Left jobless by virus, workers learn how to pivot and pitch
Employment-seekers absorb hard lessons and adapt — but the danger isn’t over
Mark Henick woke up one morning last March to a scary new world of unemployment. The father of three, who worked as a mental-health advocate and speaker, abruptly lost six months’ worth of contracts because of the coronavirus.
“Everything fell apart,” he says. “We were future-broke.”
With no prospects for income, and bankruptcy staring him in the face, Henick felt “helpless and hopeless.”
Then something happened that changed everything: A stranger who’d heard about the family’s plight sent a large sum of money to tide them over.
“Opening the envelope and seeing this cheque for $10,000 in my hands, I cried right there in front of the mailbox,” a grateful Henick recalls. Putting pride aside, he used the cash for living expenses while he redirected his skills to earn money again.
While the Toronto resident’s story has a happy ending, countless Canadians are still struggling after their working life was upended by the pandemic. By late last year, close to 450,000 job seekers had been without work for six months or more, Statistics Canada reported. Among the hardest hit by job loss in Toronto are low-wage, racialized workers and women.
In a survey of 1,000 unemployed Canadians last fall, more than half said they were willing to take any job that would help pay the bills and two-thirds were looking for work in a different field. About 55 per cent had lowered their salary expectations.
Sixty-two per cent blamed COVID-19 for being jobless after several months, and while the majority still hoped to find a job, about 20 per cent had quit looking, reported the Harris Poll, which did the survey for Express Employment Professionals.
For Henick, the key to finding work was pivoting his career, which helped him land two podcast deals and several virtual speaking events, and finish his just-published book, “So-Called Nor
mal: A Memoir of Family, Depression and Resilience.”
Before the unexpected boost from a Vancouver man (who asked to remain anonymous), the 30-something dad says he was “prepared to do anything” to support his family.
With existing debt, car payments, rent, child care and other bills to worry about, he and his wife — a teacher on maternity leave — had savings for only three months’of expenses.
Reasoning that job prospects would be better in Toronto, they returned to the city from a rental house in Niagara they’d only just moved into. Their landlord responded with understanding and compassion, letting them out of their lease with no penalty. When Henick wrote about the landlord’s kindness on Twitter and a U.S. business news site, the generous stranger stepped up.
“He saved my family’s life,” says Henick, who’s since paid more than $10,000 forward himself, also anonymously. One of his new ventures is a podcast called “Living Well” for others going through mental-health challenges.
For Zainab Mehdi, a “huge mental expense” finally eased in January when she landed her first job after an eight-month search.
The McGill University graduate estimates she applied for about 400 jobs, did between 30 and 50 first interviews and messaged “hundreds” of people to build a network before being hired as social-media co-ordinator at Cossette, a marketing and communications agency.
As a fresh grad with a B.A. in psychology and no job experience, “people weren’t recognizing my value,” says Mehdi, who felt worthless “after putting on your best face and getting nothing for it.”
With dim job prospects in her field, she quickly focused her search on the business sector. “Diligence and perseverance” were finally rewarded with a job that “exceeds all expectations,” says Mehdi, who also credits “networking and defeating apathy and not victimizing myself.”
Her best advice to job seekers is to use LinkedIn “to message a bunch of people (to talk to) at companies in positions you’re interested in.”
Employment consultant Sonia Garzon echoes that advice to build a network of connections, adding it’s smart to first identify an industry of interest and then read job descriptions to see what employers are looking for.
It’s also crucial to promote yourself by creating a presence or a “personal brand” on social media, says Garzon, a project manager at ACCES Employment, which offers free online job-search services and helps connect people from diverse backgrounds with employers.
Also key is to consider transferring your skills to sectors that you haven’t worked in, urges Garzon. “We put labels on ourselves. The idea is to see beyond that,” she says, pointing out that 21st-century skills of problem solving, change management, critical thinking and communication are in demand across the board.
“Companies are hiring,” she says, listing opportunities in data analytics, customer service, IT, telecommunications, digital marketing, cyber security, the COVID supply chain and health care, among others.
Toronto musician John Gzowski, who’s been job-hunting since his contract work on theatre productions was cancelled last March, sums up his advice in one word: “pivot.”
With 25 years of “solid” freelance work under his belt, the composer and guitarist has now taken his talents online to write music for virtual dance shows and create sound design for podcasts.
It helps fill his hours, if not his bank account, says Gzowski, whose partner — a dancer, choreographer and therapist — is also struggling to find work.
“The bigger worry is what happens in the summer and fall,” he says, predicting a “pretty frightening seismic shift” in the arts as music festivals, small theatre companies and venues fall victim to the pandemic.