Michael S. Wirtz / Staff Photographer
Michael Kitson (left) and Bob Calandra, authors of "How to Keep Your Job in a Tough Competitive Market: 101 Strategies You Can Use Today." On overcoming being paralyzed by fear, they offer: "One thing is, I must continue to do my job and do it well."
Q&A
Tips for keeping your job
With the U.S. jobless rate at a 25-year high, the authors’ new book seems ideal for the times.
It's too bad that Michael J. Kitson and Bob Calandra's new job-survival book wasn't out in 1993, when Calandra got canned from his job as senior editor of a health magazine.
Maybe he could have used the advice offered in How to Keep Your Job in a Tough Competitive Market: 101 Strategies You Can Use Today, published in April by Adams Media, a division of F&W Media Inc. in Massachusetts.
But as it was, Calandra never saw his canning coming.
These days, Calandra and Kitson are not surprised by the misery and fear they see in the job market.
As jobless rates continue to rise, more and more people worry about whether they will be able to stay employed. On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate had risen to 9.4 percent in May, the highest level in more than 25 years.
In 1993, when Calandra lost his job, his magazine had published only an issue or two. Then, one Wednesday, the publisher's assistant told Calandra the magazine would close that Friday.
"We thought it was going swimmingly," said Calandra, 57, of Wyndmoor. "We were wrong."
It is interesting that neither Calandra nor Kitson has to worry about getting fired. They work for themselves. Calandra is a freelance writer specializing in business, human resources, and health topics. Kitson runs Michael Kitson Associates in Malvern, a management-consulting firm.
They met in the mid-1980s, when they joined the same ice hockey team.
Unlike Calandra, Kitson, 61, of Coatesville, has never gotten a pink slip. But he has been an architect of layoffs.
As director of strategic organization planning and development, his job was to oversee three major downsizings at Sunoco Inc. in the 1980s. The company went from 22,000 people to 9,000.
After a decade of layoffs, Kitson left Sunoco to take steps toward starting his own business. "I was just totally fried, burned out," he said.
Question: What is it like to be a planner for massive layoffs? You become the villain.
Kitson: You absolutely do.
Q: What would attract anyone to a job like that?
Kitson: Quite honestly, the thing that enabled me to do this was that I was convinced I could actually make this process more humane.
Q: Any strategies?
