Meet Jessica Bowman, the original Laid off Renegade

Jessica Bowman, Laid Off Renegade, Search Engine Marketing Consultant

She Had Her Dream job: Search Engine Optimization Evangelist, Yahoo! Inc. (Basically, an internal Internet marketing consultant)

Time on the Job: A whopping 106 days (No Joke)

Today: Jessica is a search engine optimization consultant, the next step she was afraid to take - so fate took it for her.

Her thoughts on the Yahoo Layoff: “I felt on top of the world at Yahoo, and often asked colleagues, “Where do you go from here?”. Nothing seemed appealing after finally landing the ultimate dream job. The only step it seemed I could take was going out on my own, in fact, employers looked at my resume and said, ‘Your resume reads like a consultant, why do you want this job?’ It felt that I was forced into consulting, something I was afraid to go after until I found myself jobless and unemployable. Now I’m loving every single minute of it, including Mondays!”

Jessica’s Lay Off Story in her own words:

My one and only layoff was from my at Yahoo! Inc., who, after one day of 11 grueling interviews where everyone told me how great Yahoo was, finally lured me away from a great job in Los Angeles and moved me up to San Francisco (insisting the job could not be done from LA).

I arrived in San Francisco on October 26, 2008, a city I had never laid eyes on and where I had zero friends.

On February 12, 2008 at 8:43 am I was laid off. A mere 106 days after I started. Now known to me as D-Day, the day my liberation began.

I still hadn’t found all the bathrooms, let alone knew everyone’s name.

The Yahoo! layoffs were public knowledge and friends and family were worried for me; however, I never imagined in my wildest dreams they would lay me off after the hoops they went through to bring me on board. But it happened.

Devastated and clueless about the life of unemployment, I fumbled my way along using the Internet to its fullest potential and got media mentions that included Motley Fool and industry publications such as Search Engine Journal.

Then one day Marie Claire Magazine called and asked if I would be interested in being featured in a spread about women who have been laid off and how they’re handling it. “You bet I would!” came out of my mouth instantly. Fearing it may be a hoax I sent back a leery reply. It was the real deal, complete with a photo shoot.

How The Laid Off Renegade Book Was Born

As I spoke with Marie Claire Magazine, I knew that I had thrived through my layoff and needed to put pencil to paper to help the millions of people about to be impacted by layoffs in the first recession of the millennium. Before I knew it an impulsive, swept up in the moment “I’m writing a book” came out of my mouth! Suddenly I committed to millions of readers that I would have a book on handling layoffs in the millennium.

I found that Layoffs Today are Different

Three months post D-day, I’m here to say the layoffs of the millennium aren’t like the layoffs your parents faced. It’s a different era. There are better ways to handle it. And most importantly, there has never been the means to broadcast yourself to millions of people through something we use every day – the Internet.

About the Book

This book will walk you through the ins-and-outs of being laid off, getting back on your career path through the use of the social media, search engine marketing and online networking.

Follow directions in this book you’ll realize that your layoff was just the next rung on your ladder and the best thing to happen to you.