Your Career Matters: For Bankers, a Job Lost Is Often an Opportunity Gained
PHILADELPHIA -- When First Union Corp. took over Corestates Financial Corp. last year, Albert W. Mandia figured he'd be just another merger victim.</br></br>After a 24-year career that had seen him rise to chief financial officer at Corestates, Mr. Mandia worried that his new employer would consider him extra baggage as a decade of downsizing climaxed with the loss of Philadelphia's last major bank. As he began looking for a new job in early 1998, he wasn't sure he would be able to stay in Philadelphia -- or in banking.</br></br>Just a year later, Mr. Mandia is thriving in a corner of the financial-services industry that hardly even existed a decade ago. He is chief financial officer at Philadelphia-based American Business Financial Services Inc., a much smaller but fast-growing firm that makes retail loans to people with spotty credit records.</br></br>Mr. Mandia represents a new class of employee who, thanks to a booming economy and tight labor market, is finding that there's not only life after downsizing, but opportunity, too.</br></br>The Philadelphia banking scene is representative of a dynamic taking place in lots of industries. In the past, low unemployment levels and fast economic growth often made companies reluctant to lay off workers. Now, companies sometimes see layoffs as a source of growth as they reconfigure themselves to work more efficiently.