Wednesday April 11, 2001

Dealing With Unemployment

Hide your head ... the job cuts keep coming. Motorola's passed out 22,000 pink slips. Dell's fired 1700. Charles Schwab will send 2300 employees packing later this month.

After eight years, Doug Hutter became a victim of Dell's downsizing. He's already spent most of his severance just to stay a float. "I've paid a couple of home payments ahead but it's getting to the end of that time, don't know where the next one's coming."

Like Doug, Gary Davidson was also on Dell's hit list. He says, "No one was able to figure out why anyone was laid off."

Angel Perez has been working the phones since he got the boot from a New York dot-com. He says, "You go through the whole process of denial or healing or whatever, anger."

After the shock wears off, its time to ask yourself, "What do I do now?"

Hotjobs.com's Dimitri Boylan has three tips to help laid off workers land new jobs.

Number one: don't panic. "They take the first job they get and they find out three months later that it wasn't the right thing for them."

Number two: stay positive when you're interviewing. "Never carry a negative experience from a previous employer into the interview process for your next job."

And number three: consider a new career. Dimitri says despite the dot-com bombs, tech jobs are still hot. Help is also wanted in the education sector. If you're looking for high pay, try health care.

Dimitri says, "There's a tremendous shortage of health care workers and that's going to persist in the next 10 to 15 years."

Experts say most people will have six different careers in their adult lives. A lesson Doug, Gary, and Angel are learning the hard way.