After Nortel’s Crash
Six laid-off workers tell their stories
As told to Chris Cobb
The Ottawa Citizen, TechWeekly
Nov. 14, 2002
Anita Caputo
Age. 44. Job: Managing Divestitures
I was on vacation, returned to work on July 31 last year and within two hours I was laid off. If you were astute, you could see it coming. I was managing divestitures and was to be working on an IPO. When you're slotted to work on something that is future-oriented, and the future is not happening, the writing is on the wall.
I had spent my holiday reading a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It inspired me and made me realize that if I got laid off, I could do something on my own. Our family knew things were not going well at Nortel and at the beginning of 2001, we had begun to curb our spending. When we told our two daughters - they were 10 and 11 - that mom was laid off, it was good news and bad news: Mom would have a little more time for them now and the bad news was that some of the things they had become accustomed to we may not be able to do any more. More than half of our income was gone and, like everyone, we were affected by the share price. Nortel was a significant part of our retirement portfolio.
When you had a career like mine at Nortel there was always another position for you. It was never a concern. You never even had to look. For myself, and most others, it still hurts because you left behind a family and your home away from home - the people you spent most of your working days with.
But I don't blame anybody. I have been around for a while and prior to this we lived through a bad period in Calgary. This is life and this is business. It's cyclical. I value financial security and my ability to have done what I have done in the past year and a half has depended on us having financial security through my husband's work
I came out of Nortel very confident. I have a very good skill set, I'm a Certified Management Accountant and have been in senior management positions for most of my career. I understand technology very well and I worked in customer relations, project management and have managed divestitures. So I thought: No problem, I will become a consultant. It was October last year. I was ready to market myself and move on. Then I realized I wasn't sure what I was going to sell as a consultant. Someone asked me what was my one-year and five-year goals and I thought, "I just want to be a consultant."
I stumbled on a book called Finding Your Perfect Work. I corresponded with the authors and am now licensed to use their material to develop a workshop. At the moment I'm delivering workshops on career transition and have developed a workshop called "Plan to Succeed," which takes a potential entrepreneur through the planning process. And I have had speaking engagements. I am at the beginnings of becoming established.
There are days when you feel everything is going your way and other days when you've had a couple of rejections and you feel quite down. So I have felt the rollercoaster effect. But I believe that we create our own reality. My first challenge was knowing what I really wanted to do and doing what was natural for me. After that, I find there is a certain energy that attracts work.
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