The 6-Point Plan to Go From Laid Off to Newly Hired

You’re in a relationship with your career. Have you ever thought of that?

It’s estimated that you’ll spend one-third of your life working. Whatever job you’re doing (or were doing) is a piece of this vested relationship.

As with any meaningful relationship, unexpected things can happen and the relationship ends.

A layoff or firing can feel akin to a devastating end to a personal relationship.

We have all been job-dumped. It's not the end of our career. We learned to fall in love with a job again. We just need to get through the aftermath of the dump.

Here are the six steps to get you back to being ready and able to take on that next career-happy move with confidence, clarity, and chill.

1. Mindset

First things first – give yourself a break and some space. Take time to grieve and process. Get angry, get sad, and let it go. Do what you have to do to face the grief felt from a bad breakup that you didn’t see coming or didn’t want to happen.

Anger. Grief. Frustration. Bewilderment. Doubt. Confusion. Sadness.

Feel all the feels.

I recommend journaling. You don’t have to be a person that journals. Just journal now. Get all that stuff out of your head so it will start clearing.

Once you’re feeling a bit calmer or less frazzled, you can focus on more positive aspects – like what’s next.

For any non-journalers - I've got you. Here are a couple of options: get a notebook from the store and start jotting down thoughts before you go to bed. If you want to learn about different journaling types and get 30-days of prompts to help you make the most of this valuable life-crap cleaning tool, I'll post a link for the 30-day Journaling Challenge for Non-Journalers in the comments.

2. Goals

This may have been a blessing in disguise. In two ways.

Hear me out on this one.

Sometimes our career is going great, things are moving swimmingly. We’re going with the flow and the flow is good.

Is it? Have we become complacent from flowing and not being intentional about next steps? Is where you were where you planned to be? Or did it take a turn that never stopped?

This bump in the road – okay, more of a pushed out of a car at 50 miles per hour on a gravel road – may serve as a wake-up call.

A call to reevaluate your goals.

What do YOU want next? Why do you want that? Is there anything you had given up on that you want to reignite?

This is blessing number two – go for it. What do you have to lose, your job? Already done that! There is no stopping you from going after what your heart desires. Because that “safety net” that actually kept you in a state of fear is gone.

This is your opportunity to be daring, intentional, and dare I say it – happy.

3. Message

The shake-up at the bird was a great case study of what to do and what not to do. I am so impressed with the number of positive messages. They were spot on: gratitude and positivity.

I did not see (or I chose to ignore) any negative bashing of the bird.

What I saw was “I’m grateful for the opportunity to be a part of that amazing organization, I learned so much.”

Perfect!

No matter how much you want to, do not bash a former employer or the people.

No negativity. No complaining. Even if it is true, save that for the journal.

People don’t associate the negativity you say with your intended target. They associate it with you.

Be gracious, be positive. Those are the vibes of a candidate that recruiters and decision-makers want to talk to.

4. Network

Speaking of talking, now is the time (if you hadn’t already) to reengage your network – the right way.

Unadvisable: a generic blast to everyone in your contacts asking them to help you find a job

Advisable: add value, have conversations, spread the love and the focus

Support what other people are doing, share their content, add valuable comments in their thread, help others spread their message, connect, and grow.

Build trust and show a community mindset. That builds valuable, real bridges that can last a lifetime.

Volunteer. There is nothing that will ground you and give you a boost of gratitude like helping others.

Yes, you want to tell people you’re looking, and we want to be intentional about that, too.

5. Pitch

Once you’re ready to talk to people about what you want next, have a good pitch. This is different from your resume or LinkedIn (which I’ll get to), this is your conversation piece.

How are you going to answer “what are you looking for?”

Be prepared by having talking points that you can adjust. Your conversations will be with recruiters, friends, new acquaintances, and connectors.

Here is the center of it all: don’t lead with or make it all about a title.

Titles are close to meaningless. The person you're talking to gives value to your title based on their experience.

For example, someone who lost their home in the housing crisis may not have the warm and fuzzies about the title mortgage broker.

We want to lead with this: how people benefit from how you serve.

Then give titles as examples. And industries if preferred.

For example, if you were a help desk savant, it might sound something like this:

What are you looking for?

“Well, let me tell you what I do, it’s way cooler. Have you ever had a notice that there was going to be an update to your system overnight and come in to find you’re locked out of your computer the next day? Yeah, I’m the guy that makes sure that doesn’t happen. I’m the guy that runs the Help Desk so when you talk to IT, you’re not told to just reboot. That’s what I want to go back into – Supervising an IT Help Desk. And I really love working in the financial industry, solving all the different challenges around compliance. Do you know anyone who would love a better IT Help Desk?”

Isn’t that fun?

Better yet, it’s memorable and connectable. Most people can connect to that story.

6. Brand

Any time is a good time to update your brand on LinkedIn and in your resume, now it’s a necessity.

Remember above, being grateful for the opportunity, that you learned so much?

What exactly did you learn?

Now's the time to turn that into a differential. Set yourself apart from your competition!

• What new hard and soft skills did you learn?
• How did you put them into practice?
• What difference did it make to your company, clients, processes, teams, etc.?

Those are value-driven bullet points.

People don’t care what you were hired to do, they care what happened when you did it.

Think of structuring your bullets this way:

I helped AUDIENCE do VALUE by USING HARD AND SOFT SKILLS

(Bonus – here’s a less than 5-minute read: 3 steps to writing a resume that will get you interviews)

On your LinkedIn let recruiters know by using the Open to feature. I’m not a fan of the big green circle, but I’m all about letting recruiters know. Update your Experience, headline, About, and skills too.

I get it, your work relationship has come to an end. It’s not fun and it will take some work to rebound (just don’t’ rebound with the wrong job!). Follow these steps to move forward to be career-happy and life-healthy.

If you're feeling stuck at any point along these six steps, let's talk.

I find with articles like this, people normally ask, "Which step is hardest for you?" Na, let's shift that negative mindset ... what I want to know is

Which step is most empowering for you?

Share in the comments below!

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I support successful professionals in reaching their next level of career-happy and life-healthy. Here is what some of my clients are saying:

• "I got a 35% salary increase and a new multi-million-dollar territory"
• "From 1 interview to 15 in 2 weeks and multiple job offers"
• "A 300% increase in LinkedIn views, recruiters calling, and interviews"
• “I made one change you recommended; two recruiters immediately reached out”

Book your career consultation and let's talk soon!

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