What is the average time for laid off people is the US to find an equivalent job out there? It took me 3 months, but most of my ex-colleagues were between 5-7 months. I know one guy that has been looking for 16 months, but I think that's extreme.
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44 years old. It took 4 1/2 months for me to find a contractor to hire position. The benefits aren't as good but the pay is great and so is the work environment. I wouldn't settle for just anything. Didn't want to jump from the frying pan to the fire.
44 years old. It took me 2.5 months from layoff to start date.
@4hoc - Have you considered working as an independent consultant in the meantime? Check with your old colleagues and/or contacts, if you could do a short consulting work for them. There are always things in Organizations that are not working well, and the local resources don't have the time to analyze and/or fix them. A couple of hours here, and a few others there might be helpful.
I have been out of work now for a year. I have seriously been looking for a new for a good part of that time. Lots of interviews but no luck. I am in my late 50s and that is REALLY against me. It is very scary out there. I worked for HP most of my life. THANKS MEG!!
@2txp this is a personal decision, but children can sense when something "isn't right" and it can be better to uproot a family and move in some cases because there's a chance that a prolonged period without employment will affect them as much as moving.
42 years old, took a week to find a job with better pay, stayed there a couple of years then found another job for double the pay. Been at this last one for 6 months now.
@1dbd - Relocation is not always an option, especially if you have adolescents...
It took me two weeks. I ended up making $21K more than I did at HP but having to move 1600 mi cross country (similar cost of living)
I did have moving expenses paid for and got a $10K starting bonus at a major HPE competitor. A common theme I see here is that the ones struggling are often tied down to a particular location in which HPE might be one of the few tech industry employers.
I think it depends on the position that the former HP employee held along with the area they live in.
My personal example... I was a former EDS employee that became a HP'er. I held account management positions for nearly twenty years. I had a very difficult time finding employment in my area for several reasons including: overqualified, not holding technical certifications, lack of recent experience in direct IT support, etc.
What I did was leverage experience from a pre IT career (skilled trade) and went to work doing that. My current job does not pay what I made at EDS/HP. My current job does however offer job security, unmatched retirement benefits, and the ability to move up in a very empowering work environment.
I was laid off in January of this year (I'm 46 years old, so I guess that makes me a senior citizen within Meg's HPE). I really panicked of being without a job, and took the first offer I got (after 6 weeks), with the assumption that once having a job, I could take things with more calm and look for the job I really wanted. It hasn't worked as I expected...
I took a $17K pay cut to do an individual contributor role, similar to the ones of people I was managing while in HPE. The huge issue I'm having is that I can't take time off work to do rounds and rounds of face to face interviews. I have been able to manage the phone ones, but the face to face ones really kill me. I think I'll need to resign in order to focus on finding the job that I really want, but I guess that will have its toll on my resume (and I have no idea how long it will take me to find that job). I kind of regret now accepting that offer back then, but I was really concerned about letting it pass with how things are nowadays with the economy.
Got one the Monday morning after I left HPE. Started work two weeks later after traveling the country in First using part of my severance check.
I have been looking for 2 years since taking HP's early retirement incentive. I landed a 8 month contract with a low end fly-by-night I.T. services provider out of Mississauga and had to leave as they were abusive and incompetent. Still looking - 30 years in I.T. as a Project Manager, Consultant, and Support Engineer.
I'd be better off if I moved back to the U.S. but my roots are sunk too deep here in Canada. The I.T. job market here is dismal.
HPES / 16 Years / WFR Class of 10/2014
6 months... eating all "severance" and UE bennies to ride out the storm. Thankfully and pleasantly re-employed down the road a bit with similar benefits, surrounded by happy faces every day.
In retrospect I'm thankful to have been RIF'd early on. Even more thankful they made the separation permanent (no temptation for attempted 'backsies' 18 months later). To read about my old home being dismantled in some grand fire sale... by most accounts, it sounds like an unhappy and uncertain place of work.
It took me the longest 5 months of my entire life to get another job. It was also the final trigger for my divorce, but I wouldn't blame HPE for that. The reports out there that say that the economy is growing, and there are plenty of opportunities are pure BS (at least for someone older than 35 years). I guess that if I would have been on my early 20s, on an entry level position making peanuts, the story would have been different.