Un-Unemployed

A year of unemployment and career transition

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

Around February of this year…

I said to my wife that it was clear that I was going to be unemployed for exactly a year. April 19th, 2023 is when I got the notice from Meta that I was being laid off. I figured it was all too poetic to not happen this way. Sometimes you can’t ignore such clear universal signs, so here I am exactly a year later writing about the end of my unemployment.

Let’s start with the destination. I’ll be starting at Adobe as a Senior Manager of Design Operations in a little over a week! Even writing that sentence still feels surreal because of the lower standards I was willing to accept as the year went on. What’s even more insane is that I had two offers that were almost identical. What should have been a triumphant moment that was easy ended up being its own form of (albeit privileged) stress. I felt a weird sense of survivor’s guilt even though my bank account is lower than it has been in years and I’m now familiar with how to deliver with DoorDash. But I made the tough choice and vowed to help refer folks to the role I didn’t accept because I’m not about to get comfortable in my success again. Not after this year.

In the beginning I tried to spin it all positive.

“Hey, maybe I’ll actually get a job before my severance kicks in and it will be like making a double income for a bit!”

“I was feeling burnt out so this will be good for me! I can focus on making music and getting healthy again!”

“I’m going to find a better role and end up better off!”

Well, that last one ended up being true even if it was about 9 months later than I figured.

After that initial reflection on being laid off (which has become all too common since), I shared some initial feelings of imposter syndrome. That was back in August! I thought that was my lowest point and boy did I get that wrong. I stopped and started all kinds of new habits. I went to therapy and switched around my medications. I got hopeful, then crushed, then did it all over again, week by week.

I was “fine” throughout the whole ordeal, but as anyone who has experienced this can attest, it still hurts when bullets hit a bulletproof vest. My job search stats tell that story very well.

Here’s some fun facts from my job search over the last year:

• I submitted around 710 job applications.

  • 50 (7%) of those applications resulted in an interview.

  • 370 (52%) of those applications actually sent rejection emails.

  • That means that 420 (~60%) of my applications received no response at all.

• From those 710 applications, I interviewed for 50 different roles. That’s 7% of my applications actually resulting in an interview.

  • Those 50 roles were across 44 companies. I interviewed for 3 different roles at 2 different companies. I interviewed for 2 different roles at 2 different companies.

• So I mentioned I got interview requests for 50 different roles. This resulted in a total of 153 interviews! And this doesn’t include prep calls with recruiters, connections or referrals, or feedback calls. For these 50 roles, here’s how many got to the 4 stages I classify as Phone Screen, Manager Interview, Panel Interviews, and a Case Study Presentation.

  • Phone Screen: 47 out of the 50 roles (94%). 2 roles cancelled ahead of the scheduled interviews, 1 role cancelled just hours ahead of the interview.

  • Manager Interview: 36 out of 50 (72%) roles I met with the potential hiring manager.

  • Panel Interviews: 19 out of 50 (38%) roles had me meet with folks individually. I had a total of 64 interviews in this stage.

  • Case Studies: 6 out of the 50 roles (12%) had me present a case study. These required a ton of prep and I usually presented to anywhere from 3 to 8 people.

• After all of that I ended up getting 5 offers over the year.

  • 2 were short-term contracts with Atlassian and Microsoft, respectively.

  • 1 was a full time offer with a company that I ended up quitting a few weeks later because it was a very bad fit.

  • Finally, a week ago, I had 2 offers from Adobe and Atlassian and was faced with the toughest decision I’ve had in my career.

Here’s some other fun experiences I had in the last year:

• I spoke with one company a day after being laid off. In retrospect that was way too soon.

• I had a full loop of interviews for a role completed within a month of being laid off. Again, too soon after to be fully present.

• For one role, my recruiter was laid off in the middle of my loop. That wasn’t very encouraging.

• I got ghosted by 4 companies. And I went back to interview for different roles for 2 of those companies. Fool me once…

• The company that had the most interviews with was Freshworks. 14 interviews for 2 roles. I was ghosted and later rejected for both of those roles. I’m trying to remain neutral from this experience but I do not recommend ever interviewing with that company.

• Another company had me interview 12 TIMES for a role. They interviewed me first for a manager role, rejected me, and asked me to interview for a senior IC role. They offered me that IC role after but this was the company I left after a few weeks. I would name the company but they’ve recently had layoffs and I don’t want to kick them while they are down.

• I had 6 to 7 interviews for 11 different roles. So the bulk of my interviews were from full loops with these companies.

What I learned

It’s easy to look back on a tough year and laugh at some of the crazy statistics and absurd situations I had. I had some moments of real hope and excitement and a lot more moments of crushing defeat mixed with anger and rejection. We burned through our savings. We were unsure where we’d get our medications and healthcare. We had to prioritize bills and limit the amount of snacks the kids ate!

Through all of that, there was this feeling I always had that the next step in my career was coming. After some rejections earlier this year, I met with former colleagues and specifically one who got a role over me. I asked him for advice on how to present myself and structure my case study presentations. I took his feedback and incorporated it while also rethinking the rest of my approach. From that point, I got offers from the next two companies that asked for a case study presentation. I also applied for many types of roles throughout the year, all roles that I have done or have the right experience for. I talked to companies about Technical Program Management, Business Operations, Product Operations, Creative Operations, Digital Delivery, eCommerce, Growth, Strategy, and UX Program Management. Of course, I talked to the most companies about Design Operations and Design Program Management. Because I realized through all of this that it would never feel right to specialize in most of the above roles - that Design Operations is where I want my career to be at this point.

There is so much to be gleaned from this experience I’ve had over the last year. Hiring practices need to improve across the board. I could get into so much of it in the future, but today I want to celebrate surviving a very difficult time while also jumping on an excellent and exciting new opportunity. It never felt like those two things would align, and I went through 3 short-term jobs and a lot of months of unemployment before things did align.

As I head into my next role that I really hope is a long-term role, I do feel like I’m on the next phase of my career. I had the “entry-level, new college grad” phase. I had the “finding my niche” phase. Most recently I had the “establish and solidify” phase.

Now, I hope I’m in my “grow and thrive” phase.