New to the recession?

Update your CV, tap into old networks, upskill. A downturn is coming. Those who lived through the last one have the best survival tips

- Nasrin Modak Siddiqi

By now Elon Musk’s bizarre layoffs at Twitter are practically a meme, though no one on the receiving end is laughing. And with news of a global recession just months away, millions of employees around the world are anticipating being Musked. Cue fear, insecurity and possible depression. 

It’s happened before. In the recession of 2007-09, Ganapathy Ramachandran, a 39-year-old advertising professional then in the UAE, saw rows of abandoned luxury cars near the airport as the laid-off rushed back to their homelands. “It was a rapid downfall—we saw 70-page newspaper editions slim down to 16-18 pages,” he says.

Rais Motelkar, who had quit his job in the ITES field in that period, struggled to find a new one. Corporate lawyer Ami Buddhadev, who was pink-slipped, had to settle for working as an event manager at a much lower salary.

All of them survived. Eventually, they even thrived. And they have solid, actionable advice for those anticipating the dreaded “Invitation to a Zoom call with HR tomorrow at 8.45am”.