CHEERING TALES: Made redundant in Dubai, re-employed in Geneva

With redundancies now an increasingly common occurance in the GCC's financial sector, we're running a new series of articles detailing uplifting accounts of how people managed to secure a (sometimes better) new job.

Current role:

I am currently working in a junior forex sales role within the advisory desk of a French private bank in Geneva.

Previous role:

After completing my studies 2007, I was hired on to a graduate scheme as an assistant on the derivatives desk of a French bank's Gulf office.

When I was made redundant:

An initial 16-month contract was not renewed, and I found myself out of work from November 2008. I secured the new job in June 2009, and have been in the role since August.

Why the job was lost:

There was a merger between two divisions of the bank, in which a number of graduate recruits were employed. Several of us in the programme were left high and dry as a result. We expected to be redeployed to another area of the bank, but nothing was offered, not even within a division in another country. It was as if we had been temporary workers all along, whereas we felt we'd been working towards a longer term role.

How the new job was found:

I returned to France (I simply couldn't afford the rent in Dubai) and centred my research on finding a new position in London or Paris. But I bumped into a friend who said the market in Switzerland was not as badly affected as elsewhere and he gave me some names of local recruitment agencies and pointed to some firms that had vacancies.

The low point:

It wasn't so bad during the first three months, because I was very active and regularly receiving phone calls from recruiters and responses to applications. However, as time went on, these calls dried up and I became more despondent. But, towards the end of May, things started to look up and I was able to secure a number of interviews in Switzerland.

This wasn't before time - I hadn't received a single response from my applications to London or Paris. Money was tight, the debts I'd built up during my studies were increasingly difficult to deal with, and my time in the UAE had been very expensive.

Lessons learned:

Don't get too emotionally attached to your employer. Perhaps because it was my first professional experience, I felt emotionally tied to the firm, but you soon realise that the employee has a greater sense of loyalty than the employer. Now, I will not hesitate to consider other opportunities and will test the market on a more regular basis.

Have you been made redundant and recently managed to find a new job? We'd be interested in hearing from you. E-mail editor_gulf@efinancialcareers.com in total confidence and anonymity