Return to TV role lifts spirit

Shrewsbury resident Ajita Perera (center) helps plan a Chelmsford cable show for job seekers. (Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff)

Ajita Perera is determined to look at the layoff that blindsided her last August as a blessing in disguise.

Six months ago, she said, Virtusa Corp. in Westborough broke the bad news that she had one final week to tidy up her projects.

Perera, who emigrated to the United States from her native Sri Lanka with the global information technology company, and had worked in its Westborough corporate headquarters for seven years, was stunned.

"I never did think it could happen to me," said Perera, 49.

It was very difficult, said Perera, who several months earlier had bought a new home in Shrewsbury, finalized a divorce, and launched her 19-year-old son into college.

The job-search process in a competitive region is nothing short of daunting, she said. "I believe in myself, but the atmosphere is very, very hard."

Perera hadn't been unemployed since 1982, when she landed a job with Sri Lanka's newly formed state television service. She worked as a producer, reporter, and writer there for 20 years, before taking a marketing job with Virtusa.

Since August, she has employed all of her marketing skills on her job search - she blogs for a local news website, www.examiner.com, that promises exposure for her articles, and networks with every friend and acquaintance possible - and has been volunteering her copywriting skills for the nonprofit Taproot Foundation, but has had no solid offers.

Perera said she is reluctant to start her own marketing or consulting business.

"I am afraid of the financial burden, I guess. It just isn't where I feel comfortable," she said.

It was a mass e-mail from a job-networking group in Acton, describing a new cable television show produced by and marketed to job hunters, that got her truly excited that something could be on the horizon.

Perera arrived last week at the first brainstorming session at Chelmsford TeleMedia with a headful of ideas about set design, round-table interviews, and how to capture field footage of job seekers pounding the pavement.

Now, she said, she's feeling a glimmer of hope that this painful speed bump for her career may allow her to return to her lifelong love of broadcast television.

The cable show is just a volunteer gig, nothing fancy, but it's a way to reconnect with a past passion, Perera said.

"It's exhilarating," she said. "I feel like everything is going to work out somehow, like this will lead me to something."