After Denis Levesque was laid off in November, 2007, from his job at an Ottawa technology company, he was relieved to quickly land a management position with telecommunications giant Nortel Networks Corp.
But just seven months into his new job, Mr. Levesque got the pink slip again as part of a wave of cost-cutting measures.
"It was hard enough seeing my plans to move my career forward being crushed, but the idea that I was getting laid off again made it even harder," says Mr. Levesque, for whom it was the third such job loss in his career. "My confidence was shaken."
As thousands of Canadians become victims of layoffs in this economy, among them are a growing number, who, like Mr. Levesque, find themselves holding pink slips more than once, human resource and career experts say.
Indeed, 41 per cent of 6,023 respondents to a Globe and Mail online poll last week said that they or someone they know has suffered more than one layoff in this economy.
And Jim Geraghty, president of Happen, an Oakville, Ont.-based network that helps out-of-work-executives, says he has seen evidence of it among members.
"We have noticed in the last year and a half that some of our members who had previously been laid off were lasting in their new positions less than one year," he says.
It's tough enough to lose one job, the experts say, but it's even harder when you lose more within a short time.
Even when the loss is the result of a layoff - and not because of poor performance - it can be devastating, causing employees to start to doubt their abilities. And that can lead to a range of feelings, including a lack of self-confidence, lowered self-esteem, fear and depression, says career expert Barbara Moses.
"You're going to feel more gob-smacked," she says. "Someone laid off more than once is more likely to over-catastrophize, feeling like there's something wrong with me. ... The more it happens, the more likely you are to attribute it not to the economy but to an enduring cloud over your head," adds Dr. Moses, a Globe and Mail columnist and the author of What Next? Find the Work That's Right for You.
Older workers, especially, may start thinking, "Am I getting to the end of the road, and would anybody want me now?" says Frank Garrity, manager of The Searchsmiths Inc., a Toronto recruiting firm. "They're also apt to start blaming themselves."
Younger workers will also suffer, Dr. Moses says, because they have neither the experience of living through past recessions "to be able to take the long view," nor a track record of their own accomplishments that they can summon to counteract "the feeling of being a screw-up," she says.
Lucie Shaw certainly started to question herself when she lost her job as a call-centre manager for a Toronto-based cable company in 2007, after it downsized her department. Just the year before, she'd been laid off as call centre operations manager at Air Canada, where she had worked for 26 years.
"It becomes very demoralizing when you lose two jobs in less than two years," Ms. Shaw says. "After I lost the second job, I asked myself, 'Did I do something wrong? Why me again?' "
Beyond the loss of self-confidence, experts say employees with multiple layoffs in their work history often face more challenges in their next job search.
While employers in this economy are more unlikely to fault a worker for being laid off more than once, there are still many who may have reservations about hiring someone who, in their opinion, can't seem to hold on to a job, Mr. Garrity says.
