The Wall Street Journal - 03.04.2020

R6| Friday, April 3, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

SPECIAL REPORT |NAVIGATING THE CORONAVIRUS

No More

Networks

Job seekers and

entrepreneurs struggle

to make the

connections they need

I

n January, Magenta Freeman started a

new life. Then came the new coronavi-

rus.

Ms. Freeman, who lives in Denver,

launched a consulting firm offering

technology and task-management ser-

vices, called Digi.Mark.PM, catering to

startups and small businesses. She was

counting on networking at Denver’s

many co-working spaces and at small-

business events, where she had already

found her first two clients.

One by one, the incubators and co-

working offices shut down, along with

the coffee shops, convention centers, bars

and restaurants that host thousands of

business meetings and events every day.

The abrupt end to networking has been

one of the coronavirus’s brutal effects for

job seekers, entrepreneurs, sales profes-

sionals and others who depend on face-

to-face interactions with potential cli-

ents, employers and customers.

“For small-business people, this is

their baby. How many people would hire

someone to take care of their child with-

out seeing them?” says Ms. Freeman, 56,

who honed her skills during a 20-year ca-

BYLAURENWEBER

ANDRACHELFEINTZEIG

FROM TOP: BENJAMIN RASMUSSEN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; SWIKAR PATEL FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; VIDEOCHAT: MATTHEW HOLLISTER; THE JONES FAMILY

Decision Fatigue:

Why I Canceled My 60th Birthday

The growing spread of coronavirus has

forced some difficult decisions for families

and individuals. This series explores how peo-

ple are combating the decision fatigue and

processing the choices forced upon them.

Marietta Jones

Retired, Long Beach, Calif.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the

movie “Under the Tuscan Sun,” with Diane

Lane?

I always wanted to go to Italy after I saw

that movie. I thought, “Hey, now that I’m go-

ing to be turning 60, I don’t want a big

party, but I want my family with me.” My

husband and I got to talking about it, and

we settled on this villa that was just perfect.

We started drafting our itinerary and an-

other family was going to come with us, my

best friend and her husband.

We had a meeting in January and

said, “Let’s wait and see. Let’s hold out

and see how things are going to go.” My

husband was saying, “We can still go,

we can still go.” But I told him, “I just

don’t know.” I’m from a public-health

background and I worked with the swine

flu, and I knew this wasn’t looking good.

But we were still holding on.

Just a week or two ago, my husband

finally canceled the villa. He would give

me little glimmers of hope, but as the

news kept bringing up things, I said,

“That’s not looking good.” And when we

were looking at the CDC travel advisory,

I said, “Listen, it’s on the third level and

there are only four levels.”

I was kind of hoping someone else

would make the call. Everybody is pretty

healthy, so I didn’t worry so much about

that.Itwasmore,whatifwegetstuck

out there? How would we get back? I

started thinking about Italy’s health-care

system being overwhelmed. I thought,

what if one of the kids got hurt?

But I really wanted to go. We thought

of one night where someone comes to

the house and shows us

how to make pasta. We’re

just very fortunate that

the people at Airbnb, the

places we had to cancel—

they were very accommo-

dating. My husband said

we have credit from the

airlines, and we have up to

a year to use it.

I am hoping we can go next year. I

was the first one to turn 60. We can do

it when we’re all 60—same time, next

year! We’re all staying positive about it.

This year is the staycation year.

—As told to The Wall Street

Journal’s Julia Carpenter

Marietta Jones and

her husband.

reer working for major financial-services

firms.

Without the opportunity to rub el-

bows at networking happy hours or

make small talk at conference lunches,

many are turning to social media, text

messages and video calls to stay con-

nected and try to drum up new oppor-

tunities.

Ms. Freeman is writing more posts

about small-business resources and

digital tools on LinkedIn, Facebook and

Instagram. She’s reconfiguring a work-

shop she planned to present in person

to be virtual instead. And to earn

money, she signed up to deliver food

through Postmates and is applying to

local pizza joints and supermarkets.

“It’s not ideal, but it’ll take care of

food and basics,” she says. “You do what

you can till you can do what you want.”

Going online

One indication of how networkers are

adapting to the freeze on in-person

meetings is an increase in activity on

LinkedIn. Members’ interactions with

their professional connections, such as

commenting on and resharing posts,

jumped 55% in the week ended March

24 from the year-earlier period, accord-

ing to the networking site.

Job seekers are wondering if the mor-

atorium on meetings will torpedo job of-

fers. Peggy O’Connor was let go from

her job right before the coronavirus took

hold in the U.S. Her last

day at Aon PLC was

Jan. 31, shortly before

the insurance brokerage

announced that it

would acquire rival Wil-

lis Towers Watson in a

$30 billion deal.

She has had some

phone interviews in re-

cent weeks, but says

she’s hearing of more

companies putting

their hiring plans on

hold. With her back-

ground in change man-

agement, she says she

hopes her skills will

remain in demand as

companies adjust to a

new economic and so-

cial reality.

Ms. O’Connor is part

of a weekly networking

group for job seekers

that ordinarily meets

once a month in person

and now holds meetings by phone. On a

call in mid-March, one job seeker asked

if the others would accept an offer

without meeting their future manager

in person.

“That’s an underlying fear. Will I

have to? Will I be offered a job if I’ve

never met them?” says Ms. O’Connor,

who is 62 and lives in Chicago.

Sorting packages

Steve Kinman of Burlington, Ky., has

been on the hunt for a new job since

he was laid off in December after 23

years as an underwriting manager with

Safeco, an insurance company that is

part of Liberty Mutual.

He has applied for 47 jobs and gone

out for networking lunches with former

colleagues and friends, he says. Now,

because of social distancing, he’s stick-

ing to text messages and emails. In-per-

son interviews seem unlikely, he says.

“I can read people pretty well, read

the nonverbal cues that people give

off,” he says. “I’m kind of behind the

eight ball if I don’t have the opportu-

nity to meet somebody face-to-face.”

For now, Mr. Kinman, 52, has found

work at an Amazon sorting center load-

ing and unloading packages onto trucks.

The job is physical, and new safety

measures—for example, workers are as-

signed to trucks solo instead of tackling

packages in pairs—have made some as-

pects of the work harder, he says. His

pay recently rose $2 an hour to $17,

thanks to a coronavirus-related raise.

He estimates he has enough in sav-

ings, severance from his last role and

Amazon wages to keep up with his bills

through October. “That’s the stuff that

keeps me up at night,” he says of his fi-

nances.

The struggle for survival is espe-

cially acute for those who depend on

the food and beverage industry, which

has been especially hard hit.

So Rachel Sutherland, 45, who owns

a small public-relations firm in Char-

lotte, N.C. and works primarily with

chefs and restaurateurs, has been on

overdrive adjusting clients’ social-me-

dia marketing and helping them com-

municate their updated hygiene mea-

sures and delivery options. But her

plans to develop new business have

been thwarted by canceled food-indus-

try events.

“We rely primarily on being where

potential clients might be and then in-

troducing ourselves, talking to them

and building our client base that way,”

she says. Two key events on her calen-

dar for spring, the Atlanta Food and

Wine Festival and the Fab Workshop in

Charleston, S.C., were postponed. She

recently laid off an employee.

The uncertainty surrounding the

pandemic complicates all business ex-

pectations. “I keep feeling like if we can

just get past X, it’ll level out, and we’ll

figure it out,” Ms. Sutherland says.

“But I don’t know what the X is. If I

knew what to plan for, I could plan.”

Ms. WeberandMs. Feintzeigare

Wall Street Journal reporters in

New York. They can be reached at

[email protected]

[email protected].

Rachel Sutherland’s plans to build new business for her

PR firm at food-industry events are at a standstill.

Magenta Freeman, her

new consulting firm

stalled, is delivering food

through Postmates.

Tips for

Video Chat#3

The Right Amount

Of Makeup

Is a full face of makeup too

much on a video chat?

“When you’re experiencing

stress, it does translate into the

skin, of course,” says Gucci West-

man, celebrity makeup artist and

the founder of beauty line West-

man Atelier. To combat this sort

of strain, Ms. Westman alternates

calming oils—marula oil, rose hip

oil and camellia oil—she presses

into her skin with a derma roller

twice a week. And she says yes to

putting on makeup for video calls.

“You might have some color,

some mascara, a little bit of lift,”

she says. “I think all those things

are nice and they don’t look over-

done. You want to portray an ele-

ment of yourself—and that you’re

not falling apart because the

world is in dire straits. You still

feel good about yourself.”

—Lane Florsheim