I’ve been laid off 3 times throughout my career. It sucks. Period.
So I know a thing or two about dealing with being out of a job.
The first time time I got laid off, was the a year after I started working for a small web development company as software engineer. This was my first job right after I graduated college. Talk about a major blow!
It happened during the dot-com bubble and I found myself unemployed with no savings. I ended up working overnight shifts at Target, restocking shelves from 10pm to 6am. It wasn’t what I loved doing, but it was something that I needed to do.
Then I got hired at Yahoo!. But after 18 months I left the “Purple Search Engine” for PriceGrabber, which is now owned by Connexity.com. I led the SEO team (which was only 2 people), but it sounded fancy. At the end, I got laid off during a tough economic period — again finding myself in a pickle.
The third time I got laid off happened a few years ago when I was at Fandango. I worked for M-GO, which was an on-demand content company funded by Technicolor. After a few years. M-GO got acquired by Fandango, and was rebranded to FandangoNOW (how creative right?)
A few months into the job, I was laid off due to redundancy. And that was when the economy was healthy!
Layoffs Can Happen Anytime
During an economic turmoil, layoffs happen overnight. During a healthy economy, you can get laid off also.
The difference is in the sheer amount of layoffs and the speed at which people lose their jobs when the economy is signaling a recession. And that has a detrimental cascading impact on businesses of all sizes across every industry.
You don’t have to be a genius, or some government official, or a renowned economist to realize when shit hits the fan. Why? Because you just got laid off.
The only thing you can think about is how to pay for next month’s rent, mortgage, utilities, groceries, and other necessities.
It’s Too Late to Save Money But You Can Do This
Listen folks, I was there before, many times. If you haven’t been saving when you were employed, it is too late to think about saving when you lose your job.
If you waited for the wake up call and have saver’s’ remorse (I totally made that term up), that’s great. Now is not the time to regret buying that Louis Vuitton purse, going to that lavish steakhouse, or spending $10,000 for a vacation in Hawaii. That money is gone. Gone!
But right when you lost your job, you don’t have time to “think.” You need get perspective and take action, IMMEDIATELY.
Telling you to stay calm and not panic is not realistic. I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. Not today, not ever.
You just lost your paycheck, and have no way to pay your bills. Of course you’ll panic. In fact, if you didn’t panic then you’re not being honest with your situation.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way…here’s what I really want to tell you.
Surviving unemployment is all about perspective. This will be some tough love and raw advice — so if you don’t have a thick skin, now is the time to bounce to something nicer…
Gain Perspective On Your Situation
No, I have no advice that will solve your problems. And I’m sorry that times are tough and there’s no timing of when things will recover.
But here are a few things that might help you get through it…because this was what I had to do when I was laid off each time in my life.
#1. Keep doing something, anything. Do not allow your mind to rot away in self pity. The worst thing ever. Your mind is a muscle. It’s your NOC (Network Operations Center). If it does dark, you shut down. You lose control. Do not let this happen. I can’t tell you what to do here. But when I was laid off, I started learning more about and working on affiliate marketing to make some money. It got me through a rough patch, expanded my network, and gave me hope.
#2. Time to pull yourself together and figure out something you love doing, and do it. 100% find this. Because the reality is the ratio of available jobs and available candidates is utterly disproportionate. It will take some time before that levels out. And here’s the silver lining…you might just end up finding something that you love to do that will generate income and become a business when all this end.
#3. Don’t believe everything you read online. You’ll drive yourself crazy. There’s I don’t care if it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram…predators are everywhere…they are coming out of the woodwork! People are desperate. If something sounds too good to be true, you better run. This is the time when even the bigtime influencers are going to come undone. You will see that this entire time, it was all smoke and mirrors. Don’t get fooled again.
#4. A job is a job that pays the bills. If you are trying to be picky now, then you deserve your fate. If you’re looking for employment, do not dictate what, when, and where. Your entitlement is gone. Hell, it shouldn’t have even existed in the first place. Your landlord doesn’t care where you work as long as rent is paid. Your cellphone company couldn’t give 2-cents what time you come home from work, as long as you pay your bill. The best thing you can do for yourself is survive — that means go bag groceries if you have to.
It is important not to lose yourself during unemployment
Many people will have a difficult time getting out of a rut. But you must. You owe it to yourself, your family, your friends, oh…did I mention yourself?
So pick yourself up! Gain perspective. You got this!
