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how to get back in.
Job guru Tony Lee on recovering from a layoff
By Jamie L. Jones
Tony Lee is the editor in chief and general manager of CareerJournal.com. He’s never been laid off, but he has spent 18 years covering career issues, most recently for the Wall Street Journal spinoff web site. Lee has been watching the most recent spurt in layoffs, and of late he has been writing pieces advising those who have lost their jobs on how to cope with and spring back from the experience. Today, Lee speaks with Media Life about how media people come to terms with the loss of a job and what to consider when looking for a new one.
What is the single most important piece of advice you can give to someone who has been laid off?
Use the time for thorough self-assessment. People should start by taking out a piece of paper: on one side write down the things that they really enjoyed about their last job, the things that challenged them, the things that made them get up and go to work in the morning.
Some people may write down one word: paycheck.
Other people may have more things that they really liked about their job.
On the other side, they should write down things that they really didn’t like. It might have been working all alone in a cubicle all day with no communication with anybody.
Or it might have been having to sell to people when they're really not comfortable selling something—whatever it might be.
When they’re done with that list, they should take it and really think about what they’ve written down. They should use it as a guide when they're finding their next job.
If what they've found is that there are two or three aspects of their last job that they really liked and four or five they didn’t, they should look for a job that focuses more on those two to three.
For most people, a layoff is as big a life event as anything else that can happen in life, including a death, divorce, and positive things, too. It’s very startling for most folks who don’t anticipate it. So, when the news comes, very few people are emotionally prepared.
You say that anger can be an energizing factor in the job search and in dealing with the layoff. What do you mean by that?
The key is that you direct your anger properly. Obviously, if you just sit around angry in your bathrobe all day, you’re not going to get a whole lot done.
The idea is that you take the anger and use it as an "I’ll show them" type of philosophy: "I’m angry at them, so I’m going to get a great new job for myself, and they’ll see they’ve made a terrible mistake letting me go."
You have to channel it constructively and not wallow in it.
You also say that it’s important for people who’ve been laid off to think of themselves as a business and their skills as products—not to let the layoff feel too personal.
The idea of treating yourself as your own company, being entrepreneurial about your career, has always been important. No one else is looking out for you but you.
Unless you say that "my primary responsibility is finding myself a new job," it’s not going to happen. You can’t rely on others to come to your rescue.
That even goes for the kind of approach you take. If your approach is to go online and look at a bunch of jobs, or you pick up a newspaper and look at a bunch of jobs, then you apply to a whole bunch and sit by the phone, it’s unlikely you’re going to get a very good job.
You have to be more proactive than that. The most effective way to job-search is still networking—going to people you know, people they know, telling them about yourself and what you’re looking for and having them tap their network and come back with leads, advice, and other people for you to meet.
But you encourage people not to network too soon.
Exactly.
The key to networking is having a good sense of who you are and what you’re trying to achieve.
One of the biggest mistakes that you can make if you're laid off is that on the day you lose your job you pick up the phone and call everyone you know and say "I got fired. Doesn’t that stink? Got any jobs over there?"
That’s the biggest mistake you can make because you have to figure out a way to tell people how they can help you. It’s unlikely somebody is going to help you by saying, "Gee, we just lost somebody with exactly your background; come on over."
That doesn’t happen. What happens is if you figure out exactly what it is you want to do and how your skills can be applied to a variety of jobs, then when you go to make that call you can say "I lost my job at X, Y, or Z company last week, and I’m looking for a position that will allow me to . . ." and you list those skills that you’re particularly good at or that you want to do.
Then you say, "Do you know anyone who works at anything like that, or do you know of any opportunities along that line?"
What will come back is, "Fred does that at this company. You should probably call Fred. Here’s his number and feel free to use my name."
Fred might say "We have an opening here, or send me your resume and next time we have an opening we’ll know you’re here." Or Fred might say "There’s Bill who works at this company . . ." and you just keep working that network until something comes up. Once you’re doing it intelligently, it won’t take an incredibly long time.
Do you think the layoff experience and subsequent job search are vastly different during times like this when the economy is rocky, versus those times when unemployment is low and the economy is strong?
The key to any job search is that you’re not a product seeking mass appeal. You’re not toothpaste. You don’t need a million people to use you.
You need one job. And it doesn’t make a difference if there are 10,000 layoffs, or 100,000; you only need one job, and so the focus should be on what company out there is hiring someone with your skills and your background, despite this economy.
Once you focus on that, everything else that’s going on around you is irrelevant because you’re just focusing on the one job.
Would you give any particular advice to people who have been laid off from jobs in the media?
A lot of people in the media have the opportunity to go it alone, to start their own business or become freelancers, and make their living doing that. And I think the temptation is great to do that.
I have many friends and many colleagues who leave their jobs or lose their jobs and who say this is the opportunity for them to make their own way and become professional freelancers.
What you find when you go it alone is that you could be a fantastic writer, but that’s not enough; you also have to be a fantastic salesperson, because you have to be always out there, looking for the next assignment.
Until you get established, they don’t come find you. That’s the real key.
People don’t think about that. They also don’t think about the fact that when you’re on your own, you’re the one picking up the kids from school or taking them to the doctor, or whatever. Your life is not quite your own anymore. You have to figure that in to the equation.
August 28, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jamie L. Jones is a staff writer for Media Life.
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