Un/employment Tips

When last we left Rebecca’s May litany of good times, it was the eve of May 9, whereupon I was still on my mini-vacation but actually did a bunch of chores and errands, before seeing a show by The Lightning Struck at Lola, which was really fun and kept me out later than normal, which is good for the soul. May 9 is also the birthday of our faithful correspondent Anne-Michelle Tessier, not yet a national holiday but it should be. On Saturday we had lovely friends over for dinner and on Sunday it was Mother’s Day, a fake holiday but a convenient day to have brunch with one’s family if one is so inclined. (or perhaps I caved to Hallmark-ism, who is to say, love you, Mominator.)

And Monday was Mark’s first day at his new job, and there was much rejoicing.

When I last came through a bout of unemployment, I wrote up all my learnings in a Facebook post that I now can’t find but mainly remember, and I dusted most of those off for Mark’s benefit during his spring of job-searching/recuperation. He added a bunch of new insights in his Mark way, and I had some new thoughts and here is a variation on that post again, for what it is worth.

Things You Can Do Right Now in Case you Become Unemployed, Even if You Are Happily Employed

1. Understand employment laws regarding what ever type of employment you have (contract, full-time, part-time, etc.) Understand the terms of your particular employment—your contract or conditions of employment. Read your employee handbook, especially around HR policies on notice periods and so forth, and be alert to updates and policy changes. Read your paystubs and understand them, and keep an eye on them if something goes up or down one pay period. All this stuff can affect what you are eligible for if the job suddenly ends. Most employers do everything by the book but anyone can make a mistake—and some employers are actually underhanded. Anytime anyone catches themselves saying they don’t have to read some documents or can sign something thoughtlessly because their employer would NEVER…that Ralph Wiggum “I’m in danger” gif should pop up before their eyes.

2. Keep track of your accomplishments. Finish a big project? Get a commendation? Get a half-step weird little semi-promotion? Write out the details in a clear quantifiable way while they are still fresh in your mind. Some people keep an “accomplishments and praise” folder, some people just regularly update their resume or LinkedIn—LinkedIn is the most public way to do this, if you are looking to keep your profile up. My point is that this is like 5 minutes a month but if you don’t look for a job for a decade or more, it will be very hard to reconstruct all this from memory. Trust me, you will NOT remember all the cool stuff you did or all the nice things people said about you years later. This is also useful if you try to get a promotion or a raise, or just have a lousy day.

3. Be a good professional citizen. Try to stay in touch with people you like and respect when they leave the organization. If a project is going poorly, try to maintain the relationships and leave people with an understanding of who you are as a person, outside of this one unfortunate circumstance. If someone asks for an informational interview, informal advice, an appearance at a career day, a referral for a role, a review of materials—consider trying to do it! For those of us in mid-career, the time of doing favours is upon us. I definitely still FEEL like a baby, who should receive all the favours and is in no position to help anyone, but that is simply not true—and it’s a really bad look to try to enact it. SOME people call this networking and some people really resist being a nice person on that basis (“I would NEVER network, people just like me and respect my work.” Jeez louise!) but whatever it is, it’s much more what you do for others than what you can get. The market is really rough right now, so help other people whenever you can because its a good thing to do, and, yes, create some good will in the bargain.

4. Understand and use your benefits, if you are lucky enough to have them. This is sort of related to #1 in that it involves reading and comprehending paperwork, but also going out and actually getting to the dentist, eye doctor, pharmacist, etc. As a person who has had this type of coverage on and off throughout my life, I am always wildly eager to get whatever I can while I can, but I think if you have always had it, apathy can kick in. Most severance packages (but not all!) will include a grace period to get those last prescriptions and dental visits in if you’ve fallen slightly behind, but perhaps not get an appointment, diagnosis and solution sorted. It sounds dark to keep up with whatever you are covered for because you might not be forever, but it’s also good health practice so….why not?

Things to Do if You Actually Wind Up Unemployed

1. Pace yourself. Even if you are completely blindsided by a layoff or firing and cannot think at all, you can get space. No one needs to sign or agree to anything in minutes or even hours—make sure you don’t if you don’t want to, and get some time to think. Read everything you are offered once you are calm, and ideally with a trusted person who is also calm. If you feel like you need legal advice, it’s ok to ask a professional and it doesn’t mean anything other than you aren’t sure about something and you are asking someone with more experience and expertise to weigh in. Similarly, you might not be able to leap directly into the job search in a few days—if you were in the job for a long time and it was your only routine, it can be a huge loss. Take some time to grieve, and rest.

2. Budget. The twin instincts I had were to either scrape everything back to candles and breadcrusts or to continue on exactly as we had been when I was employed. Neither of these were exactly right for us but everyone’s situation is somewhat different and if you have been living on a certain salary for a long time it is very challenging to recalibrate. You will need some time, and maybe a spreadsheet.

3. Take realistic advice. You will note there is very little actual job search advice here. That is because what you need to do varies wildly by industry, career phase, geographic region, and a lot else. When you are just starting your job search, it’s fine to hear people out and get a range of insights, but in general, people who haven’t job hunted in many years and don’t have any experience in hiring tend not to have too much useful advice to share, but be a tad over-eager to share what worked for them in 2009. They might have some good ideas…but often not. Likewise people in wildly different industries, people many levels above or below you in the hierarchy, or from a different generation. I’m sorry, I know that sounds harsh, but no matter how good the lessons, they just have limited applicability, in my experience. If you try to follow everybody’s advice, it can waste a lot of time and make you sad that “nothing is working,” when in fact, you just wouldn’t take a marathoner runner’s advice on how to swim… Something sort of similar to that.

4. Career counselling and placement services. These are services that are paid for by a former employer. I call them “offboarding” and they are not necessarily something I would pay for myself but if they are free/included with your severance, I definitely don’t think you should blow them off. I’ve seen Mark go through two different programs (12 years apart) and I went through a third one, plus a bunch of friends went through different ones, so I can say they vary widely. The resume and LinkedIn services are always useful, along with the interview prep and some of the general reality checks about how things do and do not work in the present moment. The rest of the stuff is generally worth at least a few hours of your time, maybe more, or not. I liked the individual counselling, and the support groups that were available through the service I had. These programs are industry agnostic (most of the time) and they tend to bowl up the middle so if you are in a niche, especially the weirder ones, you are going to be left out a lot, but it’s interesting to discover the wildest ideas work for someone (DM the CEO! reach out to your 3rd degree LinkedIn connections! apply where there isn’t a role! ask for an interview just to talk! this stuff sounds wild/terrible to me but I met people who did all of it successfully and they were normal nice people. It was a real eye-opener for me.) They also make a fairly half-hearted attempt at things other than people doing a straightforward job search—career changes, starting your own business, retraining, freelance…can be a stretch to get help with, though they do try (why yes, I did go to all the sessions, including the ones that didn’t apply to me—another problem with unemployment is that it is boring!)

5. Be kind to yourself. Losing a job—one you liked, one you hated, one that felt like just the truth about your life so that it didn’t even seem possible it would go away—is tremendously destabilizing. And people do not always know what to say to be supportive in response to this news. Most people were EXTREMELY kind to me—and genuinely helpful too, but I did hear some weird comments that lodged in my brain. As with any life situation I feel vulnerable about, I wasn’t able to shut down out of bounds comments as quippily as I would have liked. Folks occasionally asked what I had done wrong to be let go, implied Mark should just support me, or wondered If I had done obvious things like revise my resume? I do recommend the support groups mentioned above for this reason—people who are not having this experience along with you sometimes just can’t get into the mindset, or are a bit self-absorbed about “what if it happens to me???” (see also, when I had bed bugs—note, that was in 2022 and when I mention it in conversation NOW sometimes people get so wrought about what if they catch bedbugs from me that we really can’t continue to interact—unemployment is not contagious but sometimes the effect is a little bit similar). It is much much easier to talk about the situation with those who are there too. But also: have the occasional couch day! Go to the beach! Cook something that takes four hours. Stay up all night and sleep until noon a couple times. Do all the stuff employed people can’t do. One of my fave days of unemployment is the day my freelance friend and I went to the island midweek and just…hung around. There are pleasures to be had.