Fireside Chat: The World Changed and So Did My Job!

A panel of talent acquisition professionals talks through what happened when the people who normally find jobs for others suddenly had to find one for themselves. Each had a different path into unemployment: a hiring freeze that turned into a layoff after months of false hope, a furlough from an agency serving New York startups, a startup that never closed its Series A, and an HR tech company that cut staff months after everyone assumed the worst had passed.

The conversation covers the practical mechanics of running a job search like a job. That meant setting a daily schedule, tracking every outreach in a spreadsheet or tool such as Trello or Airtable, logging job applications and recruiter contacts, and treating networking calls as the main channel rather than cold applications through job boards. One search that leaned heavily on posted applications produced a single phone interview; the roles that actually converted came through warm introductions and direct conversations.

Other points raised:

• Giving a search a real structure, including an emotional cutoff period before switching into strategy mode
• Sorting target roles into ranked categories, then listing contacts inside each category to work through systematically
• Turning a chaotic-looking resume into a coherent narrative by connecting each job change to a shift in the market rather than letting it read as job-hopping
• Reaching out to former managers and mentors for direct introductions rather than relying only on applications
• Using a creative, personal project, like a video resume set to music, to stand out against a flood of laid-off candidates from larger, better-known companies
• Identifying which industries and companies were still hiring or growing during the downturn, and targeting those directly instead of applying broadly

The group also compares notes on how confident they feel in the state of talent acquisition hiring processes at large companies, drawing on their own recent experience as candidates rather than recruiters. Their stories run from six months of searching to landing something within a matter of weeks, but all involve leaning on community connections built well before the layoff happened.