One man recalled one of the more difficult aspects of the day he was laid off. "They called us all into a room to tell us we were out of work. Then they gave us each a cardboard printer- paper box to take our personal belongings home with us. Nobody was allowed to pack up alone, though. The company had someone come with each of us as we cleaned out our offices, to make sure no one was taking anything that belonged to the company. They wouldn't let me take my Rolodex with me. They said that it belonged to the company. That was a year ago and it still stays with me. I now keep important business cards in a small card file that fits in my briefcase. I take it home with me every night.
Just in case."
It may be hard to believe that your period of unemployment is over, much less that it won't happen again. However, leftover anxiety can prevent you from being as effective as you can be in your new position. The important thing to remember is that this stress is irrational. In fact, the real threat of future unemployment is likely to be relatively small. Just because it happened once is no guarantee that it will happen again and, as the old adage goes, you can't solve it by worrying about it.
After having been through job loss once, though, you will probably always be sensitive to changes in your new company's financial health. This heightened sensitivity can actually be a very useful defense mechanism. One of the most important lessons you can learn from having experienced job loss once is how to avoid it again in the future. Not only can you read the signs better than before, you are also more adept at finding a new job, should that skill ever be necessary again.
Keeping an Eye on the Future
Some experts even advise that your job search should not end just because you find another job, even if the new job is an outstanding one. In fact, some experts believe you should never stop looking, throughout your entire career. The ability to keep your options open at all times reduces your anxiety over having lost a job and also provides positive career-growth potential.
Paul Hirsch, author of Pack Your Own Parachute: How to Survive Mergers, Takeovers, and Other Corporate Disasters, believes you should always be aware of all your available career options in the event you ever again start to see the signs of impending layoffs or downsizings. Hirsch gives five strategies he believes all professionals should employ at all times during their careers:
- Cultivate networks, maintain visibility
- Return recruiters' calls, maintain marketability
- Avoid overspecialization, maintain generality
- Avoid long-term and group assignments, maintain credibility
- Keep your bags packed, maintain mobility
Recovering Your Self-Esteem
"It was one year after I started my new job, after being out of work for more than eight months," a previously unemployed accountant explained, "and they offered me a promotion to manage an auditing group. I was stunned. Me? They wanted me to manage this new group? That's when I realized that, even a year later, I hadn't yet quite recovered from the effects of losing a job. I still wasn't sure of my own capabilities."
The loss of self-esteem is an almost universal response to the loss of a job. The problem is, even though you find a new job you may not recover your sense of self-esteem immediately. This effect of job loss can definitely be detrimental to your future career success.
The key to recovering confidence may be in how you look back on the experience of being out of work. If you were laid off because your previous employer was having financial difficulties, you need to focus on the fact that laying you off was a business decision. As you begin to realize that the company made a bottom-line decision about you, you can let go of the feeling that you somehow brought this on yourself and focus instead on moving forward in your new position.
