Festive atmosphere marks 'pink-slip parties' after dot-com collapse
EILEEN ALT POWELL
NEW YORK (AP) - As scores of techies crowd into a trendy Manhattan night club, a mirrored ball starts to revolve on the ceiling, showering the throng with flashing dots of light.
Standup comedians crack jokes in a side room, the bar is bustling with customers and the band warms up. As a party for the unemployed, the mood is surprisingly festive.
It's the latest in a series of "pink-slip parties," matchmaking events designed to bring together increasing numbers of laid off dot-commers and the headhunters and the still employed, but looking for more help.
"People who lose their jobs tend to crawl into their studio apartments, get really down and blame themselves," said Allison Hemming, president of the New York consulting firm The Hired Guns, which hosts the New York gatherings.
"People need to get out and communicate. Our idea is to create a fun environment that's not intimidating."
Similar parties are being held from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., as layoffs in the high-tech industries mount. John Challenger, whose Chicago outplacement company, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., tracks layoff announcements, says there have been more than 232,020 job losses in computer, e-commerce, electronics and telecom industries since the start of the year.
At the New York parties, held weekly through the summer, you can tell the players by their brightly coloured wrist bands - green for recruiters, pink for "pink slippers" and blue for friends and sympathizers.
On a recent Wednesday night, Rebecca Dill, director of production for Drumbeat Digital, was manning one of the recruiting tables. Her company, which designs Web sites for corporations, has 20 employees and is seeking five more: a director of technology, a sales executive, a writer, a technology project manager and a strategist.
"People are waiting in line to talk to us tonight," she said. "Right now, the advantage is ours. Six months ago, it was the opposite. It's kind of sad."
Among those who stopped by Drumbeat Digital's table to chat was Scott Tillitt, 29, who until last December handled public relations for an Internet company. He hunted for a job in Europe for a while, but "then the bottom dropped out of the market there, just like here."
Tillitt said he decided to attend the party "to check it out, meet some people." In a sense, to network like the old days.
"The Internet industry had so many parties," he said. "It's a natural to keep having them even after you're laid off."
At pink slip parties, business suits are out and jeans and casual slacks are in. Beer seems to be the beverage of choice, or perhaps the most affordable.
The music - the Pink Slip Top 10, according to online balloting - included You Can't Always Get What You Want, Another One Bites the Dust Won't Get Fooled Again.
Many of the techies seemed to come as much for the socializing as for the job opportunities.
Nancy Garcia-Vidal, 28, an unemployed computer systems administrator, sat with friends on a couch in a corner of the lounge, watching the crowd swell. She was wearing her pink bracelet like a halo in her hair.
"I came for the cheap booze, to see my friends and to watch the panic build out there," she said. Still, she added, "I'm looking and you never know, something might come up - even here."
Her husband, Ron Garcia-Vidal, 32, still has a job as a systems administrator for a Web development company. But he fears the firm could fail and was at the party to look for new opportunities.
"I am old enough to remember the recession at the beginning of the 90s, and this is scarier," he said.
His friend, a man with hair dyed fire-engine red who goes by the name tommEE pickles, agreed.
"You can see that there's a lot more pink (bracelets) than green out there," he said.
The gatherings also are an opportunity for sponsoring groups to meet those in the 20-something and 30-something crowd who may need their services.
"Some people who lose jobs often make really bad money decisions," said Jennifer Ridley Hanson, a director at Financial Finesse, a financial information service headquartered in San Francisco. "We want to get these people the information they need when they can use it."
She and her associates were handing out promotional material that included how-to tips under the optimistic headline: For the (Temporarily) Unemployed.
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