By Shi-Ying Lau

In December 2008, Cisco employees took voluntary unpaid leave to ensure there was no layoffs in the company.

This was part of their $1bn cost savings measure their management had rolled out that year to stay afloat during the 2008 financial crisis.

In the same month, Yahoo laid off 1,500 employees with same-day notice.

Scary as it sounds, these folks however were greeted with taco trucks upon stepping out of the company. The taco trucks were sent by another start-up in the city, handing out free food and information on their job openings.

A month earlier in 2008, a smaller tech company down the road from us had a tragic incident where a recently laid off employee returned to the office and opened fire at the CEO and two other executives, resulting in three deaths.

My former company wasn't spared back then as well. We had to let go of some members of our team in 2009, but at the same time we managed to pick up some new POs from our clients.

How? It was the combination of foresightedness of my former CEO and direct manager plus leveraging on the simple Tableau dashboards I had built for our clients back then.

The data enabled the client's management team to make decisions on how to optimize workflow and resources based on the visual data projected, while our company proposed areas where we could value-add on.

Yesterday, we heard of multiple news of companies closing or taking precautionary measures to ride out this current storm in Malaysia.

Long-time brands are no longer going to be around. Employees losing their jobs overnight, forced to take unpaid leaves, pay cut, reduce hours, etc.

It's scary times, I know. I have been through that once in 2008/2009.

Job seekers, what can you do?

Grit and persistence

Instead of mopping and swallowing in Netflix self-pity, send out as many CVs as you can and network, network, network! I cannot emphasize this enough. In my recent years of interviewing fresh grad candidates, one question I have always asked is how many CVs they have sent out before they have decided that the job market is bad.

97% of the candidates will tell me between five and 20 CVs in the few months they were on job searching. The ratio of responses and securing a job does not work this way.

I sent out an average of 15 CVs per day when I searched for my first job in January 2008. I treated every interview opportunity as a practice opportunity to refine my interview skill regardless of how (un)desirable the company is.

I landed my first offer five weeks after moving to a new city with only $1.5k in my bank account from my grad student savings and bunking in with friends in the city.

Have a schedule

Your new full-time job is now job searching. Yes, and you should be doing it from 8:30am to 5:30pm daily, Monday to Friday.

Take this opportunity to make use of the many free online courses offered by major Ivy League universities to pick up new skills that are valuable in your professional career.

What value can you bring onto the table?

Cookie-cutter cover letters will not work. Have different templates for different industries/roles and emphasize on how you could potentially provide value for the company you are applying to.

Your CV should not be on your job responsibilities. Your CV should be filled with your key accomplishments. What are the measurable results you have brought onto the table?

No one cares if you are the president of some table-tennis club back in college. What we want to see is how far you would step out of your comfort zone and push yourself. Your volunteer experience to teach English in Vietnam is attractive in the eyes of hiring managers.

Do not harp on the government to save you

Unemployment benefits are a bonus and should never be treated as an absolute saving measure. I did not have any safety net nor any government benefits back in the 2008 financial crisis, as I was holding a H1-B visa back then.

Knowing that always prompts me to save at least 25% of my bi-weekly paycheck as rainy-day money. Do you have enough cash buffer to last you for at least six months? If not, what are the immediate areas you can trim your lifestyle and expenses at the current point? Switching out the daily Starbucks to Nescafe would not hurt you.

Take care of yourself

Have a schedule, eat on time and have proper meals if you can. Have your quiet time, write in your journal and work out at home if you have space. These will help tame down your thoughts. And, if you are religious like me, pray daily. Reach out to professional helpline or positive/motivated friends if you find yourself constantly tired and having depressive thoughts. Unplug from the news media for a while. Learning to filter unnecessary noise helps you to focus on the priorities.

It is not going to be easy. But the five points above have helped me through challenging times before.

You can help yourself through this and remember that your family loves you.

It is okay to take the temporary pay cut to help your company ride through the storm. Think of ways you can continually provide value to your company and your clients.

(Shi-Ying, Lau is a partner at NEXEA, an early stage startup investment firm in Malaysia. She is writing from her experience as an employee back in Silicon Valley during the 2008 financial crisis.)