What To Do When You've Been Laid Off

NOTE: This article is an update of one that I originally wrote in 2016. While this sounds like it may be about job hunting, the reality is that it is about personal marketing and branding. This is also one of my most requested posts, so hopefully it will be useful to you as well.

Okay, the worst has just happened to you. You received your pink slip. You’ve received an email telling you that your services are no longer required. HR called you in for a “meeting”. Your manager came into your office to tell you that you are being “right-sized”, “downsized” or some other equally stupid corporate phrase they use to depersonalize the process and make themselves feel better.

In short, you’ve just been laid off, fired or terminated. However and whenever it happens, whether you were expecting it or not, it still comes as a shock.

This paper is designed to give you a variety of ideas and steps you can take to help get through and get past this. As a veteran of working in the technology industry for several decades, I’ve been through this process myself and have also seen colleagues come and go.

Yes, it’s true, being laid off sucks. Unfortunately, the concepts of lifetime employment and company loyalty no longer exist. It’s all about the bottom line, about satisfying the investors, about meeting market expectations. People are now just another part of the equation and nothing more than an expendable asset.

So… what do you do when this happens? How do you move on with your life? Here are some suggestions that may help:

• Realize that in today’s world, being laid off is no longer a stigma. Everyone at one time or another either has been or will be laid off.
• Realize that the only one who is really interested in finding you a new job is you. Lots of people may offer to help, but don’t expect them to pursue that with as much energy as you will. They have their own lives, careers, etc. so just be grateful for any assistance they offer.
• Realize that job hunting will now be your full-time occupation and that it is much harder than any paid job you have ever had.
• After being laid off, the first thing you should do is to file for your unemployment benefits. You’ve paid into the system, so now it’s time to take some of it back out. That’s what unemployment benefits are there for. Don’t let your pride get in the way of your filing for unemployment as soon as possible. Realize that it won’t be much, but at least it is something and will help fill the income gap.
• Give yourself some time off to clear the cobwebs. Being laid off is a shock, so you need some time to process what has just happened.
• Realize that you will go through the grieving process, as being laid off is similar in impact to your life as a death in the family. It’s okay to grieve, be mad, get angry, yell, cuss, or scream. This is why you take a few days off to get it out of your system. Then you can begin to move forward.
• Don’t make any rash decisions until you’ve had a chance to calm down a bit.
• If you’re over 50, you need to realize that age discrimination exists. It does, regardless of what EEOC statements are included on job descriptions and websites. Don’t be surprised when you apply for jobs that seem to be a perfect fit for your background and experience and then never hear anything back at all.
• If you’re over 50 you will also likely work for someone younger than you. Take advantage of that to learn new skills from them.
• One upside (if you can call it that) to being laid off is that it gives you time to evaluate your job or career and decide if you want to keep doing the same thing you’ve done, or if you want to make a change and go do something else. Many people forget this, so take advantage of this time if you want to.
• If your education is out of date, take classes to bring your skills up to date or to learn new skills.
• If you want to learn a new field or trade, see if there are continuing education classes you can take to see if you like it, or volunteer opportunities where you can learn while doing.
• Contact a temp agency and let them know that you are immediately available for work. This is another way to help bridge the income gap.
• Make sure you’re familiar with basic technology and applications and know how to use them correctly. Email, texting, cell phones, social media, and MS Office are all table stakes now, so you need to know how to use those at a minimum if you want to be considered for any position.
• You will likely have to scale back your lifestyle to some degree, so take stock of what your true needs are income- and expense-wise. This will help you prioritize your expenditures and show you that you may not need as much to get by on as you thought.
• Look at online sites that list 1099 contract jobs or temporary jobs in your field. A lot of jobs can also be done remotely, giving you time to both work and job hunt.
• Tell everyone you know (friends, family, neighbors, former co-workers, former employers, club members, church acquaintances, teachers at your child’s school, people you meet, etc.) that you have been laid off. Don’t be prideful and try to hide that fact from people. People want to help, so let them. You never know where your next job lead will come from.
• Network, network, network. If you’re not good at that, learn how to do it anyway.  It may be uncomfortable at first, but it is simply a skill that can be learned.
• Don’t burn any bridges at your old job. You never know when someone there may be able to help you in the future.
• Don’t be afraid to call or email people and ask for suggestions, recommendations, or even just to ask about what they do. People like to help. Just be respectful of their time if they do offer to talk with you.
• There are job support groups out there that may be helpful to join. If they work for you, great. Be careful though, many of those groups are really nothing more than complaint sessions, full of people who would rather whine than take positive steps to find a new job.
• It never hurts to talk to recruiters and headhunters, but don’t expect them to find a job for you. The truth is that unless your resume and a job description hit their desk at the exact same time and it is an exact match, they’re not going to call you.
• Help others. You’re going to feel bad about yourself right now, so the best way to get over that is to help someone else.
• Update your resume. If you don’t have one, create one and then get someone else to review it. In fact, ask several people to review it for you. Ask for their unvarnished, true, critical feedback to help you polish your resume. Just remember, don’t get offended if they do what you ask.
• If you don’t know how to write a resume, there are numerous online examples and tutorials you can follow. If that doesn’t work for you, there are also fee-based and paid resume writing services to help. Just be careful when taking this path, ask for examples and references and be very specific in what you need, as there are also lots of resume writers who do nothing more than take your money and don’t provide a quality product.
• Update your online profile. If you don’t have one, create one. The most popular site for business professionals is LinkedIn.com. If you don’t know how to set up an online profile, ask for help or look at the numerous online tutorials.
• Set up and use social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. (the list of social media platforms is too long, so fine tune it to your specific case) to provide another channel to market yourself. These allow you to showcase your skills and are not as limited in format as a resume can be.
• Publish a blog (on online page where you can write on just about any topic). A blog allows you to establish authority in a topic (or multiple topics) and can be linked to from your various social media accounts. There are numerous free blogging sites (such a Blogger.com and WordPress.com) that are quick and easy to set up.
• Set up a small business. This allows you to stay active while providing some income. Who knows? This may even end up replacing your old job and be the change you’ve been needing and didn’t even know it.
• Put up a website. Let’s face it, this is the way that people find information on anything and everything today, so you need to do this if you want to be found. Whether you use it for your personal brand or for your small business, a website is another way for you to showcase your expertise. You can also link your website to blogs, your online profile and social media accounts, providing more opportunities for your skills and expertise to be seen and recognized. There are both free and paid options for setting up a website, so do some research and determine what works best for you.
• Make sure that you have a professional email address that you use for any job hunting correspondence. Using something like “hotdog@blitzo.com” is probably not going to help you get a response.
• Be prompt and professional in responding to any inquiries, letters, phone calls, emails that you receive.
• Don’t be surprised if you’re “ghosted”. This means you’re contacted by an HR person, a recruiter, or a headhunter about a job and then when you respond back to them, you never hear anything further from them. I don’t know why this occurs, but it does, so don’t take it personally. Lack of professionalism seems to be rampant in this area, so just be sure that you always follow up and close the loop.
• Be sure and check your spelling, punctuation and grammar in everything that you send out. While emojis, twitter-speak and text abbreviations are becoming more common in the business world, your written word is still a literal representation of you, so it needs to be polished and professional.
• Contact people for informational interviews, where you can ask them about their job, their industry, what they do, if they like it, etc.
• Put a plan in place to help you organize your time and then follow that plan.
• Know that you will spend more hours per day job hunting than planned.
• Realize that you will receive many more “no’s” than you expect. That’s okay, job hunting in many ways is a numbers game.
• Polish your personal presentation to ensure you present a professional image – how you introduce yourself, how you shake hands when meeting someone, how you speak, how you respond to and answer questions, etc. Remember, first impressions do count and do make a difference.
• Dress for success (yes, it’s really true). Regardless of what you are told by HR or the recruiter, dress professionally when you go to an interview, do not wear a casual outfit. A good rule of thumb to remember is to always dress for the role above the one for which you are interviewing.
• Prepare answers to likely interview questions. There are many online resources to help you anticipate the type of questions you may be asked during an interview. Prepare and rehearse your answers so that you are able to confidently respond during an interview.
• Realize that there are many different types of interviews (phone, conference call, video conference, in-person, panel, etc.) as well as many different approaches used in interview (formal, informal, behavioral, stress-inducing, psychological, scripted questions, case, competency-based, etc.), so research them and be prepared for all different types of formats that may be used.
• Understand that many HR departments and recruiters often use a script that contains stock questions (such as “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” or “Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a stressful situation at work.”) for the initial screening or first interview, instead of asking questions more specifically related to the role you’re applying for, so regardless of how inane or clueless they may seem to be, it’s part of the process. Be prepared to answer them as well.
• Practice interviewing, especially if you have not gone through the interviewing process for a while. Ask someone to act as the interviewer and actually walk you through a full interview. This will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses in the interview process. 
• Set goals for you to accomplish each day/week/month and track your activity to those goals. Whether it is X number of emails to send out each day, or Y number of phone calls to make each week, or Z number of new networking contacts to make each month, setting goals will help you see that you are moving forward and making progress.
• Take some breaks throughout the day. You can’t sit at your desk for hours at a time, making phone calls, networking, sending emails, etc. without going crazy. Get up, walk around, go outside and get some fresh air, play with the dog, whatever. Just take a break occasionally.
• And finally, give yourself some small rewards throughout the process. For instance, if you meet your weekly goals, then maybe your reward is to go out for an ice cream. It doesn’t have to be anything big, but it shows you that you are accomplishing your goals and will help make the process a bit easier to deal with.

The reality is that job hunting sucks, that’s all there is to it. It’s hard. It’s stressful. It’s time consuming. It’s depressing. You may even feel that it is humiliating (after all, you’re now having to sell yourself to potential employers). All of that will wear you down over time. Realize it, accept it, deal with it, but don’t let it stop you.

Finally, here’s one last recommendation. Once you have gotten through this time in your life (and trust me, you will), then take some time out of your schedule and help someone else who is going through this same situation in their life. By going through this process you will have learned a lot about yourself, about what you can accomplish, about what your hidden strengths are, about change, coping, surviving and moving forward. You’ve learned a lot, now it’s your turn to share that knowledge with others.

It’s highly likely that a lot of people helped you get through this difficult time in your life, so now it’s your turn to repay the favor. Help others realize that while this is a difficult time, they can get through it. You did, so you know they can too. Help them see that they can move on and life will continue.

Pay it forward and help someone else, like others helped you.

I promise you that if you follow some (or all) of these steps it will make the process a little bit easier and hopefully, a little bit shorter too.

Good luck!

© 2019 – Richard Hatheway

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