Land Your Next Product or Design Role After a Layoff
This is a three-month partnership (bi-weekly, 45 minute sessions) to get you from the disorientation of a layoff to landing the right next role. It's built specifically for experienced product and design people, not those new to the field or coming from other functions. We start by making sense of what happened and getting you back on solid footing, because a layoff is rarely about your ability and you can't run a good search from a shaky place. From there we sharpen your positioning: a clear story for who you are, what you're great at, and where you're headed. We'll get your resume, LinkedIn, and (for designers) your portfolio into shape so they actually earn callbacks. We'll build a plan to close any AI skill gaps, since every product and design role now expects some fluency and it comes up in interviews. And we'll prep you for interviews, including the awkward "why did you leave" questions that trip people up. Throughout, I'm a kind but firm accountability partner who keeps you moving when the search gets hard.
What's included
Sessions are conversational and focused on whatever's most pressing that week, not a rigid curriculum. Everyone's path out of a layoff is a little different, so we adjust as we go. Every session ends with the highest-leverage things you can act on right away, so you always leave knowing exactly what to do next. I'll hold a hard line and keep you on task, while making room for the fact that this is a genuinely hard stretch.
- A sharp positioning story you can use in conversations, applications, and interviews
- A resume and LinkedIn that get callbacks, plus a polished portfolio for designers
- A personal AI skill plan to close gaps and speak to AI fluently in interviews
- Interview readiness, including a confident answer to "why did you leave"
- A consistent networking and application rhythm that keeps your search moving
- Renewed confidence and a clear head after the layoff
Meet your expert
Matte S.
Career coaching for product and design people, from someone who's hired the
I've spent 20+ years building and leading product organizations at Yahoo, AOL, and high-growth startups including Hightail (CPO), FutureAdvisor (Head of Product, acq. by BlackRock), and Lyra Health (Head of Product). At Lyra, I built the product org serving 20M+ people across 300+ enterprise clients; at Hightail, I led the pivot from legacy file-sharing to the collaboration platform that became the foundation for its OpenText acquisition. Deep experience leading AI/ML product strategy, 0-to-1 product development, cross-functional team building, and scaling through growth. Since 2020, I've coached 100+ product and design leaders globally — from first-time leaders to seasoned CPOs — on AI integration, product vision, stakeholder management, and organizational scaling. I also build and ship AI-powered products using Claude Code and LLMs to stay hands-on with the tools I recommend to clients.