Layoff Advice for Friends

 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tpm-3-layoff-advice-friends-jason-means/?trackingId=LTb2KNOiSZypaZ35e%2F1HLA%3D%3D

 

In 1995 I was walking home from school and found a Zenith 8086 in my neighbor’s trash. Their family got a fancy new Windows 95 machine. We did not have a PC in our home, so I brought the Zenith into our basement. I spent hours in front of that glowing green LCD screen. Booting from 5 ¼” floppies and reading reference manuals on BASIC.

One day I wrote a program to do my Geometry homework. I feared that I would need to redo my homework and “show my work”. It was quite the opposite. My teacher Mr. Ballog loved what I did and encouraged me to learn more programming. So long as I printed the program on my dot matrix printer and turned it in with the homework, I was golden.

This was a hallmark of a great teacher. It was at that exact point in my life when I realized my passion for computer programming. I wanted to work for the company that made MS-DOS and the fancy new Windows 95 machine my neighbor had. I wanted to work for Microsoft.

Four years later I befriended another teacher, Keith, at the community college. Keith worked for Microsoft, and I was able to get my foot in the door. Not having a college degree, I developed an ego away from work and imposter syndrome at work. I was living the dream though.

Coming into work one day in 2003 I had an awkward meeting appear on my calendar. Why do HR and my skip level manager want to meet at 7 AM? It was my worst fear. It was a Reduction in Force they said. I lost my dream job.

Not having a college degree, the imposter syndrome really bottomed me out emotionally. I drank heavily and blew my 401k in Las Vegas. The severance package did help me keep a roof over my head. As did my friends and family. Little did I know the year I was about to embark on would be one of growth and opportunity. Once the alcoholic haze lifted that was.

I landed a job at a privately owned smaller tech company. It was humbling not to have laundry service or free soda. I learned not everybody was a Microsoft fanboy like me. People loved Linux and thought Microsoft was evil. I eventually came back to Microsoft and spent over ½ of my life there. I have weathered multiple layoffs and they have been the saddest moments of my career. Whether I lost my job or all those around me did. We can spend more time with colleagues than our family – for them to disappear from my day-to-day life is heartbreaking.

My heart goes out to the people who lost their jobs in the recent layoffs at Meta and across the tech industry. My heart goes out to their families. So many people are affected in so many ways, from work visas to finances to starting new families. One thing I will say is to try not to take it personally. With massive layoffs, even rockstars lost their jobs. Here are the things that helped me through my layoff in 2003. No, it was not falling into the bottom of a whiskey bottle and heading to Las Vegas with your 401k. We are all humans with feelings and so I hope this helps you know that you are not alone.

Know the Facts

Buckle up, kids. You have officially entered an emotional rollercoaster. Accept that. You will have job interviews for positions you are overqualified for, and you will bomb the interviews. You might be getting no responses for interviews. Even people working at companies might be dealing with hiring freezes. Here are numbers from before the tech layoffs started in 2022.

• People find most jobs through their professional networks
• Each job posting has 118 applicants; you have an 8% chance of an interview
• It will take you 10-20 applications to get one interview
• It will take you 10-15 interviews to get one job offer
• It takes ~24 business days between the first interview and the job offer
• You need to work 2~4 weeks before you get your first paycheck
• Recruiters reject 77% of candidates with spelling and grammar errors
• Recruiters know within 90 seconds if they would hire a candidate

Sometimes knowing the facts can help us prepare emotionally for what is to come. They can objectify what we are about to feel and make it less personal. We have little control, e.g., grammar and spelling errors on resumes.

Take Advantage of Career Advisory Packages!

It can be easy to overlook and ignore the career advisory guidance or job placement help that comes as part of a severance package. Huge mistake. These packages can help build your confidence and give you practice. There are professionals that will help you write your resume. Imagine that. They can give you training on how to interview, specifically, what to say about why you do not have a job now. Tip: Do NOT talk smack about your old company no matter how bad it was.

• Resource: https://www.lhh.com/us/en

Reflect on Passion and Talent

We are all talented in our own ways and passionate about a specific technology. This is a suitable time to reflect and figure out what kind of move you really want. Layoffs can be a suitable time to make a discipline change that you would not normally make.

• What activities from your past role did you enjoy doing?
• What are your strengths and what roles allow them to shine?

If you enjoyed working to restore and prevent service outages on large-scale systems, and you were good at it, then a Site Reliability Engineer role might be a great discipline to pursue. This can expand the opportunities available to you as well.

I wanted to move from a Software Tester to Software Developer. So, in 2003 when I was laid off, I declined an offer back at Microsoft and joined a smaller company that made this change easier for me. I soon found out that I had a passion for writing code, from time to time, but it was not a natural talent of mine. Nor did I enjoy doing it all day long. On that journey, I ended up falling in love with Product and Program Management. I have not looked back.

• Resource: https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths

Get Principled About Searching and Applying

It is never a terrible thing to be principled in your approach. When you are ready to start looking for a new job here is good advice I received.

1. Be aggressive! If you are coming from a job where you worked 40 hours a week then spend 40 hours a week finding a new job.
2. Build a top ten list of companies to work for and research each of those companies. Write down why you want to work there, and learn their culture, and mission. This will help during the interview.
3. Apply for jobs that you might not even want. Get those bad interviews out of the way. Warm up to the process like a car warming up on a freezing morning. You do not just want to drive on the freeway with frost on your windshield. Get practice ASAP before tackling interviews for your top ten. What is the worst that can happen? You get an offer.

Creating Resumes and Interview Tips

There is a plethora of resources on YouTube. I like this channel. Better yet, take advantage of a career advisory package. However, here are tips that I have found helpful.

• Create a bunch of SOARs (Situation Obstacles Actions Results). Write these down. I like writing them down in a notebook – one per page. Memorize them. Then write down a question that you can ask the interviewer that will frame you explaining one of your SOARs. This is a fantastic way to humble-brag during an interview in a way that is relevant to your audience – the interviewer.

Example: Ask the interviewer "What are areas you need foobar?" to lead them to your SOAR for answering "Well one time I was faced with a foobar problem" Then explain the Situation and Obstacles you had, the Actions you took, and the Results of it.

• Spend 8 hours preparing for each interview. Research the company, team, technology, and challenges. Prepare a list of questions you want to ask the company as well. Interviews go two ways. You are interviewing the company too.
• Create and rehearse your exit statement for why you left your current employer. Keep it professional, business-focused, and positive. No matter what! People tend to frown on gossip and unprofessionalism, during the interview or just in general.
• Unless you are Neil Armstrong your resume should never be longer than one page! Recruiters read hundreds of resumes. So do hiring managers. Help them help you get an interview. Most vital information should be on the top one-third of the page.

Tip: If you have 10+ years of experience consider creating a MAIN resume with pages of your responsibility statement followed by bullets of impact and accomplishments. Then you can pull from this and create a tailored 1-page resume for each job application. Just pull the accomplishments out that align with the job description for the 1-page resume to send.

• Bake those keywords into the resume itself. Drop “objective statements” and use a profile. If you have Microsoft Word, go into settings and check “Show Readability Statistics”, and get the Flesch Kincaid Grade Level. Shoot for a ninth-grade reading level.

Please understand though that I am not a professional resume writer or career advisor. I understand that cover letters are still valid and help bring emotion into the application. There are so many great resources out there and tailoring each resume to a job description is key.

I wonder...If you copied a job description into ChatGPT asking for the resume keywords to use and then asked ChatGPT to update your resume with said keywords, what would happen ;-)

The Manager Tools Podcast

What a great podcast! I just love that their content is timeliness and can help you on your journey. Here are select shows that you might find helpful.

• Effective Layoff Announcement Response
• Getting Laid Off - Finances Rule
• The Annual Layoff Immunization - Part 1
• The Annual Layoff Immunization - Part 2
• How to Prepare Your Resume (Your Resume Stinks!)
• What Your Resume Says – Chapter 1
• What Your Resume Says – Chapter 2
• What Your Resume Says – Chapter 3
• What Your Resume Says – Chapter 4
• What Your Resume Says – Chapter 5
• What Your Resume Says – Chapter 6
• Resume Accomplishments Examples - Part 1
• Resume Accomplishments Examples - Part 2
• Accomplishments - Connecting Resumes and Interviews
• Multiple Jobs In One Company And Your Resume

Parting Words

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me or your trusted friends and ex-colleagues if you are going through a tough time and on the hunt for a new job. We are here for you and might have good leads to new opportunities. Trust me. This is a small world, and paths will cross again.