When a strategic shift at Intel made Kent Ha worry his digital marketing job could disappear, he didn’t wait for a layoff notice. He started looking for his next job.
“I figured worst case, I’d land another offer and have a backup plan,” said Ha, who’s in his 30s and lives in Oregon. “Best case, I’d keep my job and wouldn’t have to make any changes.”
By the time he was laid off last July, he’d already spoken with his financial advisor and was about a month into his job search.
Ha is among the workers who say finding a job, keeping one, and building a career now takes more time, planning, and effort than it used to. For some, that means spending nights and weekends learning AI. Others are building personal brands online, relocating for better opportunities, or preparing for layoffs before they happen.
Call it the career protection era: a time when many workers say strong job performance and years of experience aren’t enough on their own to build and sustain a career.
Investing in your reputation
When a former Microsoft manager was laid off last year, he thought finding another job would involve the usual: update the résumé, tap the network, apply online.
Instead, he encountered a labor market where one role attracted more than 1,000 applicants and standing out required a lot more than a polished resume.
At first, recruiters and career coaches emphasized networking and referrals. Over time, he said, the advice shifted: Build a personal brand. Post on LinkedIn. Make yourself visible so recruiters can find you.
“We all have to be content creators on top of our actual jobs — or lack of jobs — and perform being a candidate, so we can get noticed and shoot our way to the top of the résumé pile,” said the former manager, who is in his 30s and lives in the Seattle area.
Within weeks, he went from rarely posting to posting regularly about his field and spending hours digging into LinkedIn’s algorithm to boost his visibility. He said he sometimes felt more like an author trying to market a book than a job seeker, but he felt he couldn’t afford not to try.
After seven months, he finally landed a job. He’s not sure his LinkedIn posting helped directly, but said the extra effort he put into optimizing his resume and applying early may have made a difference.
“If you don’t figure out all the mechanics of a properly formatted resume, apply to jobs early with the right keywords, work the connections you have, and trawl for knowledge on best practices for online posting, you’re out of luck,” he said.
Investing in your skills
The extra work doesn’t stop at personal branding.
In recent years, workers have increasingly pursued non-degree credentials like certificates. The number of those credentials listed on US workers’ résumés jumped nearly 35% over the past year, according to a recent Brookings Institution report, which attributed the rise in part to rapid advances in AI and growing concerns about job security.
After being laid off from her senior hub manager role at Microsoft in 2023, Karena Plepel earned multiple life coaching certifications while launching a coaching business.
“I believe pursuing an independent source of income is worthwhile, particularly with the tough job market and the seeming lack of job security these days,” she said.
For others, the most valuable learning doesn’t come with a formal credential.
Maahir Sharma, a software engineer at a Big Tech company, spends about 20 hours a week outside work experimenting with AI and building side projects to avoid falling behind in a rapidly changing industry. Recently, he built an AI agent that called hotels to negotiate room rates on his behalf.
Sharma said it’s no longer enough to simply build projects in private and list them on a résumé.
“Recruiters, hiring managers, everyone wants to see what you have built out in public and whether there are actual users for that project,” he said.
Read more about people who’ve found themselves at a corporate crossroads
Investing in your network
Some workers say today’s labor market demands a bigger investment in fostering professional relationships.
That can mean messaging hundreds of recruiters and hiring managers on LinkedIn, tracking down their email addresses, or paying to join professional networking communities.
For others, it means relocating.
After being placed on a performance improvement plan at Amazon, Nicholas Jenkins accepted a termination package in late 2024. He expected finding another job would be relatively easy, but after months of little traction, he decided he needed to lean much more heavily on his professional network.
He developed what he called a “final mile strategy,” a plan to get from interviews to a job offer. His first move was relocating from Seattle to his hometown of Houston.
“I had a robust network there, which I hoped would give me an advantage,” he said.
After attending job fairs and networking events in the Houston area, Jenkins eventually landed a market research analyst role with help from a personal connection.
Some employed workers are making similar investments to position themselves for their next opportunity.
In early 2024, Sarthak Gupta was working remotely as a quantitative research intern in New York City, but he hoped to break into Big Tech, with Amazon among the companies he most wanted to join.
Many of the roles he was most interested in were in the Seattle area. Rather than applying from afar, Gupta moved to Seattle and stayed with a friend while continuing his internship and searching for work. He believed being local would create networking opportunities and signal to employers like Amazon that he could start immediately.
Within months, he’d landed a data scientist role at Amazon.
Gupta’s career investment didn’t end after he got hired. He passed on cheaper apartments farther from Amazon’s office, choosing instead to live a seven-minute walk away so he’d have more time to build relationships with colleagues and attend networking events.
One of his top pieces of advice for job seekers? Another career investment: “Start preparing for interviews before they even land one,” he said.
Do you have a story to share about how you’re navigating a career crossroads? If so, please reach out to the reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29.
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