Here’s another cheering tale designed to spread a warm and fuzzy glow through anyone hoping to find a new job soon. This week, the securitization professional who nearly had to go back into accounting.

Current role

I now work at a private equity fund where I am responsible for all debt related work and deal structuring.

Previous role

I was a senior associate in the corporate / whole business securitisation team of a major investment bank.

When the lights went out

I lost my job 16 months ago.

When the lights came on

I found a new job a year ago.

Why the job was lost

The market for our product disappeared. We made very large, structured asset backed loans (generally secured against real estate) with a view to securitising the whole loan and sell the bonds onto investors. It was just not a business model which had any future on the other side of the credit crunch. I do actually believe this, but our bank (as all banks say) was supposed to have a culture of hanging on to the best talent. We had an incredibly bright team who could easily have been redeployed around the business but this obviously would have involved more work for senior management and I think it was easier to just get rid of the team.

How the job was found

I started by calling every contact I could possibly think of and tapped my friends and parents’ friends for advice and help. I also called as many recruitment agents as I could find. Contacts were very useful in providing advice and more people to talk to (which was actually great for increasing my network) but in the end the job came through a recruitment consultant.

The low point

I think that it was just before I received the job description for the job I am in now. I had exhausted all my contacts and realised that no jobs were going to come from them. I had originally qualified as an accountant and had started calling up recruiters looking for jobs back in the Big Four – this was unbelievably depressing as I had really not enjoyed it but at the time, I just needed to find some work!

Life without income

I was lucky in that I was only out of work for three months. My redundancy package was not very generous but I had some accrued holiday which meant that I ended up with about three months’ pay, so financially I was actually no worse off than I would have been was I still in work. I was much more careful with money though as I never knew when the next pay cheque was going to come through.

Recovery signs

I knew things were getting better the day I was sent through the job description for my current job by a recruiter. I’d been interviewing somewhere else and had just been told that, after three interviews, they’d decided not to hire anyone. For some reason, I just knew that this was the job for me and that I had to get it – I really felt that I was going to get the job (although obviously I was never sure until I was actually offered it!)

Lessons learned

If the same thing happened again, there’s probably not too much that I’d do differently. I worked hard to meet as many people as I could and to get my CV and name around the market as much as possible – I was desperate to get back into work.

Had I been more senior and had more cash in the bank and more experience under my belt, it would have been nice to take some serious time off and relax a bit more, but I felt that it was really important to get back into the market as soon as possible.

It was a very depressing experience, but I do think one which makes you stronger (clichéd as that sounds). Almost everyone I met during my search told me that they had been made redundant at some point in their careers.

If there is one thing I would change it would be to really tell myself that being made redundant was not a personal thing – everyone tells you this, but it is difficult to believe it. If I had the time off again the one thing I would do is take a language course – it would have been a great opportunity to retake my French beyond GCSE level and exceed the ability to order a train ticket to La Rochelle!

Are you a financial services professional who lost a job only to find a new (and possibly better) one? If so, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at <a href="mailto:Editor@eFinancialCareers.com"Editor@eFinancialCareers.com.