A laid-off Accenture manager has been job hunting for 21 months. Recruiters keep telling him he's too expensive.

• Alexander Valen has struggled to find a job after being laid off from Accenture in 2023.
• He said it's been challenging to find roles that wouldn't require a significant pay cut.
• Some US businesses have slowed hiring and taken steps to reduce the number of managers.

Alexander Valen thought his more than two decades of experience in the tech industry would help him find a job, but he said it sometimes feels like a disadvantage.

In November 2023, Valen was laid off from his project manager role at the consulting firm Accenture, where he said he managed up to 150 developers, architects, and software testers, depending on the project.

Over the past 21 months, Valen said he's had more than two dozen interviews but hasn't been able to land a job. He and his wife, a stay-at-home mom, have relied on DoorDash earnings, unemployment benefits, and family support. But it hasn't been enough, and Valen said they've fallen behind on their mortgage payments.

"More recently, it's just dead — I don't hear anything," Valen, who's 51 and lives in Florida, said of his job applications. "It's like a black hole, and I don't know what's going on."

In recent months, Valen said even landing interviews has become challenging. The end of his Accenture tenure and his conversations with recruiters have led him to draw one conclusion: It's a particularly tough job market for workers with a lot of experience and corresponding pay expectations.

"The first thing recruiters say when they see my profile is it's very expensive," he said.

Valen's experience reflects a broader shift in the US labor market that's made it more difficult for workers in managerial positions to find jobs. Several corporations, including Microsoft, Google, Intel, Amazon, and Walmart, have announced plans to reduce the number of managers. And it's not just big businesses. Gusto, a small and midsize payroll and benefits platform, found that manager firings and layoffs have risen 66% between January 2022 and September 2024 for those ages 45 to 54 — and more than 400% for those ages 35 to 44.

This trend, dubbed the Great Flattening, reflects a broader push to reduce costs and bureaucracy, moves business leaders say will make their organizations more efficient. But for some laid-off managers, finding new employment has been far from easy. Amid economic uncertainty, ranging from tariffs to the early impacts of AI adoption, US businesses are hiring at nearly the slowest pace in more than a decade.

Struggling to find jobs at his pay level

Throughout his final year on the job, Valen said he noticed a shift: clients were requesting lower-cost workers, and he spent as long as two months "on the bench," meaning that he wasn't assigned to any client projects.

Since being laid off, Valen's pay level has continued to feel like a barrier. His Accenture role paid about $87 an hour, and he said he's targeted roles that pay between roughly $65 and $85 an hour or roughly $135,000 to $177,000 annually. But in the current hiring landscape, some recruiters have told him that his compensation level is too steep for their clients. It's left Valen struggling to find openings where there's demand for someone with his experience and salary expectations.

"I applied for one job and they're like, 'We're going to have to pay you $35 an hour.' That's really, really low."

Valen said he decided to stay in the running for the role but didn't get an interview. While he's willing to stray a bit from his target compensation range, he said he doesn't want to go below $50 an hour — about $104,000 annually.

A competitive job market has him exploring other options

Over the last few months, Valen said his job search has been particularly frustrating. When he manages to find a job posting that seems like a good fit, there are often already hundreds of applicants, making his chances of landing the role feel slim.

Valen said recruiters he's connected with have told him they get up to hundreds of LinkedIn connection requests a day, and that it's become difficult to figure out which candidates to prioritize. AI tools are partially to blame, as they make it easier for job seekers to apply to more roles than ever, and perhaps even help some people misrepresent their skills and qualifications.

In response to his job search challenges, Valen said he's expanded his search beyond project manager positions to business analyst and sales roles — even applying for a kitchen team member role at Chick-fil-A, though it didn't lead to an interview. He's also tried to build his AI knowledge through experimentation with various tools, though he's unsure how much of an edge this will give him over other candidates.

If he could give advice to other struggling job seekers, he'd tell them not to give up and to look for opportunities to improve their skills while looking for work. But as his search drags on, he said it sometimes feels like no advice makes much of a difference.

"It's a crazy market," he said. "I don't know what to do right now."