Feds on the job hunt are taking advantage of professional development opportunities tailored to them

In response to the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal employees, several organizations have begun offering free professional development opportunities to impacted individuals who may need to learn new skills or about an unfamiliar sector in their job search. 

“We as a country cannot afford for these professionals to be hopeless and to not be in the workforce,” said Rebecca Ferguson-Ondrey, a co-founder of wellfed, a social impact startup with more than 500 members from 30 federal agencies who are changing careers. “We need their skills. We need their expertise. We need their passion and their drive.” 

Until they lost their jobs in February, Ferguson-Ondrey and Drew Tye Ruby-Howe worked on employee experience and engagement in the Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Children and Families. Since then, they’ve launched wellfed to provide weekly wellness sessions and virtual skill workshops, particularly on resume and job search strategies, as well as some in-person events. 

“We are fired federal workers, so we’ve been in it. We have been through the ringer, we’ve been on a roller coaster — the emotional roller coaster of ‘do I have a job or don't I have a job?’ The uncertainty of it all, we've been living in it,” Ferguson-Ondrey said. “We're also professionals that are equipped with the expertise. We're change management experts. We are employee engagement and wellness experts. So we are uniquely equipped and positioned to support the fired federal workforce.” 

Ruby-Howe said that working on wellfed has helped with processing her own firing. 

“This has been a form of healing for us, because we are grieving the jobs we had, the life that we knew, and we want others to understand that their grief is valid and that they are not alone,” she said. “Just because they can't be doing the work that they were doing does not mean that they have less to give and that they are lesser by way of these circumstances.”

UiPath, an automation company and government contractor, recently announced a program to train public sector professionals on how to use AI agents that it hopes laid off federal employees take advantage of too. 

“288,000 full-time employees are projected to be impacted through the [deferred resignation program] or some form of a [reduction in force], like, think of that as a major multinational corporation vanishing overnight,” said Chris Radich, the company’s public sector chief technology officer. “We have friends, neighbors, very talented folks who are leaving government, and we want to help transition a lot of administrative and management professionals — in terms of job category — we want to help transition them to be a part of this technology wave, to be a part of the AI era.” 

The series’ kickoff meeting is July 17, and the training features tailored learning plans, community support and opportunities for certifications. 

Work for America, a nonprofit that helps state and local governments recruit employees, in May began providing more than 9,000 former federal employees who are using their platform to find job openings at those levels with three free coaching sessions through a partnership. 

Caitlin Lewis, WFA’s executive director, said coaching could be especially helpful for individuals who want to shift the focus of their work or move for a new opportunity. 

“Coaching is really great for just having a framework for thinking through some of those big questions — especially for the folks who have been in the same job or in multiple jobs in the federal government for decades and just have to do a total mindset shift to even start to think about what's next because this wasn't something they were expecting to be doing at this point in their life,” she said. 

Lewis said her goal is to help federal employees who want to continue to serve in government stay in the public sector. 

“Being in a room with people who have 30 years of experience, who have PhDs, who have been leading critical research, doing work in service of this country for their whole careers, and having them walk into a room seeking help with their resume because they haven't had to look for a job in 30 years is literally a gut punch every time,” she said. “You never become numb to that. So it is very motivating to get to work on something that is so directly responsive to what is impacting so many thousands of workers.”