, when I was 'vocationally challenged'. I learnt a lot from him and we are family friends now.
[Update: Another great story in LA Times on how powerful the 'free' model can be - "It's Web 101 for this experienced Intern"]

• Place/Channel/Distribution: Your online identity (For example here are mine on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc.) Your online identity is very important since customers research online significantly before buying offline - for example, 77% consumers research reviews and ratings to confirm their decisions in ecommerce world. I assure you, potential employers do the same - before or after an interview

• Promotion - Enable discovery that a product is available for purchase. Blog, email people you know, use tools LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc. 

[Update: The Op-Ed piece in New York Times has an article on blogging if you are Out of Work with examples like 'Recession Wire - The Upside of The Downturn' or that of the 23 year old who was laid off and blogs here]

Remember - its to 'learn' and if you do it well, the letter 'l' will become silent to lead to 'earn'

The above are also great examples since they got quoted in The New York Times - one should definitely try to get  quoted in media articles on today's economy and unemployment rates. A good free source to find your customer (in this particular case - the reporter writing a piece on career or unemployment trends) is HARO

• Customer: Your future (or current) employer

As in any business, distribution is one of the hardest things to do but thanks to social media, one's reach and potential to be where your customer is much higher.

Reid Hoffman, the Founder and CEO of LinkedIn, interviewed on Charlie Rose recently says the same a wee bit differently:

This is the first part of my 'I Know What I did the Last Time I was Unemployed' Series - it touches upon the Economics, 'my 2 cents' spent during that time.

My girl-friend then, wife now, had a job with the Oregon University System sending interns abroad. She worked for the state so she didn't make much but it helped pay for the bare necessities like rent for the one-bedroom apartment and utilities. Yes - it helps to have a sugar mama!

The following 'snapshots' are an intention to give you sneak peak into my life then. You will notice that it was all the intangibles... the unquantifiable that made the difference.

1) Focused on the 'smaller miracles of life'. Our Friday dates were sharing one cup of coffee at Borders but we focused on the company we had of each other and being lucky enough not to be worried about being bombed, lucky enough to be in America which was my dream in India.
We lived off the furniture given away by our friends and were never (and still do not) trying to catch up with the Joneses. We stopped to recognize that about 1B people in this world live off less than $1 per day   

2) For the first 10 or so months, we shared an apartment with my brother in-law and his girl-friend and slept on the floor. It might amaze many but it was 'normal' for us. We were looking at the forest, not the trees.

3) We genuinely thrived and lived the journey independent of the destination - every moment of the 'struggle'. We perceived it as an opportunity to build out and grow our life together from scratch and during tough times. We would have been very disappointed if we had it all then or now. We recognized that when we looked back on these days, we'd probably be nostalgic, and indeed, today - with two jobs and a shortage of time together, we do sometimes long for those times.

4) I took up a job for about 2 months to strings lights on the streets in downtown Portland. I worked for free all day for someone (in the tech space looking at startups for deal flow) and then went to string lights from 3 in the afternoon to 3am in the morning in cold rainy nights.

This was probably the hardest part (and my biggest wins) to do since In India, I was not raised to respect the dignity of labor - people from middle class families did not do blue-collared jobs. Over and above that, I had an engineering degree from one of the top 10 schools in India, about 5 years experience in one of the best corporations (Tata Group that bought Jaguar and LandRover) doing USD 2M-3M deals a year in India and very recently I had received an MBA degree. I looked on it as a cross-cultural experience. Most of the battles we fight are in our head - (dis)illusions. Unfortunately or fortunately, perspective is reality.

5) Finally and very very importantly, I got addicted - addicted to The Chase. The harder it got, the more exciting it became... the harder it got, the more valuable I perceived the goal. The harder it got, the more I rose to the challenge.... the harder it got, the more I saw an opportunity to push the envelope.

I would not be paying attention if I believed in coincidence so here I am - deeply in love with startups!

Today we take advantage of that "opportunity" and live the same way - I drive a used Camry with 130k miles on it, we do not own a flat panel TV, have no qualms buying at Ross or TJ Maxx and we have NO financial obligations. 

Hpr5052

Imagine: The vision beyond 

I embarked on a series of blog posts yesterday titled 'I Know What I did the Last Time I was Unemployed' but before I start off on that I need to recognize these 5 professionals.

I hope this would inspire many to respond or reach out to those seeking jobs. I assure you having been in that phase for 3 YEARS and where career sites like Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com or employer sites are like big black holes, a simple email or a few minutes on the phone giving job seekers feedback can bring hope. In times like this, believe me, Hope Can Be a Tactic and a Chase, The Adrenalin Rush!

A significant portion of what had to come together for me was these amazing people who responded to my outreach. I was relatively fresh off the boat from India, unemployed, with a name which spell checkers suggest 'urinal' as the alternative (Take that Barack!) and they were all very busy senior executives. They are:

• Sriram Peruvemba - then a Director of Marketing at Planar and now a VP of Marketing at E-Ink and my first employer ever in the US. I met him offline through a Professor at Portland State University 
• Shripriya Mahesh - then a VP at eBay for Products and now soon-to-become a famous film maker. I 'met' her through LinkedIn. We connected way back in the last downturn and are yet to meet in person - one day!
  
• Rahul Sachdev - then a GM at Siebel and now a VP of Marketing at Intelliden. I 'first' met him through LinkedIn in 2004
• Ajit Pendse - had just sold his last company, eFusion, for $250M and was most recently CEO of Trinity Convergence. I met him offline at a local Starbucks in Portland, Oregon. Ajit was figuring out what to do after selling his company and I was at the other end of the spectrum - figuring out what to do .
  
• Konstantin Guericke - then a co-founder and VP of Marketing at LinkedIn and most recently the CEO of Jaxtr. I met him through LinkedIn when I first 'bumped' into the service in 2003 when they had 40,000 users and I saw its potential. He did not offer me a job right away but fortunately humored my feedback as an early adopter of the service.

Imagine: You CAN make a big difference in someone's life - you just may not know it.

We are facing one of the most challenging financial times, which many compare to the Great Depression, and some growing unemployment pains. Here are some recent headlines that say that better than me:

Wall Street Journal, December 7th 2008 - "Job Losses Worst Since '74"
Reuters, Jan 09, 2009 - "Employers Cut 524,000 Jobs in December'
Wall Street Journal, Jan 09, 2009 - 'Worst Year Since 1945, With More Pain to Come'
No one is immune - Wall Street Journal, Jan 13, 2009 - CEO Firings on the Rise and Downturn Gains Steam

And a picture that says more than those headlines:

Picture 1

I thought I would share my days, actually years, from the last downturn when I was unemployed coming right of B-School. I came from B-School with a dream all the way from India in 1999, when everything was going great in the US. If you believe in God, then suddenly the saying 'Man Proposes, God Disposes' was very profound to me.

As a backgrounder, I came out of B School in 2001. Then I gained experience at being unemployed for almost 3 years. I finally got a 'real' job at Sprint as a sales guy (for 4 months) from where I joined LinkedIn in 2004 in its very early days when there was no 'social networking' category. From there I moved on to co-found my current company, CrossLoop. You can read my bio more on the CrossLoop site here or on my LinkedIn profile here. CrossLoop is funded by El Dorado and Venrock.
 
I had written a little about careers and jobs before but the current situation warrants a more detailed peak into my life during those times.
 
A lot of things had to come together for where I am today inspite of that - I intend to pen those down here in the following parts:

Part I - The Economics
Part II - The Untouchables
Part III - What I would do if I was unemployed again

Imagine: You never waste a crisis