Surviving & Thriving
High-tech employers are snapping up laid-off-dot-commers
By Carolyn Said
December 2000

As has been widely reported, some 31,000 Internet workers nationwide have lost their jobs so far this year, according to Chicago outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. But the effect on the job market has been negligible. Bay Area unemployment rates have actually declined.

"We were concerned that with the dot-com demise we'd have a reduction in our executive search practice," said Valerie Frederickson, CEO of Valerie Frederickson & Co., a Menlo Park executive search firm. "Instead, Murphy's Law hit: We now have a 50 percent increase." She said most of the new business comes from large companies, such as Compaq, Inktomi and Phillips that are adding entire new divisions, such as wireless.

Just the same, Frederickson thinks it's no longer entirely a job hunter's market. "The people getting laid off from dot-coms don't have the experience the big companies want," Frederickson said. "Young people without good experience who had high titles and high pay at dot-coms are now getting a rude awakening."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/13/BU154469.DTL