Losing a Job: From Great Depression to Reinvention : Employment: Pink slips once meant blue days. But now the jolt is often used as a catalyst to positive change.

Times were terrible. Nobody seemed able to cure the economy. Martha Johnson was 40, alone in her Portland apartment, unable to lift her hopes against the weight of rejection letters. No jobs here for a middle-age career woman in the Great Depression.

At 3 a.m. on Feb. 9, 1932, she shambled into her bathroom and swallowed poison. Like the Wall Street barons who leaped from their office windows in the market crash, her passing was noted in the newspaper.

“Her bills were mounting, her cash dwindling and jobs for a woman her age becoming rarer. What to do!” wrote the Portland News-Telegram.

Job insecurity probably gnaws at the spirit of more Americans more sharply today than at any time since that Depression.

But in the two generations since Martha Johnson’s plaintive suicide, America has made, sometimes without stopping to account for it all, significant progress when it comes to the old question, “What to do!” when facing up to unemployment.

More and more, Americans are riding out today’s rounds of firings and layoffs and reorganizations. Some of them are emerging stronger, better placed, more confident, and with a limberness they never knew they had. Just as business is acclimatizing to the whirlwind of economic change, so too are workers adapting.

“It’s not the pain you’d think. Job loss you get over pretty quickly. I’ve counseled maybe 150 people over the last five years and 90% to 95% would say that losing a job was a step forward in their lives. They look back and say this was a growth experience, self-retreat, a needed time out,” says Ronald E. Ennis, who operates his own worker “outplacement” company in Portland.

This business--a booming business--of outplacement, or career transition counseling, is to the white-collar work force what retraining and unions are to the blue-collar: a doorway to the next job, scaffolding over the feared abyss of unemployment. It is particularly relevant for America’s beleaguered mid-level managers, who account for only 8% of the work force in the 1990s but 22% of the job losses, according to the American Management Assn.

By its nature, outplacement offers optimism in the face of dread and a push forward after the shock of being set back. And it is made credible by success stories of men and women who have fingered their own pink slip and never given thought to reaching for the poison.

Maybe you are reading this because you are among those who know something is wrong in your job or in your industry. Rare are people who look back and say they were completely surprised when they were told to clear out their desk. If you’re not in such a jam, be patient. “Don’t worry,” says Ennis, “I tell people, you’ll get your chance--you’ll get fired.”

Words of caution: Like other counseling and advice programs, outplacement centers have their share of charlatans and incompetents, and maybe more than their share, considering the booming demand. Some are little more than lonely-hearts clubs; others offer only rote services. Typically outplacement is quite costly--some fees are up to 17% or more of a person’s previous salary or flat sums that can range to $12,000.

Reputable outplacement counselors say their success ratio is high. But that could be expected. Engineers and the kind of people who rise to be managers or white-collar executives are typically motivated and educated, and it would be uncommon for such a person not to have the capacity to rebound, particularly if helped along. These workers tend to view outplacement not as salvation but as strategy.

Lesser motivated and lesser educated workers, those with more serious difficulties in finding good jobs, are not as frequently seen in outplacement programs.

To illustrate how the process works at its best, Ennis and his company, Pathways, opened their files and made introductions to four mid-level managers who wear the war paint of the 1990s economy. Here are their stories.

*

Promode Lodhia, 41, born in India, is married with two children. He has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and computer science from Georgia Tech. For 11 years, he worked for a Portland manufacturing company with “a very exciting career--always moving up.” He advanced to manage a group of engineers and basked in recognition.

This was as he had methodically planned it. Born into a merchant family, Lodhia had set for himself benchmarks by which he would gauge his success. He was determined. At night he went to Portland State and earned an MBA.

Then came a management change at the top of the company. One morning in June of 1991, he was ordered into his supervisor’s office.

He listened. “We are very happy with your work, but we have to let you go. You don’t fit in our management.”

A busy, directed man all his life, Lodhia went home empty to ask, “What do I do now?” From his pocket today, he pulls out a chart that was devised to help people cope with death. It works just as well to describe the emotional tumble of losing one’s job. His finger follows the path of his emotions from anger to grief to helplessness to reconciliation.

As part of his separation, his employer offered him outplacement services. Lodhia asked for cash instead. He was refused. Companies increasingly offer outplacement because they want to avoid lawsuits, and they want to keep from dragging down the morale of other workers. So he took what they gave him, which led to Ron Ennis.

“Ron advised me not to talk to people for a month. It was good advice. I was so bitter, I would have said things that would have been bad for me.”

Thus began Lodhia’s “time out”--a self-consumed, difficult, challenging and, ultimately, revelatory interlude.

“When you’re on the job, you don’t get a chance to discover about yourself. This was a process of self-discovery.”

Sometimes it was painful. He lost faith in himself. His children asked, “Daddy, aren’t you going to work today?” He cursed his fortunes. The regional economy was lousy. Why me? he asked many hundred times.

But by working through counseling questionnaires, by writing essays on his accomplishments, by auditing his deepest values, he surprised himself.

He regained faith in his own worth, no small matter in such circumstances.

And he changed his views of the worth of money. His paycheck was how he had measured himself. But as he was forced to think through the success stories of his life, “I found they didn’t have a lot to do with money.”

His training, experience and goals had pointed him toward management. Then he dug deep and found that he was actually strongest at technical matters, developing projects and pushing them to completion.

Call it a recalibration. “If you know what you’re looking for, it will be easier to find,” he says, satisfied.

Next came the push to “network,” which Ennis and other job outplacement experts say is the gritty heart of the matter when it comes to finding new work. List everyone you know. Call them. Schmooze with the store clerks, neighbors, people in elevators. Join civic groups, renew your membership in professional associations. Call, call, call.

Motivational speakers and outplacement programs devote hours, sometimes days, of training to networking. It can be a particular challenge for people in technical fields, who have had little day-to-day experience in cold-calling and chit-chatting with strangers. For workers with sales experience, it can come as second nature.

One strategy involves role reversal. Think of yourself as the person who gets approached. Would you have a few minutes for an eager stranger who wants to know about you, your job and what you might know about the job market. Virtually everyone says yes--and networking coaches emphasize this: Most people are happy to talk, most people are flattered when asked for help.

As for motivation, Ennis tells his clients that more than 80% of the “good” jobs are “hidden” or filled by word of mouth, not through advertising.

Workers who go through the process can quickly become zealous converts.

“You get complacent when you are in a stable job like I was. But networking is the key to staying employable,” Lodhia said.

In his case, the payoff came when he called a former co-worker who had moved on to a job at Hewlett-Packard Co. Like a hundred other calls, it was a dead end. Until a while later, when the former colleague passed on a tip about an upcoming opening that might fit Lodhia’s skills and interests.

“I’ve grown a lot,” Lodhia says today from the lunchroom at Hewlett-Packard’s Vancouver, Wash., office, where he devises and assembles computer systems for use within the company. “For me it was a very positive experience. Looking back, I found what I really wanted to do in life.”

But just in case, Lodhia has not forgotten the lesson of being cast out on his own. His computer is programmed to remind him to make networking calls twice a week.

*

For 20 years, Fred Bruderlin worked the good life in Santa Barbara, most of it for an insurance company. He was vice president of information services, married with two small children and going on 47 years old.

When ownership of his employer passed from father to son, the philosophy of management changed, and Bruderlin’s life went downhill. He began thinking about leaving California and sent out resumes to the Pacific Northwest without success.

One day he went to his boss to request vacation. His intention was to travel north to nose around more seriously about a new job and a place to move. Instead, he was fired on the spot. It was a shock but not entirely a surprise. It was July, 1990.

He sold his house, took his equity and four months’ severance pay and came to Portland. His employer offered him outplacement with Ennis as part of his dismissal. His wife was a homemaker and could not support the family.

One of the services typical in outplacement is an office. Bruderlin had a place to go each day, 8 to 5. His job search became his new job.

There was an unexpected sense of freedom in his life. “You’re in control of your own future. For many people, this chance to take control is the first time in their lives. It was a neat feeling.”

Oh, there were plenty of lows. In Santa Barbara he lived a “sheltered” life with his few friends and his job. In Portland he was an outsider. He wrote his letters to would-be employers and began the difficult process of calling strangers and building a network.

“It was an opening-up process. I’m basically a shy person, and I couldn’t afford to be shy anymore,” Bruderlin says. Some days he felt as if he were going nowhere. “Ron would say, ‘You’re not working hard enough.’ I’d go back and make more calls.”

Other days he would come home in a great mood. Nobody actually offered him a job, but, wow, a stranger at some company somewhere actually returned his phone call. His wife indulged these moods.

Today, he knows many more people in his community than he did after 20 years in Santa Barbara. He’s such a convert to networking that he’s written a software program in his spare time to teach others the difficult, methodical undertaking.

“In my view, the ‘90s are going to be turbulent and nobody can count on keeping a job. The smart people are going to keep their networks alive. It’s always on my mind--it’s my responsibility to myself.”

Four months along in the process, Bruderlin’s expanding network of contacts paid off. Today he is general manager of DMC, a company that sells computer systems to dentists’ offices. The experience, he says, put work into its proper perspective, strengthened his commitment to his family and enlarged his interest in teaching the ancient martial art of tai chi.

“There were plenty of times along the way when I wished it wasn’t so; I wished I had my old job back. I came within three months of having to leave Portland, saying I would take any job, anywhere,” he says.

“But now I can say, I am stronger and a more confident man.”

*

Sixteen years with First Interstate Bank and Anne Byrd had risen to be an audit manager with the title of vice president. In 1990-91, the bank reorganized and streamlined--leaving Byrd in a department that changed focus.

Typically, this is the first step toward a layoff. Indeed, her job position ultimately was abolished. But Byrd, 40, married with no children, had an investment with the bank, and it with her. She decided not to wait for the ax to fall.

She went to the human resources department and asked for help. She needed a self-assessment. The bank agreed and offered her either internal job counseling or the services of an outplacement expert. She took outplacement. The catch was that she would be paid for only 60 days. After that, she was on her own. That was in the summer of 1992.

Like colleagues who had been laid off, Byrd was haunted. “At first I felt I had failed some way--that there must be something wrong with Anne Byrd or this wouldn’t be happening.”

With Ennis, she inventoried her life, her hobbies, skills and interests for career options. She liked writing children’s stories. Maybe she could turn that into work.

“I never had to go through an internal review of who I am and what I could do. But in this process you have to ask what do you really want because you just may get it.”

Which brought Byrd back to banking and First Interstate. That’s what she liked. And wanted. One by one, she went through the departments at the bank, seeking what are called “information” interviews with managers. How, exactly, did their departments function? Could she be of value?

What she found out was not what the bank did, but what it did not do. She knew she wanted to be more self-directed. So she wrote a proposal for a job that did not exist but which she thought would be valuable, a job that would oversee the training of employees on how to stay in compliance with myriad bank laws and regulations.

She submitted it. The days ticked by and her anxiety increased. Would the two months lapse and would she be out of luck?

“It was not always a comfortable process because you may learn things about yourself that you don’t want to realize. I learned that I was wearing my emotions on my sleeve and setting myself up to be vulnerable.”

A job offer came from a competing bank. She pushed First Interstate to decide on her proposal. It did, and she was moved to a new job of her own design, still as a vice president and now with a wide-open future. Someone who could have been written off had now written her own ticket, a show of gumption sure to enhance her reputation.

Of the process, she says: “It helped me realize that things are not going to stay the same. That business is and will change. You can ride with it or let it swallow you up. If I could offer one word of advice, it’s don’t be afraid to toot your own horn. It’s amazing how people underestimate themselves when they’re down.”

*

Wade Byers is a native of the Portland region and the long-serving mayor of the suburban community of Gladstone. He is a mechanical engineer, a single parent, and like many in the Northwest, ended up in the timber product industry.

He rode the boom years as a sales engineer and technical marketer for companies that supplied machinery for saw and paper mills. In April, 1991, with the timber industry on hard times, he was laid off when his company’s sale projections proved overly ambitious and the firm underwent the dreaded downsizing. He could see it coming for more than six months.

Still, the pink slip left him with an empty feeling. “When I got out of college, people went to work and they stayed forever.”

He was offered outplacement services. Ennis advised him to collect himself. “No sense in starting the process until you’re ready to do a good job of it,” Byers recalls.

Then he turned to his lifetime’s worth of local friends and connections. “Smile and dial,” Byers calls it. “I laid things out. It became a sales and marketing task. I was selling myself.”

He set himself a deadline of six months, after which he would return to college at age 47 and start from the ground up. He made a deal with himself that he would take a lesser job if that was all he could find. “I knew I would be OK, but I didn’t know how I was going to be OK.”

His self-examination left Byers with these lessons: “People should identify those things that are really important to them. They should be sure that the things they are using their resources for are really important.”

At the outplacement center, Ennis had delivered his standard advice: “Everybody gets a job.”

After four months, Byers became a believer. “Sometimes at the end you find there is more than one job and you have to make a choice. Or you ask, should you hold out for something still better?” Byers picked from three opportunities and today is sales engineer of E.S. Constant Co., which markets heating and ventilation equipment.

“For all the turmoil of today, most people land on their feet. What’s changed about me? Well, I appreciate having a job. Sometimes I go in to the boss and say, hey, I appreciate the chance to work here. And I can tell you, it’s not all bad to be out of a company that’s struggling.”

Times researcher Doug Conner contributed to this story.