The day of Lazada’s layoffs, M’sian ex-staff made a hiring group for affected SEA employees

Last week, news broke that Alibaba-owned ecommerce company Lazada had a sudden round of layoffs.  

According to The Edge Singapore, one-fifth of the Malaysian team was laid off, including the CEO and Chief Logistics Officer.

The retrenchment exercise left many employees scrambling for new jobs, leading former staff members to reach out a helping hand.

Leveraging the alumni network

It started out as a WhatsApp group, created by ex-Lazadians Arun Kumar and Gerald Young. Arun was the Head of Search and Recommendations at Lazada, and is now Head of Growth and Strategy at Food Market Hub.

Meanwhile, Gerald is the Chief Growth Officer at airasia Superapp and was previously the VP, Head of Traffic at Lazada.

Arun told Vulcan Post that he started getting messages from former teammates on the day of the retrenchment exercise, and thus began looking for resources such as a community that the laid-off employees could join.

However, this group didn’t exist yet, so he got in touch with Gerald, who he used to work with, to create it. He initially thought maybe 40 or 50 people would join, but before long, the group had reached the maximum amount of 1,025 members.

Thus, they decided to create a Google Sheet where affected individuals can input their name, country, position, department, a Google Drive to upload their CVs, and more. This grew into a more structured Google Form that linked to the Sheet, as well as a Looker Studio dashboard showcasing all the information.

The sheet was also shared by Luca Suino, a former Senior Vice President of Category Management at Lazada, on LinkedIn.

In a phone call with Vulcan Post, Luca said that his post has acquired over 100,000 impressions, meaning that it is highly visible to not just affected employees but also hiring managers.

Luca, who is the Chief Commercial Officer at the KL-based Momentum Commerce, shared that Lazada has a huge alumni network, with people in every corner of the industry.

“The camaraderie is still there,” he explained the reasoning for helping.

The objective of the form is to match hiring demand with the huge influx of supply. Based on LinkedIn posts from people at companies like UEM Sunrise Berhad and CIMB, there certainly seems to be demand for the talents.

At the time of writing, the Google Sheet has almost 100 entries. Arun said that additional WhatsApp groups for different nationalities of employees have been created, including Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines.

An offline matchmaking event

Aside from online groups, Luca shared his desire to bring the networking offline. He told Vulcan Post that he would like to arrange for an offline event next week where affected talents and head-hunters can gather.

Likening it to speed-dating, he shared that this can further help with matching demand with supply.

Arun added that many of the affected talents may have been at Lazada for years, and thus out of practice when it comes to networking and interviewing for roles.

Luca clarified that there’s no hard feelings for Lazada, and that all these efforts aren’t made to go against Lazada.

“It’s stuff that happens. They need to do what they need to do,” Luca said about the layoffs.

In Luca’s opinion, the affected employees won’t be out of a job for very long, believing in the talents of his fellow network of former Lazadians.  

Arun is more cautious, sharing that the market is rather soft right now, and it really depends on the company. That said, he has observed interest from internal recruiters at various companies, including PwC.

For now, the results of Arun, Gerald, and Luca’s efforts are not yet visible, but the quick mobilisation of ex-staffers and recruiters appear to be promising.

Featured Image Credit: Arun Kumar, Gerald Young, and Luca Suino