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When the Ax Falls (Princeton Alumni Weekly)

Thread ID: 12550 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-02-29

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hqz [OP]

2004-02-29 01:47 | User Profile

When the Ax Falls: In today’s economy, a Princeton degree isn’t an impenetrable shield against unemployment. Four alumni tell how they have coped with the unexpected.

By Mark F. Bernstein ’83 February 25, 2004

[SIZE=1]http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW03-04/09-0225/features1.html[/SIZE]

Ragnar

2004-02-29 04:11 | User Profile

Millions of guys without Princeton degrees and sinking will be interested to discover how little difference it makes. A country that throws away its cobblers won't care about its elite either.

[QUOTE][B]Jack Moore ’62 [/B]

When Moore graduated from Princeton in 1962, he was certain he wanted to be an electrical engineer. “I grew up in the Sputnik era,” he explains, referring to the 1957 launch of the Russian satellite that shocked Americans and spurred efforts to close a perceived technological gap with the Soviet Union.

He first went to work for Western Electric Corporation (which has since been become part of Lucent Technologies), working as a product-development engineer in the new field of semiconductors while pursuing his master’s degree at night. Though Moore thought about adding an M.B.A. to his résumé, he allowed himself to be talked out of it by friends who argued that he had all the credentials he would ever need. “In those days,” he says, “an M.B.A. was not as big a deal as it is now.”

Instead, unlike many people he knew who stayed with their first employer forever, Moore moved on to a series of small companies in what he calls “my risk-taking years,” ending up at Bethlehem Steel as a research engineer in 1972. He received promotions regularly, scaling the departmental ladder, but the bottom fell out of the American steel market, and Moore was laid off in 1986.

[B]He took that first adjustment in stride and quickly found another job before moving to a company in Ohio. His career there lasted for six years, until the 1991—92 recession, when Moore found himself caught in a corporate reorganization and his job was eliminated again.[/B] He moved on to consulting – in effect, a marketing job, with himself as the product. “This was a big, big change in my life,” he recounts of the time after his second layoff. “I realized I did not want to work alone. I liked a company and I had never gotten the satisfaction out of pure engineering that many of my colleagues did.” He decided to stay in marketing.

Luck, unfortunately, eluded him. After four years as a consultant, Moore was hired by a German firm based in Memphis, but it moved its American office shortly after he joined them. He went back to consulting for two more years, until 1999, when he moved to Atlanta to take a job in sales development. Things were booming, but Moore again caught the end of the boom, which burst completely after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Having already survived three rounds of layoffs, he fell victim in a fourth, in November 2001. [B]After more than two years of unemployment, Moore found a sales job in late 2003 through Monster.com, an Internet jobs site, but his new employer closed its doors barely a month after he was hired.[/B] He is now back to the all-too-familiar task of searching for a job selling products or services to business executives.

Moore says searching for a job has made him an expert networker, playing alumni networks as well as professional and social groups, though he downplays the effectiveness of any of them. The media, he says, often bandy about a statistic that 80 percent of workers find their jobs through networking, but he believes the actual number is much lower. [B]“People are fed up with people trying to network with them,”[/B] he insists. He does possess what he calls the three keys to success in the job market: Persistence. Persistence. Persistence.

“I have the advantage of not being embarrassed to pick up the phone and call people,” Moore explains. “Job hunting is really just a sales job.” But, as headhunters acknowledge, the economy is still a buyer’s market, and Moore believes companies feel they can afford to wait for the perfect candidate. “You have to meet 12 out of 10 requirements [for the job] now,” he says.

At age 63, he does not want to move from Atlanta and could not afford to retire even if he wanted to. Although age discrimination in employment is prohibited, Moore says he faces it anyway. [B]He lists his academic credentials on his résumé but omits the years in which he graduated, and does not list any employment experience prior to 1986 lest potential employers figure out too early how old he really is.[/B]

Moore says he tries to remain optimistic but admits it is sometimes difficult. [B]Two years shy of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare, he and his wife, who does not work, must buy their own health insurance, not to mention groceries and other necessities, by eating into their savings.[/B] Fortunately, their children are grown. Two years ago, Moore worked over the Christmas holidays as a sales clerk for a local department store but has not done so since, preferring to focus instead on finding long-term employment. How do he and his wife make ends meet while he waits and looks?

“I rob banks,” he jokes darkly.

[url]http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW03-04/09-0225/features1.html[/url]

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