SG
Guest Comment: why I took a 70 per cent pay cut
21 October 2009
Monday marked the first day of my return to the working class. More than a year after I left my previous position, I had finally secured and accepted an offer to return to the financial services industry. From my previous sales-trading jobs with a broker in New York, I will soon be making the transition to a research position with a local investment bank in one of Southeast Asia’s smaller markets.
To be frank, debating with myself over whether to accept this offer was just as hard as landing the offer itself. On one hand, taking the job means a sizeable (70 per cent!) pay cut and it is also a more junior position than my previous one. As a consolation, the lower tax rate and cost of living in my new country does soften up the blow significantly.
My career on the trading desk is also coming to an end, and I am starting out as a freshie in a different role. This was one of the biggest obstacles in my mind. While my peers who were lucky enough to avoid the layoffs are moving on to senior roles and bigger responsibilities, I am taking a step back and restarting the game.
But I suppose this was not really an issue at all - another half-year out of the market and I might as well have been a fresh graduate with zero prior market experience.
Despite all the minuses of this position, my craving for some career stability was simply too strong to ignore. Accepting this offer means the end of an exhausting job search around the region. I've finished with flying for hours and staying in budget hotel rooms on my own expense (whatever happened to companies paying for candidate’s travel?) only to end up with fruitless interviews and the chance to repeat the process every fortnight.
Before the turbulence of the past year, the freedom and financial capacity to plan for classes and vacations with a degree of certainty never seemed like a luxury. And the paycheck! How great will it be to not have to dig into my reserves every month to pay off my business school loan anymore?
An additional factor that I had to consider for this offer is that I cannot make my new job simply a temporary shelter for the next year or so until the market gets better. Given that I was out of the market for a year, and this is a new job function for me, I need to stay for a minimum duration of two or three years. Risking more short-term damage to my resume is the last thing I want to do now.
Not an easy decision at all. It took me a week to finally convince myself to take it. Ultimately the single most important reason I accepted the offer was because this gives me a fighting chance to stay in the same industry that I had grown to like over the years and still would like to make a long-term career of.
To me, the only thing worse than restarting at a junior position in a different function, is restarting at a junior position in a different industry.
Its tough when you are made redundant, you used to be somebody and then your a nobody - as the days become weeks and the weeks become months you start to lose your confidence and the pressure increases - if your lucky and persistent an offer will come but no doubt it will be a lesser role than you expected.
But accepted it with a huge smile and get your head down, as the option of long term unemployment is no option at all.
JMH 31 Oct 2009
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