Laid off from Meta after 13 years: a Director role in 94 days

I hate hearing this from Senior Managers:

“Last month I got laid off from Meta, along with like half of my team. I was heads-down at the company for 13 years and I haven’t looked out in all this while. And that’s the reason I’m reaching out to you.”

This client had discovered us through social media and had done his research before getting on a call.

“I’ll have to identify my target roles and companies, and then identify and contact the right person for all job applications I make. It’ll probably take 12 months to do it alone, and if you can guarantee me results in 6, I’ll be 6 months ahead.”

Smart thinking.

The career debt of staying too long

Staying too long with the same company, especially one where laying people off has become second nature, is very risky.

Years pass by quickly, and you find comfort in your complacency. It’s like taking the blue pill from Morpheus in The Matrix.

Then you wake up one day, and your work email (which is supposed to be full of JIRA tickets, meeting updates and reminders) only contains a singular email titled “Update Regarding your role at Meta.”

So you do what everyone else in the same boat is doing. You apply to 70 to 80 roles in a day and start hoping someone reaches back. You’re a FAANG employee. Someone has to be interested in employing you, right? Right?

And when caught off-guard like this, many candidates realize the “career debt” they had been accumulating in lieu of comfort. Three weeks pass. Radio silence.

12 companies in two months

That’s when you ring us, and we get to work.

For this client in particular, having rich experience in content personalization paid off, and we were able to generate conversations with 12 companies within the first two months, including Uber and Walmart who were looking for someone to lead their recommendation teams.

He ended up accepting a Director of Search and Recommendation position at a global travel technology company within 94 days of that phone call.

But in all honesty, we never enjoy the calls that people have to make out of necessity instead of ambition. If you don’t want someone else to decide the last day at your job, book a call with us and you could be the one writing that resignation email instead of receiving a termination one.