Job Gone Extinct? How to Fight Back
Adapting your skills can stop your career from going the way of the dinosaurs.
April 2, 2009 — -- Maureen Nelson of Pleasant Hill, Calif., thought she was playing it smart.
The year was 1982, and personal computers had yet to revolutionize the business world.
After working the typical post-collegiate fast-food job, Nelson lucked into a position in the typesetting department of a small publishing company. The pay was lousy and the hours grueling, but she put up with it because she thought she was investing in her future.
"At 24, I could paste up a paging master, paste up page flats (using hot wax), use an arc burner, run a process camera, and I knew my way around the contacting darkroom," Nelson said in an e-mail.
"I had apprenticed two years at slave wages to learn a lifetime of skills so I'd never have to do fast food again. I felt that I was acquiring skills that would keep me employed the rest of my life."
You probably can imagine how that turned out.
By the early 1990s, the country was in a recession, the publishing world was racked with layoffs and the company Nelson worked for had folded.
"I could not find another job because my skills were so obsolete," she said. "And when I found that I was not employable because the technology had changed, I just wanted to fall on my sword."
If this sounds familiar, don't despair: Nelson fought her way back to gainful employment, and you can, too.
For tips on how, I spoke with Nelson and a number of other workers who've been displaced by sweeping industry changes at some point during their careers. Here's what they had to say.
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