Unemployment Benefits, Job Boards and A Little Fun at Thecanned.com

There’s nowhere to hide from the buckets of bad economic news that keep sloshing over weary Americans. According to CNN more than 200,000 jobs have been shed since the start of the year and most economists agree we haven’t seen the worst yet, but there are occasional glimmers of hope.

Thecanned.com, which launched this Tuesday, one day after 71,400 job cuts were announced, is a resource for “people who get canned, downsized, fired, axed, marginalized, let go, shown the door... or otherwise find their way to unemployment,” according to their press release.

Thecanned.com offers straightforward information on how to file for unemployment benefits in your state, how to maintain your health insurance coverage and how to look for new jobs beyond the mainstream job boards, all while keeping a sense of humor.In addition to its informational resources, the site has a blog dedicated to “layoff beards.”

A recent story in the Wall Street Journal chronicled the phenomenon of the layoff beard, whereby forlorn former financiers were freed to flaunt facial hair that would have been forbidden on the trading floor of their old firms. With no job, no important meetings and no one to judge you based on looks, it's finally ok to wear a beard.

“I’ve been growing a layoff beard for months,” said Mike Trapenese, who co-founded The Canned with his partner Chris Merrit-Lish, after losing his job at a boutique New York strategy consulting firm in August. Trapanese said that since he started growing the beard he has convinced several former consultants and financiers to join him in support of the cause along with friends who are current law and medical students.

Chris Giardina who was unaware of the layoff beard blog on TheCanned.com, nevertheless became part of the layoff beard phenomenon after losing his job with a healthcare-focused hedge fund in October. Giardina says he will never go back to work in the finance industry. “Those days are over.” Wherever he goes to work in the future, Giardina expects he will be able to keep his beard.

(Giardina sporting the "Sabertooth" layoff beard)

Typically the layoff beard is temporary fashion statement that adorns a man’s face while he contemplates his next career move, but with Wall Steet in inexorable decline, the layoff beard may become a more lasting statement as more laid off young people have more time to radically rethink their life’s goals.

Trapanese also believes his finance dream is over and ideally he would like to get into the clean tech field in for his next job.

Although The Canned launched this week, Trapenese said the response has been immediate and positive. He has been contacted by two major news outlets, including a radio station, to speak about his experience being laid of as well as starting a Web site. In such hard times, the saga of the layoff beard on is “a fluff story people want to hear,”  said Trapanese. Furthermore, making the best of a bad situation is a good reminder for us all that losing a job can be the start of an exciting new life, or at least a new beard.