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Meet five Tulsans who’ve turned their employment challenges into opportunities for complete career makeovers.
In many ways, Tulsa has managed to steer clear of the national economic crisis that has gripped headlines and the public mind-set for the last year. But that doesn’t mean local companies haven’t taken a hit. Multiple employers have cut back on staff over the last 12 months, including Oral Roberts University, Nordam, Lufthansa Technik Tulsa, Penloyd/OFC, the Tulsa World, Gerdau Ameristeel Steel Mill in Sand Springs and SemGroup and SemMaterials, or shut their doors on local facilities, including Lifetouch Inc. and United Ford, according to news reports.
Additionally, national companies such as Bank of America, AT&T, American Airlines and Cox Communications also have announced cutbacks, with potential impact on Oklahoma employees.
In all, over the last 18 months, 4,655 employees have been laid off from 70 companies in the Tulsa area, according to the Tulsa Metro Chamber.
The job market may look bleak, but there is hope. In some cases, a pink slip could result in a rosy future — especially in Tulsa, a city working to brand itself as a capital for entrepreneurism and innovation.
While the following five individuals have encountered challenges in their working life, they also have found ways to overcome them. Thanks to creativity, networking and some flexible thinking, they have each landed new positions, some starting their own business endeavors and others finding new employers. In all cases, they learned that, even in an economic recession, there is life after layoff.
For Mitchell Hall, it all started with a tree house.
The summer he turned 13, Hall and his two younger brothers decided to build a wooden fort in the mulberry tree behind their house. Equipped with their dad’s tools and scrap wood from the construction site across the street, they went to work.
“We just kept building,” Hall says.
When they were finished, they had a three-story fortress, complete with carpets and weatherproofing. From then on, Hall knew what he wanted to do as a career.
“I loved construction and building things,” he says.
He studied construction science at the University of Oklahoma and landed his first job upgrading government buildings in Oklahoma City. After a couple of years there, he found a better job doing ground-up building for an Edmond company called Build It. But in June 2008, as the economy worsened and construction took a hit, Hall and about 15 of his co-workers were laid off.
“I didn’t see it coming,” he says.
But Hall had a plan. He always knew he wanted to have his own company. After all, he likes to take care of people, to be in charge, to lead by example and to take initiative. So he moved back to Tulsa, his hometown, to start MP Hall LLC. He began slowly, placing ads, putting up signs and, most importantly, making in-person contacts. Still, making the leap was terrifying, he says.
“I prayed a lot before I did anything,” he says.
Now, Hall has three full-time employees and is out-bidding his former employer for contracts at such places as Remington Park in Oklahoma City. He’s always looking for new clients. And, he says, getting laid off made it all possible.
“It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” he says.
Life’s tragedies can’t seem to keep Ted Jacobs down. On the contrary, he has a knack for finding positives in them.
When his son, Justin, was diagnosed with leukemia, Jacobs got involved with the Brass Ring Society — which later merged into Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oklahoma — through establishing the Field of Dreams 5K Run in Tulsa. He served as race director for four years, beginning in 1991.
When he and his wife divorced in 1995, the two maintained a strong friendship and Jacobs focused on his career.
And when Jacobs got laid off from his oil and gas job that same year, he began a journey that led him to creating one of the most successful programs at The University of Tulsa’s Collins College of Business.
Previously, Jacobs worked in oil and gas for 17 years but had trouble finding a replacement job after ONEOK let him and 30 percent of his co-workers go.
Fortunately, the event-coordinating experience he gained while planning the Field of Dreams 5K landed him a position with the Chamber of Commerce in Waco, Texas. That job required extensive fund raising — a skill that would earn him his next job at the University of Oklahoma.
The school’s petroleum land management program was suffering. It needed a landman with fund-raising experience to reshape it. Jacobs, an alumnus of the program, had both the professional and fund-raising experience. He was the man for the job.
“I did a major overhaul of the program,” Jacobs says.
It worked. The program grew exponentially from four students in 1997to 230 students in 2006.
With that success under his belt, Jacobs approached The University of Tulsa about creating an energy management program. TU appealed to Jacobs because it is a private school in Tulsa, the former oil capital of the world.
“It’s the perfect place for a very unique program,” Jacobs says.
The university president must have agreed because he hired Jacobs in 2006.
Jacobs spent a year planning the curriculum, and students began classes in fall 2007. Four semesters old, the program is one of the largest in the college and needs a cap on enrollment.
“I’m doing more for the industry now than I ever could have at my old job,” Jacobs says.
Change doesn’t scare Rebecca Bryant. In fact, she welcomes it.
“I guess I’m adventurous,” she says. “I love to try new things. … I don’t like to get stuck in a rut.”
Perhaps that’s why her résumé is so eclectic.
Bryant started in the music industry, a career she chose after managing her younger brother’s high school band, Premonition. That led her to Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., where she studied music business.
Bryant found a job in artist management before graduating and decided not to finish her degree. But in the mid-1990s, as the Internet began siphoning customers from the music industry, Bryant was laid off. She decided to return to school to finish her bachelor’s, graduating from Middle Tennessee State University with a degree in human relations.
While Bryant was in school, her husband, Andrew Bryant, who also worked in the music industry, fell victim to layoffs as well.
“We survived on unemployment and student loans,” she says.
The couple then moved to Oklahoma. Bryant decided to pursue her master’s at Oklahoma State University. She finished in 2000 with a degree in marriage and family therapy and began a job in home-based therapy soon after.
“I wasn’t interested in that,” she says. “It’s too dangerous.”
After two years of working in therapy, Bryant decided again to try something new: online retail. She began Council Creek Cheese and Cuisine. She sold specialty cheeses and organized a cheese and wine club.
The goal was to open a cheese and wine shop, but early signs of the economic downturn in 2008 changed Bryant’s mind.
Instead, she decided to start Franklin, Bryant & Associates, an organizational development consulting group, and return to OSU full-time to get her Ph.D. in educational psychology with a quadrant in organizational behavior.
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” she says. “This seemed like the right time.”
Next, she hopes to become a professor at a research university while still consulting on the side.
To those facing layoffs, Bryant has one bit of advice: “Look at it as an opportunity, not a roadblock.”
Jeremy Young says he owes it all to networking. When he graduated in May 2007 from Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., he had hopes of moving to Washington, D.C. But that didn’t work out, he says.
Instead, Young found a job in Tulsa working as a landman.
But in fall 2008, business began to slow. The company couldn’t afford to pay Young anymore and, by December, he was out of a job. But the bills kept coming, he says.
Young cut back on expenses. Only the necessities: No more eating out, no more buying drinks at bars.
“I felt busier and like I was working harder than when I had a job,” Young says. “The stress involved makes you more drained.”
Young filled his days with job searching. He scoured the classifieds, pored over job Web sites, set up meetings and collected names trying to drum something up. His international business degree and limited oil and gas experience didn’t get him as many interviews as he’d hoped, he says.
“They all said the same thing: ‘We like you, but you don’t have enough experience,’” he says.
Young realized that the suffering economy had created an employers’ market — not enough jobs, too many applicants — so he was going to have to change his approach. He turned his attention to networking.
Young, who is active in Tulsa’s Young Professionals (TYPros), realized he could tap those friends for more than just social hour.
In February, during a Super Bowl watch party with TYPros friends, Young met Brian Weatherl, who owns Source Rock Energy. At the time, Weatherl wasn’t hiring, but Young gave him an idea.
“My pitch to him was to take his expertise (in drilling horizontal wells) and apply it to other reservoirs in Oklahoma,” Young says. “Three meetings later, he offered me a three-month contract.”
Despite the economic climate, Young says the prospects are looking good and he is still employed with Source Rock Energy.
“I’m very thankful and excited about the opportunities,” he says.
Getting laid off isn’t something Lou Ann Lissonnet talks about much. Even three years later, it’s a painful memory.
“Layoffs were just something I read about, not anything that would ever happen to my friends or me,” she says. “I was hopelessly optimistic.”
Lissonnet was working as a public relations assistant at a creative agency in Tulsa after she graduated from Oklahoma State University in 2005. Eight months after she was hired, however, the agency eliminated its public relations department, leaving Lissonnet without a job.
“I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, fresh-out-of-college PR girl, so the loss of my job did come as a surprise,” she says. “At the time, it felt really awful.”
But when the shock had settled, Lissonnet realized she had learned an invaluable lesson: the importance of resilience.
“It gives you a reality check,” Lissonnet says. “There is no real stability. It’s something you create for yourself. You have to learn to depend on yourself.”
The layoff also allowed Lissonnet to reevaluate what she wanted from her career.
“I thought it couldn’t be just about going to work at 8 and leaving at 5,” she says. “It forced me out of the traditional, conventional thinking.”
Now, Lissonnet works as an account manager for Atmos Strategic Communications, a communications agency in Tulsa that develops public relations, marketing and advertising campaigns for businesses in the area. She says she loves working with small-business owners and entrepreneurs.
“They are the heart of our country,” she says.
Lissonnet says she looks forward to growing with Atmos and hopes to one day get a master’s degree in business administration.
“I want to work to make a positive impact in our community, both as a PR professional and a citizen,” Lissonnet says. “Ultimately, I want to be a part of the solution that moves our city forward.”
If you’ve been laid off …
First and most importantly, treat looking for a job like a job, says Isabell Estes, a business ownership coach in Tulsa.
Make a schedule and take your search as seriously as you would take your job, she says. Also, keep an open mind to opportunity.
“Entertain all career alternatives,” she says.
Next, let other people know what’s going on. Connect through Web sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, Estes says. Update your résumé and post it on job sites, such as CareerBuilder.com.
Finally, Estes encourages people to consider business ownership. Many people are tired of the insecurity of big business, she says.
“When you’ve gotten laid off two, three, four times, people want to take control of their own destiny,” she says.
Workers are tired of the people at the top making decisions that are not good for the company overall, Estes says.
“A lot of people are saying, ‘That’s enough,’” she says.
A majority of Estes’ clients are 50 or older, she says. Layoffs hit that age group hardest because, although they’re often too young to retire, they have the hardest time finding another job.
The average search lasts 12 to 18 months and often results in a job paying 20 percent to 30 percent less than the previous job, she adds.
Going back to school is another option. Tulsa Community College has seen a 3.3 percent increase in enrollment this year, impressive considering that many higher-learning institutions are seeing decreases, says Mary Millikin, the director of planning and institutional research at TCC.
“Our core general education courses are experiencing the greatest increase,” she says.
TCC’s most popular majors are liberal arts, business and nursing, she adds.
