Adam Woodard, 37

Adam Woodard graduated from college in 2006, when the financial services industry was in a hiring boom. He attended a job fair, and soon found himself working at global investment firm Franklin Templeton. “I was the youngest person on the team,” he says. “I was thrown into the deep end.

That experience, Woodard says, pales in comparison to what took place three years later, when he was laid from another financial industry job during the 2009 recession. That’s when Woodard says he witnessed the “financial markets melt down right in front of my eyes.”

“I couldn’t get a job in finance to save my life in 2009,” he adds.