Bouncing back from job loss – A playbook on resiliency and finding way forward: Part 1

Losing a job has become a common situation, many of people we know are going thru during the current crisis. In fact, the churn is business has been accelerating, even before the pandemic hit. If you are one of them, it is important to not take this to heart and/or consider this as a personal failure. In fact, it is best to accept and move on towards landing the next job, fast.

This is the first in the series of 5 posts in which I have tried to distil my learnings along with suggested steps, templates, and tried best practices collated over the years, which can help you go through this journey of landing your next job faster & better.

What is happening around us?

According to Asia–Pacific Employment and Social Outlook 2020: Navigating the crisis towards a human-centered future of work estimates, the economic backlash of the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out some 81 million jobs in 2020, impacting all economies.

The impact of the crisis has been far-reaching, with underemployment surging as millions of workers are asked to work reduced hours or no hours at all. Overall, working hours in Asia and the Pacific decreased by an estimated 15.2 per cent in the second quarter and by 10.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2020, relative to pre-crisis levels.

According to the report, most countries in the region saw a larger decline in employment for women than men. The youth share in overall employment loss was 3 to 18 times higher than their share in total employment. The report shows a clear picture of young people and women being pushed out of work compared to other workers. With increased unemployment, young workers are likely to find it difficult to compete for new jobs.

Even before the crisis, we have been witnessing a huge churn in business for last few years now – everything around us has been changing significantly and often unpredictably due to evolution of new technologies, slowing down of economic growth, geopolitical confrontations, add to that health and financial crisis. Companies are struggling to stay afloat against new competition emerging from hitherto unknown niches. The fear of becoming irrelevant and business model dying is very real.

The average lifespan of a company listed in the S&P 500 index of leading US companies has decreased, from 67 years in the 1920s to just 15 years today.

Against this backdrop, the jobs are in a huge flux as well – the models of doing business and descriptions of jobs in the past may not be a valuable qualification for future jobs. Relevance of traditional marketing experience in Digital led Marketing approach now or general management experience with automation of processes and flattening of organizations are questionable. Corporate drive to hire more millennials and gender diversity candidates may be impacting opportunities for mid-career male executives. Countries becoming protective of jobs for their local workforce is limiting the work visa availability for overseas candidates.

More people are fighting to stay in their current jobs and get into a reduced pool of available jobs. This is also likely to give rise to an overall feeling of scarcity / fear leading to politicking and negative behaviours out of a sense of sheer self-preservation both from peers and superiors. So How does one deal with this situation

Important to accept the situation early and move on

Losing Job is quite a possible scenario these days – the reasons can be many: Workforce optimizations, organization flattening, company going out of business, shutting down divisions, outsourcing non-core functions, automation etc. In many ways, it is not a question of “if”, but “When”. It is quite a bit more likely to hit many of us over coming months/years than ever before.

Therefore, it is important to not take this to heart and/or consider this as a personal failure or something missing in oneself. It is just a stage in your journey and you need to continue moving forward.

The faster you accept/acknowledge the situation and move on to finding next opportunity, the better you are placed to find a new job.

Do take some down time to accept/digest the loss, reflect over the situation and begin to think how to deal with it and find your next job. This is likely to help you keep calm, more collected to handle it, and more importantly sustain over a period till you find your next job.

Keeping Positivity and faith is very important, as you are likely to project in your interactions how you feel. You need to create the right attitude to attract opportunities to you.

There is much less significance, if not totally zero judgement, attached to being without a job socially and professionally nowadays. Once you are in this stage, you will be amazed how many friends/colleagues you will find in a similar situation – who may share now with you more openly.

Action needed from you

?         Have a crisp narrative (keep it as factual as you can) for various categories of audience you will be dealing with – Colleagues/peers, Previous Managers, Future Employers, Head-hunters, family & relatives. You will need to have some variations keeping in mind their ability to understand + help you for future opportunities, but these should be in sync/aligned.

?         Every time you share, please ask for connection to their contacts/access to new opportunities – enroll them to help you, wherever there is a possibility. Get comfortable with sharing the situation and seeking support, without judging yourself or others in anyway.

What next?

The next post discusses how you can get started and find maximum job opportunities for yourself.