These days, finding a new job often means finding a new career

Rich Alper's last day as a research scientist at Pfizer Inc. in Groton is etched in his memory.

It was Jan. 23, 2009, and although reports had been flying about potential layoffs and job cuts for the full six and a half years he had spent at the company, this was different.

This time, it was him being asked to leave.

"It was 30 minutes of being really shocked and upset," he said. "But after a while I was really relieved. The stress at work was incredible."

The now 56-year-old Alper, who lives in Ledyard, said he never went through a grieving period; instead, he embraced the layoff as an opportunity and, as soon as he arrived home, began e-mailing contacts to begin the job-search process.

Alper is among an estimated 100,000 Connecticut residents who have lost their jobs in the past few years during a period often referred to as the Great Recession. While some of these workers have managed to renew their careers elsewhere after a layoff, many have had to go through the painful process of switching to a different field.

It's a process that Diana Galer of Madison, a former Pfizer researcher and manager, helps people like Alper to navigate. The victim of a company downsizing about a year and a half ago, the 55-year-old Galer, who took a Pfizer early-retirement buyout, has switched careers to leadership and job coaching, advising people about how to approach their working lives.

"I am helping people try to find their potential and work through transitions," said Galer, whose new company, Galer Coaching for Excellence, can be found online at www.theteamdoc.com.

Galer, who worked 28 years for drugmakers Pfizer and Warner-Lambert, said she advises people involved in layoffs to invest time first in self-discovery. Ask yourself lots of questions, she said, about what really interests you - "what do I really enjoy?" and "what did I love to do when I was younger?" - and make lists of all the good and bad points about various career options.

For many people, she said, the initial reaction to losing a job is angst about where their next paycheck will come from, as well as concerns that one's career is over. This can be particularly difficult in the pharma industry, where paychecks are large and drug companies have been laying off tens of thousands of scientists, she added.

"People need to take a hard look at their expectations," Galer said. "They have to look at all their opportunities, and that can take several months."

From space to capsules

Denise Mahoney of Stonington, a former contractor in Pfizer's space-planning department, already has been out of work for a year, and she's still looking for a new opportunity.

"I've never not worked for a year," she said. "I even kept working when I had a baby."

On unemployment, Mahoney is doing volunteer work at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in hopes of landing a full-time job in the health care field.

"Pfizer instituted a policy for six-month contracts for independent contractors like me," Mahoney recalled. "I found the anxiety of layoffs every six months too stressful and decided to make a career change. ... You can't worry about what you're doing every six months."

She got help from the state Labor Department, which offered her training programs as a dislocated worker. She attends a continuing education program at Three Rivers Community College in hopes of becoming a pharmacy technician - or, perhaps, an anesthesiology technician.

"I really have my heart set on working in a hospital setting," she said.

Previously the owner of Noank Village Bake Shop as well as a short-lived restaurant, Mahoney said she always had a dream as a young girl of being a nurse. Now in her 50s, Mahoney said she didn't have the time to undergo the rigorous training of nursing, but she still wanted to be part of the health care field.

"I am looking forward to getting up in the morning and being excited to go to work, to be able to do something that makes a difference and makes me happy," she said. "Who knows, maybe this will be my last career."

A new career calls

For 60-year-old George Dys of Charlestown, R.I., it took 11 months between the time he lost his design-engineering manager's job with Hasbro in June 2008 and when he finally gave up the idea of reviving his career. He kept applying for a wide range of similar positions but could never get his foot in the door - hurt, he believes, by younger engineers' greater affinity for computer-aided design.

"I'd always known that doing the same thing and expecting different results was a sure sign of insanity," Dys said.

So he started kicking around other ideas, including teaching. And then the owner of a Century 21 real-estate agency in Woonsocket, R.I., asked whether he'd be interested in selling houses.

"Yeah, you'd be good at it - give it a try," his wife told him.

So Dys spent the past six months learning the real-estate ropes, and already has sold one home while listing another.

"It feels so good," he said. "I'm beginning to understand how to interview people and find out what they want in a home. And what they (say they) want isn't always what they end up buying."

He likes doing comparative analyses of competitive homes and studying other properties to determine how values are determined. As with engineering, real estate takes a lot of discipline, Dys said, but there are major differences as well.

"With engineering, there are rules you have to follow," he said. "With real estate, you have to figure out those rules for yourself. Every house is different."

Back to a better place

And every job search is different - rarely progressing in a straight line these days, as the former Pfizer scientist Rich Alper can attest to. Alper had help from a company called Right Management, a division of the staffing firm Manpower, which Pfizer contracted to help employees through the layoff-transition period, and he found their advice invaluable.

But Alper, who spent 16 years on the faculty at the University of Kansas Medical Center, still took about a year before finding a new job.

He initially focused on finding another job in pharma, a search that proved futile. After about six months, he came to a revelation.

"So, Rich, what's Plan B?" a friend from Pfizer asked during lunch one day.

"Plan B would be something in education or academia," Alper responded.

"You've been out for a while," his friend said. "So maybe you should be looking into Plan B."

A few months later, he got a job offer from the newly formed School of Pharmacy at St. Joseph College in West Hartford. The college, initially scheduled to open this fall, recently hit a setback and won't open until 2011, but Alper already is at work, helping set up the new program.

Alper said St. Joseph wanted a faculty with a breadth of experience, and his background in research, industry and teaching pharmacology made him a good candidate for his associate professor's post.

"They didn't mind that I had a little bit of gray hair," Alper said.

Alper may not make the big salary he had in pharma, but he's looking forward to getting back to what he always loved to do: teach.

"I'm taking a pay reduction, and the benefits are not as good," he said. "But my life is going to be better."