If you are an employee in an underperforming company like Sun Microsystems, your manager has been attending meetings to help him deal with the upcoming layoffs. It is the time of year when your company will lay off employees in an attempt to become profitable again.
You are about to begin a very stressful period in your life and I would like to give you some hard-won advice:
Don't panic. You can find another job, even if you are over 50, but you will do it by networking, not through resume sites, answering ads, or head hunters.
You will experience enough rejection from being laid off. Do NOT invite more rejection by blindly sending out your resume and answering ads.
This is the first of several posts on dealing with a layoff. If you are an older employee, you may not have been out on a job interview in years. There is a strategy to follow that will lead you to your next job with a minimum of stress.
It is not rocket science, just cold, hard facts. If you are 50 or older, 90% of the time you will find your next job by leveraging your network of friends, family and associates.
You absolutely do not need to experience the crushing rejection that you will experience if you fail to read this post and the ones that follow.
Here is some background reading to prepare you for the next post in this series.
Tag: layoffs
You are absolutely right on networking being the most successful path to a new job. My husband was laid off for nine months but kept in touch with all the guys he'd worked with over the years--who have all worked together at one place or another in the decades of downsizing. He ended up back at home base. The someone who knows someone can put a word in for a potential employee that often overrides the flood of resumes of the the nameless that an employer is often faced with on a job posting.
Posted by: susan | May 27, 2006 at 08:17 AM
Having been "out" six times (4 voluntary, 1 semi, and 1 surprise) in my career, I created an email for those who need some help. I put it on a webpage http://tinyurl.com/l9svt for anyone to peruse. I call it my "I'm not a nigerian spammer" email.
If I had one iota of advice for the fat old guy "out" for the first time in a long time, then it would be "DONT GIVE ANYONE ANY MONEY FOR JOB SEARCH HELP!" (At least not right away. And not in big gobs!) I can't get over all the scams out there to take advantage. There is a ton of free or very inexpensive reputable help out there Just ask!
In all my time, talking to over 10k of people (my electronic rolodex has over 22K cards), I have had EXACTLY four people who refused to help me. [AND they are on my very SPECIAL list!] I don't know anyone who was ever "out" that would not help. So ask.
We have all received help from people we can't posibly pay back. One way to "pay back" that help is to help someone who can't posibly help you. Sort of pay it forward. So people are usually well disposed to reasonable requests. In my experience, there are are a lot of people looking for ways to pay off their own particular "Chinese Obligation".
I can be reached by email at http://public.2idi.com/=reinkefj webform. And would be happy to help anyone. I have lots of old "debts" to discharge incurred from all the help I've gotten over the years. I need to balance the karmic scales.
Posted by: reinkefj | May 27, 2006 at 11:01 AM
One of the best books when doing a job search, and even better, before having to do a job search, is "What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles. I always recommend it to anyone I hear who is looking for a job.
Posted by: Henry Cate | May 30, 2006 at 02:47 PM