Facing layoff again in mid-career
It's one thing to be laid off once, but what does it look like when it happens a second time? I had to go through this, and I walked away with a few new learnings from the ordeal.
The very first post on Multiple Angles was about my layoff story. I mentioned that I lost my job twice in my career, so I’m back to complete the story and share my second layoff experience.
It’s a pertinent story with how the layoff trend continues, especially if you’re in Tech.
Facing layoff as a not-so-bright-eyed thirty-something
I was a fresh and impressionable young person when I first lost my job in my twenties and I overcame that hurdle by persevering. (If you're unfamiliar with that story, I lost my job due to layoffs as part of a company acquisition.)
10 years later, my career progressed in a positive direction. I was in a functional leadership role at a regional level for a startup. The office was set up less than a year prior after the company had a good year and just took in a round of fresh funding. The role was a step up for me and would take me to the next stage of my career, so I went into it excited and motivated.
We were a small but trusted team, building the foundations for the business in the Asia Pacific. Progress was decent and everyone was doing their job to keep things moving. We thought that everything was fine, except at some point in time, it really wasn’t.
Just eight to nine months into the job, things were heading south. While Asia Pacific revenue was reasonable for the stage of our operations, we weren’t doing well in our more established markets. It soon became apparent to some of my teammates that budget cuts (or worse) could be on their way.
You might think that after my first layoff experience, I would have been more sensitive to layoff signals, but I wasn’t. As difficult as the first layoff was, I was young and managed to move on to better things quite quickly. It hadn’t crossed my mind that I would be on the chopping block again until watercooler gossip suggested otherwise.
Given the title of this post, it’s obvious that things did end up going further south and I found myself on a call with HR, told that my services weren't needed anymore and I’d be locked out of all the company systems in a few hours.
Unemployment - again
I had become an unemployed job seeker once again. Thankfully, I secured an independent consultant role just a month after the layoff and progressed to a permanent role at another company after that.
Looking back, I can see similarities and differences in my experiences of losing my job in my early career, and mid-career.
The opportunity cost got bigger
I was in a much more senior role and making more money than I did in my twenties. In a way, this made the loss seem bigger and harder to surmount.
Given that I had progressed in my career, I had greater expectations and a desire to make sure I could land a job that wasn’t a step backwards in job seniority or salary.
This made things tougher because there were fewer senior jobs than junior roles. After factoring company culture fit, job and skill fit, the list of relevant roles to apply for was very small.
On some days, I found myself with no jobs to apply to. This made it very tempting to just apply for jobs indiscriminately. But I did learn from the first layoff that this wouldn't be the best idea, so I stopped myself.
The result was a very stifling sense of frustration as opposed to the anxiousness I felt in my first layoff. This proved to be the most difficult aspect of my second layoff experience.
Experience and skills come in handy
When I was laid off in my twenties, I did not yet have mastery over the hard skills related to my profession. This meant that my options for part-time or temporary jobs were very limited (I ended up manning the booth at an IT tradeshow, and helping to promote printers for a few dollars an hour).
The ten extra years of work experience gave me many more options that paid significantly better, and this also made it possible for me to take more time to find a suitable next permanent role. I certainly didn’t make as much as when I had a full-time role, but I also didn’t sacrifice too much in terms of income. It also looked better not to have a big gap in my resume.
Good connections and a good reputation count
I was in my second job when I was first laid off so I barely had any contacts in the industry. I hadn’t yet worked with many people, and my friends were young and lacking connections too (Linkedin was new then and I wasn’t even on the platform yet).
It was very different 10 years later. I had a good network of ex-colleagues, partners and acquaintances, many of whom had worked with me closely and could vouch for my work. This was immensely valuable with the job search as many people in my network were extremely helpful in looking out for suitable roles, and helping to link me to opportunities.
In fact, I landed the independent consulting role thanks to a warm introduction that came very quickly after the layoff.
Still anxious but for different reasons
In the 10 years between the two layoffs, I became more financially stable as my salary grew over time. I had a reasonable sum in savings (yes, I did have six months of expenses or even a bit more stashed away) and was no longer a fresh and penniless twentysomething. I could afford to wait for the right role to come along. In truth, there was a part of me that really didn’t want to.
I had saved money precisely for such situations. I thought I would feel less stressed with this preparation but I still found myself stressed out about money.
Being laid off twice made it even clearer to me that emergencies will happen and these funds will be needed. So if I spent these funds now, what would I do later if something happened before I could save again?
So I ended up stressing about being frugal (still). I was frugal the first time around because I had no choice, but I was frugal the second time around because I was afraid that the third time would come.
Old lessons reinforced and a few new lessons learnt
What I went through in the second layoff really reinforced the lessons that I learnt from the first.
Ultimately, a layoff is an involuntary end to employment. It will be stressful for all kinds of reasons, but we can only control what is within our means to control. There’s no point in dwelling on the things that cannot be controlled.
It certainly doesn't hurt to have a rainy-day fund even if I feel stressed about depleting it. It still provides a runway and opportunity to focus on getting the right job, and not just any job.
As an introvert, networking has never been my forte. I never imagined that I would be helped this much by my network in my hour of need. It made me realise that I don’t have to be a social butterfly to build a meaningful network; this could be achieved in my own (introverted) way. People are more helpful than I imagined.
There’s no need to be so attached to the notion of maintaining a specific job title/seniority. I was initially fixated on making sure that my next job would be the same or better than the one I lost but eventually settled in a role with a less senior title in a much larger organization. It became just a small detour, and now I have progressed again. It wasn’t the kind of bad option that ruined my career prospects.
With the economy yet to rebound, more people may find themselves in the same kind of situation that I went through. If you’re experiencing it now, hang in there and reach out to your network for support. And if you’re not, your helping hand means a lot to those who’re in need!