Will Manage for Food

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Despite the bleak economic signals, the never-say-die ethos that propelled some job seekers to success in the first place refuses to let them give up. During her year of unemployment, Zoe Quan has plumbed her network of contacts, built over 17 years in telecommunications, to no avail. Her degrees from Harvard and the University of Chicago have not bailed her out, nor has her minority status. "Diversity in hiring has fallen away as a priority," she notes. Quan, single and in her 40s, has only a few months' worth of living expenses left in her nest egg. Yet she has turned down jobs that she feels don't fit her career goals, and she is thinking of going solo as a consultant. Says she: "I think taking the job just for the money or doing something I really hate could do more damage, psychologically, than good."

Going solo intrigues many corporate refugees. According to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, 11.4% of jobless managers and executives started businesses in the first half of 2002--up from 7.9% in the same period a year ago. Frances Widnt, 47, of Baltimore, Md., is about to join them. Unable to land work as a real estate agent, she is considering kitchen design. "I've gone from being bruised to being excited," she says.

One married couple, Lauren Brockman and John Balla of Tampa, Fla., have decided that they are willing to put their economic status at risk in hope of finding a more fulfilling work life. Both were telecom executives; Brockman, 36, got laid off in July and Balla, 39, a few months earlier. Savings and unemployment benefits have kept them afloat, allowing them to hold on to their comfortable home and even their part-time nanny — for now. The job hunt has proved fruitless. "I don't think there's a position on Monster.com even tangentially related to our industry that he hasn't applied for," says Brockman of her husband.

But suddenly free to spend more time with their two children and each other, the two find themselves reluctant to go back to the work-centered life they knew. They began negotiations last week to take over a custom cabinet — making firm. "We want to create something tangible, a real product you can see and touch," says Brockman. "In telecom, unless you're laying fiber in the ground, you're doing something very few people actually understand. We like the idea of doing something creative now." Of course, adds her husband, "we'll have the best damn connectivity any cabinetmaker has ever had."