Finding your purpose when you’ve lost your job

No one size fits all; Worknetting; Downturns mean some downtime; Invest time more than money; Go off the beacon track (not all the time, but occasionally); Don’t ditch the first love; Use your supports; Transferable skills;

A kindly professional recently invited me (along with many others I should add) to share thoughts about how the recently laid-off in oil and gas can make the most of their transferable skills. It’s a huge question and I'm not sure how much I can offer, but fair enough, I have been through it in the past and survived to tell the tale. There is so much to say, that it kind of needs more than just a comment. I’ve covered aspects of the question before in other articles, (e.g. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/21763-tips-designing-career-geoscience-2018-dave-waters/) but 2020 if nothing else, is certainly a new “context” for all of us, so, maybe some selected and more targeted thoughts are in order.

If anybody’s up there, what on earth are you doing…

No one size fits all

It’s a bit like that sensation, if you’ve had it, as a couple, when a pregnancy or a new-born arrives and you eagerly hunt for more information on “how to”.  How to this, how to that. What you quickly find, is that advice arrives in a deluge. Both sought and unsought. There are hundreds of books, many of them saying diametrically opposite things. When the event actually arrives, you find some things work for you and others very emphatically don’t. You find that the baby screaming at you at 4am is expressly unimpressed by page 75 of chapter four and is busy writing a footnote of its own. 

It’s the same with job loss, and career re-direction I think. We can very rapidly spend a lot of money on a lot of stuff telling us what to do – and it’s OK to spend a bit to research things – but do be aware that your own path will very much be just that – your own. Some things will work for you, and others won’t - so don’t feel bound to all the advice you receive. Cherry picking is totally legitimate. Cherry chucking is too. 

You are, identifiably unique

Worknetting

"Network" is one of those words with lots of different connotations, but it’s no big deal. It’s people who know you and are interested in you and what you do, and vice-versa. The most rewarding and mutually interesting networking conversations are natural shared interests in what we are working on. That becomes more of a challenge when we have lost our job – but it doesn’t have to be. There is a temptation when we lose a job to rush out and furiously tap everyone in our circle of friends and contacts – but spoiler alert – it can be depressing at the height of a downturn to do this. It leads to lots of no’s, lots of repetitive conversations, and an increased and depressing realisation of just how big a pool we appear to be competing with. Have you ever looked at how many people have the same job title as you on social media? Don’t. Don’t fret though, you’re more unique than you realise.

By all means it’s important to keep up contacts if we lose a job, but don’t feel too panicked into feeling you have to do so constantly. We also owe it to ourselves, financial pressures notwithstanding, just to step back and think a lot. To ask ourselves what we are truly interested in. There will be all sorts of advice about what computing course you have to do, or which AI buzzword is trending, and all that. All those things, actually, are worth investigating, at a relaxed pace. Yet the biggest transferable skill we all have, is, very simply, being us. Trite but true. What excites us, what makes us tick. We are at our most competitive in a job market when we are talking about the things that interest us most.  

It’s good to talk

Let’s be real, there is no guarantee we’ll get a job in that field straight way, or indeed ever – sometimes we do have to grit our teeth and take less interesting jobs. Personally, all that “whatever you want to do, you can make happen” - I’m not a believer – talk to the hundreds of millions of people around the world that are far more opportunity derived than we ever will be in OECD countries.  There’s no way in a million years their dream jobs will land on all their tables, just by thinking positive. To be fair to the positive vibe gurus though, that’s not a reason not to have a go, cos it might. Just don’t count on it being solely a matter of positive thinking.

So, if we have a bit of time on our hands, I’d suggest we owe it to ourselves, just to do some personal research on the topics that float our boat. For one thing, it gives us a project to help focus our mind on something positive, and that’s important, and for another it helps start conversations with people we know on a basis other than “gimme a job…”. You now have something genuinely of interest to you that you can talk about. It matters less about what you investigate than investigating something. There will always be false trails but sometimes you only get a view of the right one by going down the wrong one a bit, but who knows, it just might lead to something too. There’s nothing to stop you opening up several projects like this, as long as the focus doesn’t get too distracted. It’s good not to have all the eggs in one basket.

I call it worknetting because the focus is not on talking to people, the focus is on investing a bit of time, in something interesting to do and to talk about. It’s putting the horse back in front of the cart. It’s not focussing on the net and the fish, it’s focussing on putting some bait in first.

Things take time sometimes

Downturns mean some downtime

You will hear of people, who lost their role at the same time as you, falling on their feet straight back into other jobs. It might not happen to us. Don’t be discouraged. Whenever anyone does, they will often make a point of broadcasting it to everyone at the top of their social media voice. That’s very forgiveable, and we are glad for them, but when this happens, it’s OK to not be rejoicing too loudly with the Hallelujahs if you’re still very deeply in a place you don’t want to be. 

Don’t be too hard on yourself if the weeks turn into months, and the months turn into seasons. It can take some time sometimes.  Allow yourselves to grieve. It’s a loss.  There will be days that you are not very productive. Allow them to happen and don’t beat yourself up when they do, but do find stuff to do with your hands and mind. If it is different stuff totally unrelated to job-seeking, that’s fine. You need a break from all that. Clearly there are financial imperatives driving most of us, but there are mental health imperatives which come first. 

If you don’t want to get out of bed once in a while, that’s OK

Invest time more than money

There is a certain truth in having to invest a bit to get out of a hole, but be careful, do it wisely, because being careful with the finances at these times matters. If you are a professional, do what you need to have a self-sufficient IT network, but resist temptations to buy huge bits of kit. Shop around, see what freeware, or very cheap software there is out there that does most of what you want to do. It won’t be the same all-singing, all-dancing packages you were used to in staff employment, but you’d be amazed what is out there if you hunt around. Once you get up on your feet again, and a bit of income coming in, that's the time to think of upgrading with better fancier kit, not before. To my mind anyway.

Likewise on the courses front. By all means, COVID circumstances notwithstanding, invest in a course or a conference or too – but be frugal, and selective. Really pick the ones that count. Think about it. There are some very cheap ones out there if you look around.  

Personally, I find smaller events better because topics are more focussed and you have a better chance of actually getting to know people, participating meaningfully and genuinely in discussions. Also, sometimes it’s here that smaller companies get more chance to talk – and they are often the ones more likely to have work that needs doing without the guarding obstacle of huge HR departments to filter through an advertised job response of 600 applicants. Everyone chases the big employers. They can afford to be very choosy.

Resist the temptation to plump for the latest trendy buzzword course, unless it is truly, truly, something that interests you, because you can bet your bottom dollar a lot of others will have the same idea and you will all be competing with people who chose that subject long ago with a natural talent and a natural unforced enthusiasm. 

Webinars too are great when it's really something you need and want to know about. Don’t fill your days with them for their own sake though. Lots of people do lots of talking on lots of stuff, but spending time on researching a topic yourself will differentiate you more. 

Nectar may be nigh, but not before some caterpillar crunch

Go off the beacon track (not all the time, but occasionally).

What makes us unique, and attractive, to an employer, is our combination of skills. For any one given skill, there will always be someone either better at it than us, or cheaper at it than us, or [sadly] both. What we offer then, that is a differentiator, is our combination of skills. It makes probabilistic sense therefore to increase these a bit. Don’t go too silly, but if there are fields out the corner of your eye, that have some overlap with your experience then give them a go, explore. Check out fusion. Revisit those Mongolian language courses you always wanted to do. Take up neurosurgery as a hobby (no don't). You get the drift. Sometimes we can achieve much more by offering our historical headline skills to a slightly off-piste discipline, for which they are fresh, new and interesting, than we can with the usual suspects for whom they are old, and non-unique. Sometimes this can be true of geographies as well. Your mix of talent will be rarer in some places than others, and the post-COVID world will mean you don't necessarily have to live there to take advantage of that. 

Go on, give it a try

Don’t ditch the first love

If you hated your job when you lost it, ignore this section. If, however it was really something you loved, don’t feel tempted to ditch it totally. You may still have to explore other options for a while - as the bank balance doesn’t fill itself – but neither should you let the fire go out totally – throw another log on it occasionally, because especially in commodity based professions, you never know when things just might warm up again, to take advantage of. If you know an interest is still yours at heart, hold on to it.

"Mine"

Use your supports

You losing your job is not just your problem. It’s the problem of everyone who by choice has invested themselves in your welfare over the years. Don’t “protect” others from the trouble. You need all the help you can get, and you’d be surprised how many are willing to give it. Family, friends, colleagues, kids, acquaintances, even strangers and dare I say it, the government. Share your feelings, because whatever attempts you make to hide them - you won’t succeed and it will make others feel better, not worse, to feel included.  There will be times too when the stress of it hits all your household full-on at the same time on the same day.  Inflate the emotional air-bags when those crashes happen, and forgive, and ask for the same. It ain't no picnic, but they ain't gonna let you starve.

If you are a person of faith, then use it, and use your fellow adherents. It’s free and it’s genuine, and it’s generous. Don’t be shy. If that is not an option for you and you don’t want it to be, then don’t dismay. Clubs and charity organisations everywhere are filled with generous people, and the opportunity to partake in [cheap] activities to get to know others and take your mind off things. If sadness persists, counselling services are not there for decoration, and things don’t have to get really bad to use them. You save everyone some grief by using them before they do ??.  

Hanging in there is easier with company

Transferable skills

The original question motivating this article, was what can we transfer from oil and gas to other roles, when guess what, oil and gas is experiencing a downturn? I sort of want to turn that on its head. There is an implicit assumption in there, that we always are the filler, for someone else’s cushion. If our own cushion bursts, how do we get our goose feathers into another one? 

If there is something that I’m learning, four years as director of my own consultancy, and as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, it’s that to be attractive to others, is not so much about crafting ourselves into what others want - it’s more about crafting ourselves into who we really want to be, and finding the problems that match it. It sounds idealistic and it is – so it’s not going to happen straight away or easily – but more and more the most interesting opportunities that come my way are falling into this bracket. You’ve got to pay the bills in the meantime, so don’t be proud, false trails and dead ends are all part of the story, and at times the ride is a little bumpy - but don’t transfer “the you” out of you, when looking at the next step. 

Don’t let your mane wane