On Thursday last week, 350 people at Wayfair's Boston headquarters lost their jobs.
One of the largest employers in Massachusetts, the 18-year-old Internet retailer let go of 3 percent of its global workforce in a bid to drive down its operating costs. The company had continued to report losses in the lead-up to the decision: In its latest quarter, Wayfair lost more than $1 billion in market value.
By that afternoon, after they'd been notified of their collective termination, the former employees had streamed out of the office and set up shop in the bars in and around Copley Place Mall. They were, as Brent Kleiman described it, "drinking like fish."
"My team was going out to lunch, and they came back from lunch and said, 'The bars are packed,'" said Kleiman, founder and CEO of the talent acquisition firm Argosight, whose offices are around the corner from Wayfair's on Dartmouth Street. "'People just lost their jobs. They're so upset.' And from there, we said, 'We can do something to help them with this.'"
Kleiman's team got to work.
Toward the end of last week and over the holiday weekend, the Argosight group began reaching out to some of Boston's major tech firms, including DraftKings, Rapid7, Drift, Toast and Examity. Quickly, a core group formed, and an idea was born: The companies could pool their resources to hold a pop-up job fair to scoop up the talent that Wayfair had left behind.
The idea started small, Kleiman said. Ten or so companies could set up tables at the Industrious coworking space and bring in maybe 50 candidates who were looking for work. That quickly ballooned. Now, the event's organizers are expecting about 50 companies, including Chewy, edX, Kyruus and more, to come in to hire for positions in engineering, data science, marketing, UI/UX, design and HR. About 1,000 candidates will attend the fair, which has been moved to the main ballroom at the Westin Copley. (Kleiman said Westin offered the space at a slight discount.) Kleiman estimates the final capacity is about 1,200, and registration—which is free—is still open. The job fair will take place on Wednesday at 5 p.m.
"It's definitely taken on a life of its own," Kleiman said.
In addition to the recruiting tables standard of career fairs, the pop-up job fair will have photographers on hand to take new headshots, opportunities for candidates to have their resumés professionally reviewed and interview training.
It's no coincidence that the event will take place right around the corner from Wayfair's headquarters. Kleiman said he and the other organizers wanted to keep it accessible to the people impacted by the layoffs, which naturally meant having the job fair in Back Bay.
Word has already spread. People have shared the event widely on LinkedIn, tagging the profiles of friends and colleagues who had been laid off. A HubSpot employee also shared a link to the EventBrite page on Blind, an app where tech industry workers can post anonymously.
"I think Boston has a tight-knit ecosystem that can pull together, and I think it's pretty special," Kleiman said. "There's so much going on here, I think this will frankly foster more innovation, because you'll have great talent—which Wayfair had terrific talent and still does—now spread across the ecosystem more."
