Geraldine Abrahams on a comeback that gives hope to those who meet redundancy in their forties

Redundancy hits any of its victims hard. But for those who have worked to improve their skills as they have evolved in their jobs it can come as an espec-ially ironic blow, as Peter King found out in May 1996.

His present job as the operations manager for Midland Airport Services (MAS), a ground handling company based at Glasgow Airport, involves overseeing a whole spectrum of responsibilities including the main passenger services and those concerning baggage and maintenance and cleaning of aircraft.

His job today is far removed from the one he began 25 years ago, although even then, as a chef in Fife, he had decided to work in the hospitality industry. After promises of promotion into hotel management failed to materialise, King joined Airport Catering Services (ACS) at Glasgow as a trainee duty manager at the airport. At that time he had three City & Guild qualifications in catering/ management, and - with ACS being part of the Forte group at that time - he had also had training in management development, and participated in people-management courses.

Following a transfer to Newcastle as a unit manager in 1980, and then to Manchester as operations manager responsible for distribution and customer services - which involved him in further training in performance planning, interviewing, presentation, profit improvement and product development - he returned to Glasgow in 1984/85 as deputy general manager.

In time, ACS evolved into Alpha and Peter King became regional transport manager covering Scotland - for which he studied transport law, accounting and finance.

Not surprisingly, having acquired ongoing and increasingly adaptable qualifications, he was shocked when he was made redundant in May, 1996, as part of a rationalisation policy in the company.

''The redundancy came so quickly,'' he recalls. ''My boss had been made redundant the previous November and from November to April/May they had said I would be the next unit manager. Then suddenly it was: you are going to lose your car and six or seven thousand off your salary, but we expect you to do the same work.

''It was a question of making me redundant or offering me a job in London; but my wife had a job and my son was in high school, so it was too much of an upheaval.

''I didn't want to risk my son's education because the company had decided to throw me out, so I accepted the redundancy, the government minimum after 20 years' service.''

The company did supply him with a career consultant who helped him put together a CV and to examine other options. ''I didn't understand things like networking and CVs because I never had one,'' he says. ''I thought 25 years working should speak volumes. But he told me to forget about my City & Guilds and my diploma in accountancy because I did them back in 1988 and they were obsolete in terms of today's workplace. And I had thought I was qualified and experienced, and that my experience would sell me.''

King scanned the papers daily in the hope of finding job ads placed by companies seeking his skills; then while he was on holiday last year, a friend contacted him to tell him about a job advertised by MAS in a pilot/airport magazine. he de-cided to apply.

Around that time, he had also decided to enrol in a management fresh-start programme being run by Management In-troductions. Within a week of starting the course, he was contacted by MAS and invited for an interview. He explained then that he would want to continue the management course, as he now recognised the importance of up- to-date qualifications. To his delight, the company encouraged him to go on - and he completed within a record six months.

Each module apparently has a category of identified skills and participants of the programme have to demonstrate the skills used, and explain the methods involved.

''I introduced management appraisal and objective setting into my work,'' says King. ''I had to prove that I could carry out meetings, and at that time I was chairing health and safety meetings for MAS, so I put that into the modules.

''For proof, I put in minutes of meetings and feedback from reports and performance analyses that we had produced. That proved I had managed the performance of the operation, had identified the skills needed to manage a business.

''I had to discipline myself from January through February, because the business was building and I could see what was ahead. I recall telling someone that I could see a light at the end of the tunnel - and they said it was a train coming!

''Now I can see he was right, but you get out of the way of the train, you manage your way past it. If I hadn't disciplined myself then, I probably wouldn't have finished the modules. I now set myself and my duty management time targets.''

King has an enviable group of qualifications behind him now but he is insistent that he will continue to build on them.

''I'm 45 at the end of the year. I have at least another ten years to go, so I want to maximise my opportunities. I would advise people who find or have found themselves in a similar redundancy situation not to give in, to keep up the contacts they have built up.

''One of my colleagues has cut himself off from everybody he has known and closed so many doors, and now he is finding it difficult to open them.

''If you want to stay local, don't go looking at the London papers; stick with the Scottish ones. And if you want to stay within the same type of environment, stop at nothing to keep in touch. Pick up busi- ness cards as you go out the door because they represent people you have met personally - people who may be able to help you in the future.''