CareerSherpas: Climbing the Mountain

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years writing about transitions, career planning, reaching for success, and talking people through all of the above to help them reach a positive outcome. Today I’ve been offered a different challenge: Proving I can do the same for myself (again.)

Yesterday I was let go from my day job.

Rather than hiding this fact away and talking around it, I’d like to help whomever I can by making myself a case in point. So I give you the CareerSherpa approach to rebounding strong.

Day Zero

Let’s start with first reactions. On meeting with my late manager and human resources to hear the news, my immediate reaction was simply to hold very still. I doubt this is ever the kind of news one is fully prepared for, but I took in the information given fairly readily. Sure my hands were shaking trying to read the document I was given, but I’m pretty sure everything I heard made sense in context.

Sharing the news was not fun and, as you’d expect, more than a little emotional. As I talked with my wife, I realized that I had a choice in how I wanted to react and what I wanted to do.

Knowing that you can act and that you have decisions that you can make is a very liberating feeling. Immediately you can start to think about what the possibilities actually mean. For me, this meant I could start to formulate a plan.

My wife later commented that I was treating the situation like it was a project to run. In many ways I’m wired to plot out a course once I have an idea of the starting point and the destination. This has proven to be useful in a lot of areas and no less so today. So my first tasks were laid out fairly quickly:

• Step 1: Regroup and regain composure. Being an emotional wreck right out of the gate isn’t going to help, you need to take the space to recover and calm yourself. I had the advantage of suspecting that something was up some way in advance and had prepared a bit, but it is essential to collect yourself and prepare mentally to look at your options.
• Step 2: Eat lunch. It was lunchtime, so I found somewhere with Wi-Fi access to eat something. In general though, finding something to eat and drink is a good idea. Even if you’ve managed to recover a dead calm immediately, you have burnt through a lot of energy in your stress response. In any case, you will need more fuel to power up your brain cells and be able to think clearly.
• Step 3: Broadcast your availability to your network. Social media is your friend here. LinkedIn is the most obvious for professional networking, but you have to think through what your message is going to be there. Facebook offers a different kind of group, but it’s worth sharing the news there as well.
• Step 4: Create a contact list. Where social media offers an instant blast, you also need to follow up and target your message to certain people. It doesn’t matter who they are, if you know them it is good to have them on the list.
• Step 5: Prioritize your contact list. Start with any contacts whose job it is to find jobs and people to fill them – recruiters, contracting companies, people who have teams of people like you.
• Step 6: Contact your top five. Take the first five contacts on your prioritized list (or ten if you’re feeling energetic) and contact them. Use the mode of contact that they will appreciate most, but realize that leaving a message and giving them a chance to respond later may work best. If they like to communicate via email, use email. If they like to talk, call them. Keep each communication short and to the point.
• Step 7: Check your email. It’s likely that, if you’ve been a good co-worker, friend, or polite acquaintance at your last job, somebody will have noticed. If they’ve noticed, they might also have suggestions or contacts that they’re already offering to you.
• Step 8: Take everybody up on any offer given! Everyone who makes an offer of help thinks that what they’re suggesting is a good option. You won’t know if any offer is or isn’t good until you check it out and follow through.
• Step 9: Thank everyone who contacts you. Sounds silly? Not at all. These are people trying to help who have shown an interest in you. (Hint: Remember these people. They’re your real references and they’re the strongest connections you have in your network. It also never hurts to be nice to people.)

How far did I get on Day Zero? Honestly I hopped around a bit, but I managed to accomplish a lot of these steps and I’m feeling pretty good about what I accomplished.

I’d also like to take the opportunity to publicly thank everyone who contacted me to wish me well, offer help, or just to chat. Very few things take the sting out of a loss like a community pulling for you.

Peter Fitzgerald is the founder of CareerSherpas.com and is currently working on his first book, looking for a new day job, connecting individuals with ideas and opportunities, and attempting to learn the bagpipes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Job Transition: A CareerSherpas' Odyssey, Planning for the Future, layoff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.