Economic Woes Signal Content Industry Job Losses: It Could Happen To You!

By Maxwell Hoffmann, special to The Content Wrangler

It was just another beautiful autumn day in Portland, Oregon. Since it was October 1st, I swiped my credit card and bought my monthly MAX train pass for $86. If I’d been psychic, I could have bought the $4.75 one day pass. I wouldn’t need the train for awhile.

I had barely put my bag down in my office when my boss told me we needed to meet privately. After leading me into the conference room he placed papers on the table and said “Max, it’s not you, it’s the economy.” I didn’t need to look at the papers to know what was happening. There was a lay-off. And my name was on the list, along with others. Less than two hours later I was on the train home with an empty computer bag, my usual book bag and the oh-so obvious card board box overflowing with personal contents from my desk and adjacent walls. The woman across from me gave me a sorrowful look, and then averted eye contact. She moved to the other end of the train as soon as another seat opened up. I managed not to cry until I got into my car. So, was this how it was going to be?

Through subsequent days I moved through total shock and numbness, to tears, to anger and finally returned to rational thought. All normal emotions. Although my instincts are to paint a pretty picture, I’m sharing my raw experience because this could happen to you. If it doesn’t, it will happen to someone you know before the end of the year. Going through this has taught me a lot of lessons, both in terms of resources to fall back on, and what not to say to a friend who’s been laid off.

The shock: my company had created a new position for me at the beginning of the year and had relocated me 1,000 miles north from Los Angeles. Before signing on a home purchase in May, I had asked my boss and one other source “is there anything I need to know that could put me at risk in the foreseeable future.” I was assured there was nothing to worry about, so I became a local homeowner. Two days before the lay-off, my name had just gone out on a proposal. I was planning a second round of training with a major customer. I had recently received a bonus and was booked about a month in advance. After 9/11 a previous employer had downsized from 167 employees to only 27 employees. Against all odds, I had survived all of those lay-offs. It was different this time.

“Although my instincts are to paint a pretty picture, I’m sharing my raw experience because this could happen to you. If it doesn’t, it will happen to someone you know before the end of the year.”

Now I have a mortgage. Now I have no income. The woman at my grocery check out stand has a job; I don’t. How could this be happening? “It’s the economy.” Since this happened on October 1st, before the biggest stock drop in history, one can only imagine how many others have heard those words across the country, in every segment of the workplace. So, before someone in your company HQ decides to change your row in a salary-sorted Excel spreadsheet to pink, read on for some useful tips.

New tools for tough times

Fortunately, we have stronger social networking tools available than existed right after 9/11. Facebook, Plaxo, even Twitter have matured and made it easier than ever to connect and get the word out that you’re up for hire. And we still have CareerBuilder, Monster and the old war horses. But I have found LinkedIn to be the most potent tool for finding real opportunity. I’m not out of the woods yet, but thanks to my LinkedIn connections I can see light at the end of the tunnel. (Note: all of my LinkedIn hints should apply to similar networking sites.)

Hint 1: If you haven’t done so already, sign up for LinkedIn.com. Most new LinkedIn users start out limiting contacts to former co-workers and people they’ve met face-to-face. Other new users make the mistake of passively posting a resume and waiting for others to “find them.” You have to take the first step in order to build up useful contacts; the whole point of LinkedIn is to expand your connections through “friends of friends” who could form a mutually beneficial relationship. Ask for appropriate introductions. These connections will never be more beneficial than when you are out of work. (And what a time that is to find out who your real friends are!)
Hint 2: Let virtually every contact in your LinkedIn network (or address book) know what happened to you, what your qualifications are and exactly what you are looking for. Don’t assume that friends/contacts will just read your profile and connect the dots leading to your dream job. You need to mention specific industries, job types and geographical locations you would consider. So far I’ve had over 75 positive responses just from LinkedIn contacts in a little over a week. I have three telephone interviews scheduled early next week, with recruiters or potential employers that came from LinkedIn contacts I have never met face-to-face.
Hint 3: There is a lot of hidden power in LinkedIn. Though a potent tool, it does not have an intuitive user interface. There are three in boxes and two of them are capable of hiding “hidden” archived messages. (Hint: go through the tutorial several times.) Learn how to use the advanced search features on Linked In when searching for jobs and people. You can confine your search to people who still work for a certain company, and who live a certain number of miles from a certain zip code. The larger your network, the richer the results.
Hint 4: When you do identify a company with a position that seems like a good fit, used LinkedIn to search for former employees of that company. Contact a couple of recent former employees and find out if your next potential employer has a history of (a) frequent re-organization (b) turn over in management or (c) high turn over in certain positions (like project managers). Does the company keep sales people for a year to build up cold calls and then replace them? The business intelligence you derive this way is literally worth its weight in gold, and the optional $19.95 per month to upgrade to “premium” LinkedIn.

How do you get noticed with 500 competitors for the same job?

Avoid “canned” or boilerplate responses to job listings. Write each cover letter from scratch (even the on-line ones) and always mention several points addressed in the job description. Have multiple resumes prepared ahead of time that highlight a variety of strengths for different careers you may be focusing on. I have cover letters and resumes for five different job searches, (1) Translation/Localization, (2) Desktop Publishing/Production (3) XML and Content Management (4) Author/edit content and (5) Course Development and Training. I have created a resume for each discipline which highlights appropriate career accomplishments and mentions relevant former customers or business partners.

So, what if you’re not laid off yet and you want it to stay that way?

Everyone needs a periodic career “make over” or re-branding, even if you intend to stay with the same employer and advance within its ranks. Due to the dynamics of the world economy, your job is becoming increasingly dependent on overseas economic health. If your company is to survive and thrive, product and service sales will probably have to increase in non-English speaking markets.

There are a variety of things you can do to increase your value, especially if you are involved in content creation:

If you’re already LinkedIn, start requesting (and giving) some recommendations and endorsements. A few simple endorsements from co-workers and customers carry more weight than anything you can do to “blow your own horn”. It has taken me 3 years but I now have over 30 endorsements. Rule of thumb, you will get one endorsement for every two or three that you post for others.
Master the principles of controlled or simplified English. Even if you don’t have software to support your effort, learn to create content that is unambiguous and always has a clear subject / object / action. Why? Chances are that anything you create within the next two years could be reused in a non-English speaking market. Go to http://www.smartny.com for some samples.
Become aware of localization/translation issues. Attend a free webinar with ENLASO or one of the many other companies who offer such services. Find out how to create content with maximum leveraging or “re-use” of previously translated content. There are a host of seemingly innocuous document objects that can wreck havoc in translation when they are misplaced. (Hint: unstructured FrameMaker users, don’t put an index marker in the middle of a word.)
Learn some simple methods of authoring content using the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and XML. Even if you have to use a free, downloadable editor, make the move into topic-based authoring. This is where the world is heading (with, or without you). Even if you don’t use actual DITA structure, with all of its benefits of references and reuse, topic-based authoring creates clearer content with higher reader retention.
Even if you have take a night class at a community college, learn to communicate visually through video, motion capture and similar techniques. Products like Adobe Captivate, Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite and others are blurring the lines between products that used to be associated with product design and authoring. Diagrams that contain *.swf files or interactive 3D diagrams help eliminate the need for pesky “call outs” that have to be translated.

What not to say to a laid off friend

But enough about you and your potential traumas. What about my pain and suffering? Having never been laid off before, I hadn’t realized how stinging the handful of “insensitive” replies from friends can be. I’m sure that I’m guilty of having said at least one of the phrases below in the past to a laid off pal. Here are some actual quotes from responses I got to a mass e-mail that made it clear I had been laid off, have a mortgage and need a job soon:

“Why don’t you just register with Adobe’s job board? Someone with your talent should be able to land a job in about a week!”
“If you were so great, why did they fire you?” (No, I’m not making this one up: I had to explain the term “Lay-off “ to one of my European friends.)
“Think of this lay-off as God’s gift to finally give you the time to find that job that you really love.”
“Why don’t you just become a Java programmer?”
“If you don’t truly love your work, someone else who loves it more can come along and take it away from you.”
“Have you ever thought of becoming a teacher in elementary school? I hear that there are shortages there now.”
“Why don’t you go into Health Care? I read a newspaper article that there are plenty of openings over there.”

If you don’t know of any possible leads or advice just be say so. That gets you off the hook, and you avoid a silence that says “I don’t care.”

Offers of help come from unexpected places

I’ve learned that you should contact everyone, even friends who are already laid off. You can still find an opportunity that is good for someone else. Surprisingly, the most concrete assistance from LinkedIn contacts came from people I hadn’t seen for a long time, and those “friends of friends” I connected with some time back. I even had three people I’d never met ask to become LinkedIn connections just so they could share their contacts. Evidently some of my contacts had shared my situation with them.

One thing this experience has taught me is that basically, most people, are good, concerned and genuinely want to help you in your time of need. One of those new contacts on LinkedIn shared a quote she had heard from an actress on Turner Classic Movies, “Remember, no matter how small the part, you are always as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.” That being the case, I know that I will land work, be it contract or permanent. Mortgage payments shall be met. And eventually, small luxuries that I took for granted shall return.

And even though “it’s the economy,” I will be contributing to it again soon.

To see what I might have to offer your organization or customers, check out my LinkedIn profile. Or, contact me at or +1 (503) 805.3719.