Please Feed The Animals

What To Do Right After Losing Your Job – By Jeanne Schad

Note from Erik: The following is the third in series of career coaching articles written by Jeanne Schad. This feature will appear every Monday.

It’s the middle of September — AKA, the end of Q3. Layoffs are coming. You can be sure of it.

If you should be one of the unfortunate many, there are some things to do right away. And one of them is not updating your resume. It’s not time yet to look for another job.  Seriously.

If you’re like most people who get that special surprise one Friday afternoon, you’re feeling rejected, angry, betrayed and scared.  I certainly felt that way when I got laid off six years ago from an ad agency.  This is not a good time to be marketing yourself.  Best do that when you feel whole, capable and confident again.

Here’s a loose timeline you can follow to help get yourself there:

Day 1:  Take care of business. Review your (hopefully sizable) severance package and put any due dates on your calendar (with a reminder).  Take a quick look at the unemployment rules in your state and mark when you have to apply.  Just spending a couple hours to make sure you don’t miss important deadlines will allow you to better do the next step.

Days 2 – 15:  Unplug completely for a couple weeks.  When celebs go into rehab, it’s always in a beautiful natural surrounding.  Being in nature brings us closer to the ways humans have lived for centuries and allows us to experience life without distractions.  Psychologist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote about the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  According to Kubler-Ross, people must experience each stage in order to heal and skipping a stage doesn’t work; it only gets delayed.  So take time in a beautiful setting to experience your loss.  Then you can look at moving on to feeling better.  Ask around, post a note on your Facebook; likely somebody has a place in the middle of nowhere they can lend you for cheap or free. (Craig’s list offers house swap postings).  Bring a journal or sketch pad and spend a little time on yourself.  When I was laid off, I hopped in the car with two friends who had also been let go and drove to my parents’ cabin on a lake in Iowa.  We spent two weeks fishing, cooking, sleeping, eating, chilling and most importantly, healing.  It was a fantastic retreat.

Day 16:  Make your announcement. Update your LinkedIn and Plaxo profiles to indicate that you’re in transition and what you’re looking for.  Put something in your FB status.  Send an email to everybody in your contact list.  If you walked out with a company directory from your last job, fantastic. If you didn’t, see if a friend on the inside can snag one for you.  Names and email addresses of colleagues will slip quickly without daily reinforcement.  Do the same for client contacts for each account you were on.

Day 17 – 30:  Weave your web.  Spiders catch their prey by spinning webs much larger than where they can move immediately.  With the job search, your network acts as your web, expanding contact you alone can make.  For the rest of this month, simply weave your web of connections and capture them in a way you can be in quick communication.  Whatever your system (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, email), get back in touch and connected with anybody from your last job who you think had a favorable impression of you and your work.  Be sure to include support staff; their job is to know resources and can be great networkers.

This gives you one full month to heal, prep, connect, lick your wounds and get yourself ready to look for a job.   Now, what exactly are you looking for?  If you’re clear on that, fantastic and best of luck.  If you could use some pointers, check out part 2 of this blog, to be posted next week.

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Jeanne Schad is owner of Internal Relations Professional Coaching Resource.  This former agency account service suit now works with companies to coach their people to have more fulfilling careers.  You can join Jeanne for a webinar each Wednesday for out of work ad agency professionals on topics like: defining your own success; designing a job search action plan and staying accountable; finding fulfillment and a paycheck.  Jeanne can be reached at jschad@internalrelations.com or (310) 823-8607, @jeanneschad, or http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeannescha