Memories of 2008/09 or career advice for my younger self

Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and the run on Northern Rock started in September 2007. I joined the relatively new Leeds office of Drivers Jonas (DJ) not long afterwards with a brief to grow the residential business, but within what seemed like no time at all there was no residential business to be had. Credit had been crunched.

2008 was not a pleasant time. I remember the other Associates jostling to position themselves as specialists in whatever fields there were still fees to be had in. Somebody pitched themselves as a health sector specialist. Somebody else pitched themselves as an education sector specialist. I had dipped into PPG15 a couple of times, but was by no means a heritage specialist. Nevertheless when the sector lead needed somebody to speak at a conference in Liverpool my hand was the first to go up. I recall chatting with the other speakers before it kicked off and the conversation was dominated by the economic outlook. An older chap sought to console the younger members of the ensemble with the advice that everybody should expect to endure four recessions during their career.

The sun is shining as I write this, but there are some dark clouds looming. The National Institute of Economic & Social Research forecasts that the UK economy will be 25% smaller by mid-summer that at the start of the year. The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that 35% will be wiped off GDP this quarter. Planning Magazine has reported that most consultancies have furloughed staff or introduced pay cuts to deal with dropping workloads. A minority have announced redundancies. According to Savills and Glenigan construction has been halted on sites in England with capacity for 193,000 homes. The Department for Work & Pensions has said that it would normally expect 100,000 claims in a two week period. There were 950,000 in the last two weeks of March.

It might be short and sharp like the last application on an evening planning committee agenda, it might be as slow and painful as adopting a local plan, but either way recession number two, for me, is right on schedule. I graduated and started working twenty years ago this year and so, on the basis that I have got another twenty or so years to go, I will be about halfway through. It is the whiff of redundancies in the air that brings back the memories of recession number one.

I do not recall looking for a career twenty years ago. I was looking for a job and, when I did, I was counting down the days until my next trip to London to so see my mates not the days until I could apply for chartered membership of the RTPI. It would be a bit of an exaggeration to call it an epiphany during my second job, but it did occur to me during that spell that, firstly, I was no more or less capable than anybody else I had come across to that point, from which I started to take confidence that I could do it, and that, secondly, I did actually quite enjoy it. It was from then that the job started to become more of a vocation and I began think more seriously about my career and how it could progress. I started reading things because I actually wanted to and not because I had to.

Some people exude the sense that what they are doing has come as naturally as walking. Some people exude the sense that they do not know what they want to do. Whilst I was quite fortunate to have a switch flick like that quite early on I had still not yet started to think about a career as a forty year endeavour. I was not yet prepared for a recession, let alone four. 2008 felt like the end of the world. I can certainly see now, from this half way marker, that a career is like climbing a mountain. Advantage should be taken of a breather, whether enforced or not, every now and then, but the reward is at the top when you can sit back, with a greater perspective, and take it all in.

During my final year at university there was a module called something like ‘Career Development & Orientation’ and it included guest speakers who actually worked in planning. One was a sharp-suited firebrand consultant from DTZ whose name I cannot remember. After three and a half years of being lectured about the theory of town planning by people wearing cardigans and sandals her carpet-bombing of that lecture theatre with truth bombs was a revelation. If you are a Simpsons fan you might recall the episode in which Mr Burns offers career advice to Lisa’s class. ‘Family, religion, friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.’ Her address was in a similar vein.

Something that did stay with me was her advice to seek out five roles from across the sector during the first ten years of your career. In so doing, her reasoning went, you would have a breadth of experience and knowledge to call upon and a choice of Director-level opportunities open to you as you headed into your thirties. I first set foot upon the career ladder in September 2000 with that plan in mind and up until leaving DJ it had largely been plain sailing.

I knew though that the chop was coming at DJ as soon as the redundancy process began. Motions were gone through. The review by senior management had concluded that of the seven or eight Associates they could do without one. I was the last one in and my face had never really fitted so it was no surprise when that one ended up being me.

Up until then I had either got every job that I had applied for or been tapped up by recruitment consultants about something. With then a reasonable, but as it transpired excessive, amount of confidence I started applying for roles at the start of 2009, well before getting my P45. I thought that I would have something sorted before I formally left. I did not. Then I thought that I would have something sorted before Glastonbury. I did not. Baby number one was on the way. Things were getting serious.

I do sometimes think of that sharp-suited firebrand consultant from DTZ and wonder whether she has ever been made redundant for as much as her advice was sound enough in principle, were I to ever offer it to an impressionable class of final year students I would add the caveat that, in practice, a career can no more be planned as a town can be planned. Life cannot be planned. Aspirations, ambitions and guiding principles are about as secure a platform as you can hope for. A masterplan, if you will, that is flexible enough to deal with changing circumstances and that allows the fine grain to sort itself out.

During that summer of 2009, Glastonbury (and Sky Sports) notwithstanding (it was an Ashes summer), we chopped expenditure right back and just focussed on the mortgage payment. I paid a few hundred pounds for personal indemnity insurance, registered as self-employed, and became a planning consultant. I got in touch with some of the local architects that I had dealt with whilst working in development control at my local council and a couple of them kindly let me write some appeal statements for them. I did not make much money, but I covered enough mortgage payments and bided enough time for something to turn up, which, sure enough, it did. Another consultancy was looking to rebuild having themselves taken the opportunity to move some people on whose faces had not fitted. Not only was I back in the game, but, as it turned out, it suited them for me to start towards the back end of 2009 so I got to spend a month or so with baby number one before clambering back into the hamster wheel.

I want to ride the ups and downs and to be in it for the long haul and whilst I have more respect now for people who do manage to stay the course I also have an equal amount of respect for people who, having paused and reflected, decide to do something else entirely. Life is too short to spend five sevenths of a week doing something that you do not want to do. Getting back on the horse is brave if you like horses, but it is just stupid if you do not.

My brief spell in self-employment also increased the respect that I have for people who do cast off the shackles of corporate serfdom and go their own way. That must take some doing if you have only ever been used to the guarantee of a single payment into your bank account every month, but self-determination has a value as well and that value is more likely to be at least equal to a monthly salary if you have got to the point, for example, where your clients are first and foremost yours rather than your employer’s. That is a position worth working for early in your career so as least to have the option of striking out on your own later.

So I head in to recession number two knowing that, if I can put this one behind me, I will hopefully only have two left. Of course, regardless of what may or may not end up being any recessionary parallels between the Credit Crunch and now, the current crisis is one of public health and there is clearly nothing more important people’s health. The economic implications of this episode for both one’s personal finances and the public finances need to be viewed through that prism.

Some people seem to have been born into a world that hands them more control over the variables than everybody else. Some people seem predisposed to a path that always seems to lead upwards. Ultimately though nobody’s destiny is ever entirely in their own hands. As Bob Dylan said, you have got to serve somebody. All you can do is just try to make the best decision when a fork in the road does appear and I subscribe to Gary Player’s theory in that if you have not put the time into practice you cannot bemoan poor luck.

My face did not fit at DJ, but it has fitted elsewhere. That happens and it is important to learn that it happens, but, in my experience, if your guiding principles remain steadfast in face of changeable and inclement climatic conditions then you have more chance of riding out the storm that somebody whose foundations are more flimsy. 2008 was not actually the end of the world. I am glad that my face did not fit at DJ. I bear nobody who was there any ill feeling. One lives and one learns. It worked out for the best. Everything turned out alright.

Update.

An old-friend who worked in Manchester at the time I was finishing University got in touch having read this to say that the sharp-suited firebrand consultant from DTZ was Marion Chalmers. Just for completeness.