Laid-off from ApplyBoard, Waterloo Region tech worker confident despite turbulent times

WATERLOO REGION — When Sanaz Hosseini was laid off from ApplyBoard in August, the marketing and product management specialist packed her bags and went to Italy, Turkey and Nepal.

“It wasn’t the first time I was laid off, and I didn’t want to get depressed or anything like that, so I traveled,” said Hosseini.

She is among more than 200 people laid off from startups and tech firms in this region during the past six months.

During her overseas trip, recruiters started contacting her about new jobs.

Since returning in November from her travels, two more recruiters have reached out.

“I looked at job postings online, and there are lots of them — here and in Toronto,” said Hosseini. “It doesn’t really make sense, because every day I hear about more people getting laid off.”

She is not the only one puzzled by seemingly contradictory trends in the economy.

Interest rates are rising, but unemployment is falling and dropped to 5.1 percent nationally in November. It was the third consecutive drop in the unemployment rate as it nears the record low of 4.9 percent set in July.

“People are reaching out to me without even applying,” said Hosseini.

Falling unemployment rates are usually a good sign, but venture capital investments in startups and tech firms in 2022 are down by more than half compared to the previous year.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” said Hosseini. “Why are there so many job openings at the same time as so many of my friends are getting laid off?”

Communitech, which laid off 10 percent of its workforce or 18 people, has more than 9,000 openings listed on its job board. Two-thirds of those jobs are in the Toronto-Waterloo tech corridor.

When Hosseini came to Canada from Iran in 2009, she already had two degrees: a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Iran University of Science and Technology, and a master’s in biomedical engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology — Tehran Polytechnic.

Once in Canada. Hosseini also completed a master’s in management sciences at the University of Waterloo in 2011.

After graduating, she worked for Sandvine, and then for Intellijoint Surgical. When she was hired at ApplyBoard in May 2021, the Kitchener-based startup was growing rapidly. It was attracting hundreds of millions in venture capital, and was valued at more than $4 billion in July 2021.

After working in the local tech sector for more than 10 years, Hosseini is philosophical about getting laid off from ApplyBoard, which has cut 120 jobs during the past four months out of a worldwide workforce of 1,500.

Her longest stretch of time without working for a company lasted from February 2019 to May 2021. During that period, Hosseini used the skills and contacts she’d acquired in 2017, when she did an entrepreneurship program for immigrants at Conestoga College. Hosseini did freelance work writing business and marketing plans for clients.

“It’s really not a lucrative business, so I started applying for jobs at the same time I was trying to get new clients,” said Hosseini.

Then the pandemic struck in March 2020.

“Then it was terrible. I lost hope for getting any job, and with two other people we founded a startup,” an online marketplace that provided virtual studios for yoga instructors, said Hosseini.

“It didn’t work, but we tried,” said Hosseini. She was happy to be hired at ApplyBoard.

Now, Hosseini is looking for a new job from a place of strength, confidence and experience.

“This is the third time I have been laid off. It is not the end of the world. I will get a better job,” said Hosseini.

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