Downward Mobility After a Layoff: How We Landed Lower-Paying Jobs When the Dot-Com Bubble Burst

We reinvented ourselves for whatever jobs were available. Women with Masters degrees dropped the M.A. from their resume and applied for receptionist's jobs. Marketing directors called themselves marketing managers. Department managers called themselves "team leaders." Many of us completely revised our resumes to eliminate the college education, and downgraded the job descriptions in our work history to match, whether stepping down the white-collar ladder or shifting further down to gray-collar. (Those who went back to former skills and worked as bartenders or carpenters or auto mechanics wrote a new "skills-oriented" resume from scratch - to the extent that it mattered, since trade jobs are often decided in a five-minute interview).