If your employer goes bust, what next?

I work for a small biotech company in Maryland. Due to declining interest in our pipeline, high competition for equity investments, and a dwindling cash suppy, many of the employees have already started to seek emmployment elsewhere. Biotech tends to pay a bit better than other industries since firms often compensate employees for the risk of working at a less stable company. Hence, most of us make $10-25,000 more than market average. During our job hunts, we’re all finding that the market value of our skills along with the declining economy will decrease our salaries quite a bit. So, the conundrum we face is “Stay on an apparently sinking ship and wait it out with our high salaries” or “Jump ship for significantly less money.”

I worked for a local technology company several years ago. They had a lot of unsold inventory and finally laid everyone off on a Friday afternoon.

For me, being laid off means, “Find another job!” I found out later that to my coworkers, being laid off meant come back to work the following Monday on a voluntary basis. It took several months before enough funding was in place to start paying people. Everyone would rush to the bank on pay day hoping that their paychecks would clear. The company lasted for almost one year before closing their doors for good.

I have never enjoyed job searching when I was unemployed. My best advice is to pay attention to the local job market with respect to skills that are in demand. Secondly, stay in contact with former bosses and coworkers. You never know when you might need a new job or a reference.

I worked for two companies that went bust; one company failed shortly after 9/11 in the aerospace industry and the other was a Boston consulting company in 2005.

The first company went bust due to the president of the company offending most of our clients with her “visits” to our off-site employees.

The consulting company went bust in Boston due to no projects there but keeping 25 employees on the payroll. While in the Houston office, five employees were working 50-60 work weeks prior to the collapse. We were given one day’s notice. As a senior project manager, I had to tell the client the company was bankrupt. The client decided to pay me and another employee directly to finish the project.

After the 2005 company bankruptcy, it was hard finding work so I had to take work on a contract basis and even outside my field of expertise.

If my company tanked, it would actually be a good thing. I’m on a contract that in a worst-case scenario would be sold off to another company, so my job is secure. But my current company is huge, and the Executive Office (like most large companies) is way out of touch with us worker-bee’s. We make all of the money, including acquiring new business, and the Executive Office is dead weight. So if our comapny went under, that would actually be pretty nice.