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By Peter Longini
Back in 2001, when the global tech crash finally caught up with Marconi’s high-flying Routing and Switching Division north of Pittsburgh, Shane McClelland then the company’s Director of Field Marketing – was handed one of the darkest assignments a manager can draw: immediately cut 75 employees to meet the finance department’s across-the-board budget reduction target.
“It took a week to schedule all the interviews and go through the process that you have to follow legally,” McClelland recalled. “And there was a range of emotions from people crying to people thanking me, that they’d had a great time, that this was a great learning experience.”
What made the layoffs particularly hard for McClelland wasn’t just that all those who were cut had been exceptional performers, it was the fact that the company’s Routing and Switching division was doing comparatively well; it was generating cash, and it was profitable.
“It was tough for me to accept the fact that there are these across-the-board cuts handed out by the financial team, and the managers just had to follow them,” he said. “But that’s what happens. So I said to myself: you have to take charge of your own destiny; if it happens, it happens. It’s arbitrary; it’s not about me personally. And that’s when I started really asking myself: what options are out there? What is the next thing?”
Part of the answer came from the people who had just been terminated. “Of all those people let go, I know of only two who really struggled afterward,” McClelland said. “Everybody found a job that was either as good as or better. And it wasn’t necessarily in telecom or networking. But they’re all doing fine. And once they’d filtered out into all these different sectors and I still had a connection, I thought: Jeez, I should keep in touch with them because I could be going through this one of these days. So the more people you know who are doing different things, the more options you have.”
McClelland’s other response to the dark days at Marconi was to form his own consulting business. He still maintains it, even as a full-time employee of LM Ericsson – the company which acquired the Marconi operation in 2005.
“Several of the people who moved out into different industries after Marconi would call me up periodically and say ‘are you still there? Would you do a project for me? We need someone like you that can do this stuff.’ So the networking keeps me busy,” he said.
“I have a friend who’s the CEO of a small startup in Research Triangle Park. He wrote that he heard about the site closure here and asked ‘what are you doing?’ I said, ‘well, for now I’m okay. But if you know of anybody that needs project work, let me know.’ And there were three follow-ups for me just from that one email stream. Networking is the best type of marketing for consulting. I spend as much time doing the networking and the selling than I actually will doing a project. It’s amazing how much networking it takes just to get one project.”
McClelland makes liberal use of online technologies, including LinkedIn and Plaxo, as well as Excel spreadsheets to cultivate, connect with, and track his growing network of contacts – an effort to which he devotes about an hour a day. But he has also become a strong proponent of face-to-face professional, trade, and business association meetings, where some of the most important types of information get shared. “There’s this hidden job market you never see externally,” he said. “If you’re not in that loop, you never hear about these things. And there are often opportunities that pop out, from a networking perspective. It creates options.” It’s also an opportunity to make useful connections with skilled people who otherwise would never have made it past your reception desk to give their sales pitch.”
Almost everyone you approach to ask for a network meeting will agree to do it, McClelland has found, although sometimes the arrangements take a while to work out. But there are limits, too: “Only pester three times,” McClelland advises. “If for whatever reason they’re not interested in returning your call or answering your email after your initial contact, there’s a reason they don’t want to talk to you. But don’t give up, maybe all you need is a referral from someone they know.”
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