My husband John Plocher
was quoted in the newspaper today!
The
Mercury News published the article:
Silicon Valley unemployment rate jumps to record 11%
By Pete Carey
Posted: 04/17/2009 10:32:21 AM PDT
“Silicon Valley’s unemployment rate jumped to a record 11 percent last month, and more than 100,000 people are now unemployed and looking for work in the area, the state reported Friday. The question now is how many more will join them before the recession ends….
It can’t happen soon enough for John Plocher, a 47-year-old software engineer who was laid off from struggling Sun Microsystems in November after about 20 years with the company. ‘It’s just staggering how many people are out there looking,’ he said Friday.
Job-loss shock
‘All the big companies seem to be shedding,’ Plocher said. At regular lunch meetings of his networking group, ‘I just look at their name tags: ‘I used to work at…’ and it’s all the big names in the valley.’
Plocher, who has a son in high school and daughter in college, said socializing and networking are important, especially to get over the first shock of losing a job. ‘The first month was really, really hard.'”
Some of the resources which have been of most help to John in his job hunt:
- There is a networking and lunch group in Cupertino, California,
called CSix where job hunters share ideas
and leads. - The book What Color Is Your
Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles is excellent. This book is available in
many languages (French, Korean, Russian, Turkish…). Also check out the
resources on Dick Bolles’ web site:
JobHuntersBible.Com - LinkedIn – a social networking
web site for professionals who want to extend their contacts. - For more, see my
January 15, 2009 blog post.
KatysBlog 