Career Tracks: Turning Layoff into Opportunity to Choose New Path

David Forktus was given a choice when the New Jersey bank where he worked was about to be bought in early 1996: leave or be demoted.

"I was offered an entry-level position about an hour and 20 minutes from my house after eight years with that bank," said the 34-year-old Mr. Forktus, who was an internal auditor in a 16-person office.

Given the choice, Mr. Forktus took advantage of the bank's severance package and took an auditing job with the New Jersey Turnpike Authority last June, three months after leaving the bank.

"I really didn't want to go back into banking," he said.

Mr. Forktus is not alone. According to Manchester Partners International, a Philadelphia-area outplacement firm, 70% of employees who lost banking jobs last year left the industry to get new jobs. That figure was 61% in a 1995 survey.

Moreover, the survey found that a greater number of those fired in 1996 found better jobs outside of banking. Of those who left the industry last year, 34% landed new jobs with higher status, compared with 22% of those who remained in banking but were displaced from their old jobs.

Manchester said the average employee losing a banking job in 1996 was a 39-year-old male middle manager earning $63,000 annually. These employees typically had been with their respective banks for eight years.

The survey of 520 bank employees found that middle managers accounted for 41% of all the displaced, up from 36% the year before.

Unlike banking, Mr. Forktus said, his new job offers the possibility of advancement. "For me, personally, it was a right decision," he said. He said that of several co-workers in his department who decided to stay on three were pushed out of their jobs six months after the acquisition.

Mr. Forktus' advice to others who find themselves in the same position: "If you really enjoy banking, you should stay with it. Personally, I'd look elsewhere."

Some bankers are simply burned out in the profession, said Anna Navarro, a career strategist who operates St. Louis-based Work Transitions. Ms. Navarro, who works with about 100 job seekers a year, said the bulk of the bankers she's worked with have gone to other industries.

One example is Steven Rosenbaum, a former vice president of Guaranty Trust Co. of Missouri, a subsidiary of Central Bancompany of Jefferson City, Mo. Mr. Rosenbaum quit his bank job "after much soul-searching" in August 1995 to break into television news. He started a year ago as a late- night and weekend news anchorman at NBC-affiliated KSDK-TV in St. Louis.

Ms. Navarro also recently worked with a female vice president of a rural bank on the outskirts of St. Louis who was "really fed up with banking." The woman now teaches business classes at a local college and paints on the side.

Manchester, which works with people ranging from line managers to chief executives in a number of industries, has worked with hundreds of fired bankers during the past few years. While many bankers migrate to other financial services companies, a growing number are leaving to do something entirely different, said Katherine Donahue, a senior vice president at Manchester in New York.

"The most common is other forms of consumer finance," she said, "but there are also a number of people moving into all different kinds of industries."

Ms. Donahue said the most frequent change in careers she's seen is former bank employees, such as Mr. Forktus, going to new industries to perform similar functions. "You can change industry, or change function, or change both," she said. "People we see usually change industry rather than function."

Some industries particularly hospitable to bankers are telecommunications and public utilities, where companies want professionals experienced in industry deregulation.

Switching industries, however, doesn't shelter anyone from being laid off again, Ms. Donahue warned. "No job, whether you stay in an industry or become the new guy or new woman in a new industry, is secure."

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