New Delhi, July 19 -- A former employee at US financial technology company PayPal has shared the emotional and financial challenges he faced after being laid off and how a referral from a former colleague helped him secure a new job. John Huan Vũ, now a senior consultant at Visa in San Jose, told Business Insider that he was left astonished after being laid off from PayPal in July 2024.

Vũ said he initially took a week to process the lay-off before beginning an intensive job search. Over the following 16 months, he submitted more than 6,000 applications to over 2,000 companies and attended dozens of interviews, keeping track of every application in a spreadsheet.

He said the recruitment process had changed significantly since ...