Layoff Recovery Toolkit
Layoffs can happen to anyone, even top performers, and they don’t define your value or potential.
If you've been laid off, you are in good company. I've been there - more than once - and each time I discovered that what seemed like a set back was actually a stepping stone to something better.
I'm Ralph Perrine and I created this toolkit to share what I learned about proven ways to turn a layoff into a LEVEL UP.
This Toolkit gives you 2 ways to learn: click the audio above OR study the materials below at your own pace.
This toolkit is designed to help you navigate this transition with confidence, giving you practical tools to help you set a strong positive mindset, conduct a highly effective job search, and be 110% ready for what’s next.
There are a lot of tips out there for finding a new job. What you're going to learn here is unique:
You're going to learn how to share your past success stories in a way that excites people about working with you to create future success stories.
Let’s get you ready for your next big opportunity!
First: How to manage your thoughts as you go through this transition
Its tempting to try to understand why the layoff happened, and very tempting to think about it in highly personalized ways:
- "They didn't value me"
- "I must not have been good enough"
- "I didn't butter up the right people"
...and thousands of variations on those themes. None of them are helpful.
When you are laid off, it's best not to take it personally. It's ok and perfectly natural to feel hurt and angry. BUT you don't want your hurt and anger to come through in your networking activities and interviews.
The narrative and vibe you give off can be one of two things:
- Wow, such a resilient talented individual! - they're going to find a great opportunity to do great things at some lucky company!
OR
- This poor person is feeling really angry and victimized.
People will pick up one or the other of these, based on signals you give off: words and phrasing, body language, and even behaviors - like procrastination or avoidance. All of these are controlled by your mindset.
You want the focus to be on your potential, not your grievances. So right now let's adopt at a non-personalized view of why layoffs happen, and set up a healthy mindset that will take.you to the next level of success in your career.
How to think about your layoff without taking it personally
Layoffs happen for primarily two reasons:
- Budgetary - the company is in financial trouble and literally can't make ends meet. They are forced to lay off staff, shut down product lines or other things in hopes of surviving long enough to get to better days.
- Restructuring - the structure of the organization doesn't match the new operating environment that the company has entered. To stay relevant, the company leadership has to adjust the structure and focus of the company.
In both cases, you have reasons to be very glad you were laid off.
If your layoff was budgetary, you didn't want to stay there anyway. A company in financial trouble is a shrinking opportunity space. You don't want to be in a shrinking opportunity space. You want to be in an expanding opportunity space. So be thankful you were one of the ones allowed to escape early.
This has been the story over and over, when I've compared notes between the people who were laid off in round 1 vs round 2 vs the eventual shutdown of the company (which sadly happens sometimes). In every case - everyone agreed - the ones who kept their jobs were not the lucky ones.
If your layoff was due to restructuring - you can also be thankful here. When a company's structure and focus changes, you either want to be fully aligned to that new direction, or you want to be out. Why? Because staying in the company would only result in friction caused by lack of alignment.
I left a lucrative position in the 90s due to friction caused by non-alignment. My team and I were bringing more modern cost effective approaches, but our work threatened a legacy line of business.
I began to notice that my team was spending an inordinate amount of time fighting political battles. We were actually pretty good at holding our own and advancing our cause. But I realized we had to choose who we wanted to be: Did we want to be innovators, or did we want to be corporate politics ninjas? The thought that propelled me was "what if we could work somewhere where there was no debate about what we're supposed to be doing, and we could just focus doing the work we loved???" So we all left. We didn't have the "benefit" of being laid off, we just made the decision ourselves, because we didn't want to waste our careers on friction. You don't either.
7 steps to turn your layoff into a Level UP
These practical steps will help you establish the mindset you need to be consistent, proactive and resilient during your career transition.
Some of these may seem hard to do, not because they actually are, but because for many job hunters they might not feel like traditional job-hunt tasks.
But remember what we said in the intro: we’re going to learn how to share our past success stories in a way that excites people about working with us to create future success stories. That's the secret to turning a layoff into a Level UP.
The practical steps below are going to help you do exactly that. They'll help you present yourself as a better candidate, and connect with better opportunities in shorter timeframes.
The all important Step 1: Sit down and write yourself a Thank-You note, recognizing all the great things you did in your last job.
Write it as if it were from a leader in the company, who recognized what you'd done. Why: Losing a job makes people feel a level of shame. What you need to do is get above that. Get convinced about the value you have, and be ready to articulate that value convincingly to others.
Step 2: Write out the wins and achievements from your career and last job, with detailed supporting information.
Writing that thank-you note in step one probably jogged some memories. So now we’re going to build on that by writing out a list of the wins and achievements from your career. Make it as long and as detailed as you like. (This document is NOT your résumé - that comes later. You may come to see this step as actually more important than your résumé.)
If you won an award, write out what it was, and why it was awarded. Include a link or photo. If you achieved something, have a quote from someone, or a statistic preferably with a public press release.
Why: you’re going to build a small collection of verifiable stories ready to share. Know them well enough to be able to tell a 10-word version of them or a 10 minute version of them. (we will dig into this more in the section below: How to pick the right stories and tell them well).
Step 3: Inventory your skills and abilities, and determine which ones need updating.
Using your wins and achievements from Step 2 as a guide, write out the skills and abilities you demonstrated in a document. This document is going to be very helpful later when an interviewer asks about your skills and then asks for an example of when you demonstrated that skill. Again, don't try to make it resume format, or brief or perfect. Not yet. This is for your reference and you will use it in 2 ways:
- You'll add relevant skills and abilities from this document to a resume that is targeting a specific kind of role. You may have a more rich or unusual mix of skills than you realize, so taking the time to write them out is valuable. It helps you get ready to represent yourself in a complete and accurate manner.
- You'll use this list of skills and abilities to help you identify where you have opportunities to strengthen or add skills. Nothing will bolster your confidence during a career transition like learning and gaining new competencies. Coursera and Khan Academy and other online learning platforms are good options. Volunteering as a business mentor for startups can also give you exposure to new skills and industries, which can help give you that blended expertise dimension that is so important in today's job market (more about this in the next point below).
Step 4: Learn how to describe your skillsets, emphasizing blends of skills, rather than lots of different skills when presenting yourself.
Here's why you don't want to create a big list of skills:
- People referring you, interviewing you or reviewing your resume won't know what to focus on.
- People often develop negative assumptions when they see a long skills: they may doubt the list is accurate. They may assume you are a "jack-of-all trades" (rarely a good thing), and/or people will be left wondering which of these skills are true areas of strength vs things you dabbled in.
Key Insights about presenting relevant skills:
- Today's accelerating technology and economic landscape constantly spawns demand for new kinds of need-to-know expertise. To stay relevant and maintain the company's competitive advantage, individuals and organizations alike need expertise that blends knowledge of current operational responsibilities AND new technologies and evolving business models.
- In other words, to stay relevant, people must move beyond one dimensional expertise and learn how to cultivate blended skillsets: PMO expert with experience in AI Governance etc. Or SAFe Agile with focus on digital healthcare. Scrumaster with Blockchain. etc. Notice these often blend a traditional skillset with a newer one. If you can demonstrate that you have blended skillsets it will help employers understand your skills more clearly and help you stand out.
Step 5: Now you are ready to start Networking! Meetups, volunteering, speaking at events and online interaction (LinkedIn or others) - endless options.
What is the purpose of networking? I like to define it like this:
Networking is me putting myself out there in hopes of helping others and learning something new. In the process, I will meet people who may want me to join their team, or may know of someone else who would like me on their team. They'll want me on their team, when they hear the stories I'll share about the wins and successes I helped enable, and when they see my skills and expertise in action.
Notice the emphasis on being helpful. This is a subtle but VERY important signal for you and for others:
Don't network as a "needy person" ...network as a capable person who wants to help and who also knows that others are eager to help.
Again, mindset makes all the difference. I learned this emphasis on being helpful from Heather Hollick who wrote a great book on networking called "Helpful."
BTW, some of you may be thinking, "Look I'm an introvert, I don't do networking." Heather's book was written from the standpoint of an introvert, and her insight that people want to be helpful actually gave her a more positive appreciation on networking and how to do it in a way that worked for her.
Some ways to network effectively:
- Schedule conversations with potential employers, even if they don't have current job openings.
- Get coffee with advocates who know you and can put your name / resume in front of others.
- Connecting and networking on LinkedIn.
- As we mentioned before, volunteering is another great way to network. Mentoring or helping startups and non-profits can give you valuable exposure to new ways to leverage your expertise, while meeting new people who may open doors for you.
- Speaking can also be a great way to create new connections.
These word of mouth channels and activities can be way more productive than staying home and blasting out resumes to online job boards. They give you opportunities to tell your stories of the wins and successes you created in your previous roles. As we'll see later in this workshop, telling your success stories is a more powerful way to present yourself than relying on resumes and job applications alone.
Step 6: Start Writing and sharing your resumes and job applications.
Let's review what you've been learning and putting into practice in Steps 1-5:
- You have verifiable stories about your wins and successes
- You know how to speak about your skills and abilities in clear relevant ways.
- You are engaged, networking, volunteering, helping
Now you're in a really good place to share resumes and apply to jobs. Because you're already "out there" building connections and sharing your wins and successes, you won't have to rely solely on sending resumes. In fact in many cases the resume becomes a formality.
Remember: Your resume is not what opens doors for you. You open doors for you. Your stories, the way to talk about your skills. The way you get involved and help others.
Too many people think of a job search as just "make a resume and send it." As you're learning here, it's so much more. And because you're following Steps 1-5, your resume will be better quality.
Insight regarding job boards and the recruiting industry: In my experience as someone hiring key talent, and also as someone looking for a job - on both sides of that equation - the talent acquisition industry is a little dysfunctional. So I want to share some tips so you can protect yourself from wasting time:
- Many online job postings are repeat postings from other sources. In many cases these jobs may have already been filled, but no one updated the posting, so you're wasting time applying to a job that doesn't exist. I know this because I've been the victim of that and can't remember how many times I've heard: "Oh we closed that weeks ago, it must be an old posting."
- Corporate recruiters sometimes have a pattern of posting a job, and then if they don't find good candidates within a week or so, they'll hand the opening off to one or more contracted recruiting agencies to see if they can find a person. These agencies in turn often have their own sub-contracted recruiting partners. These scattered, outdated job postings can make someone waste a lot of time.
- Rather than starting with popular job boards, learn which companies are recognized as best places to work, or recognized for their leadership in their industry. In my observation its better to apply directly to the company that is hiring, vs on a job board.
Most companies will have a "Careers" section on their sites. You can either type their URL with a slash and the word Careers, or you can Search on their company name with the words "Careers" or "Jobs". When you've found one or more companies with relevant job openings, you're ready to fill out their online application and prepare/share your resume.
Resume building: create focused resumes
- Always pull from your Wins & Successes and your Skills & Abilities documentation you created per the instructions we shared earlier. Your resume should be a more succinct, more targeted version of those documents.
- Having a few different versions of your resume can help you target different roles or industries.
- Don't feel like you have to include everything, just include what's relevant, while also representing your employment history. In other words, if you worked from 2015-2024, list those job titles, employers and durations, but don't feel like you have to provide equal levels of detail about all of them. Call out the wins and successes that relate to the job you're applying for.
Resume Formatting: I found that 2 formats were most helpful:
- A plain text version was best for company job boards that ask you to upload a resume into their system. Resumes that are saved as PDFs, Word Docs and other flavors usually get mangled with these, and force you to waste a lot of time correcting or moving information into the correct fields etc. So have a plain text version that you know uploads cleanly.
- A PDF version that you can send as an attachment via email or print out if needed. This version can be a little more formatted with fonts, headers and bolds, but you should still keep it simple and clean.
How to allocate your time: Have a structured schedule and time budget so that you are spending the right amounts of time on the right things.
- Allocate a daily amount of time to sending out resumes and applying. Don't neglect the task of creating and sending resumes. It's not the sum total of your job search. But it's very important.
- Allocate more time to networking and learning. Why? Many resumes / job applications are "viewed" and sorted by automated systems and never seen by a human. Sending resumes doesn't give you a platform to tell your stories from ...and stories are what it's all about, as we'll learn in our next segment.
Step 7: Turn interviews into excellent conversations
I'm going be putting a lot of emphasis on story telling, and its important to understand why:
The job search process is the literally process of telling people success stories from the past, so they'll want to work with you to create success stories in the future.
The interview process is you listening and observing to understand which stories and which parts of those stories are most important to the team interviewing you, and then sharing that with them in the most clear, succinct way possiblele. In the end, both sides - you and the interviewing team - need to feel like you both know what the next step should be.
Think about all the people involved in the typical hiring process.
- The person who recommended you to a company or to a hiring manager
- The hiring manager
- The HR partner
- The recruiter
- The others who interviewed you - maybe a few members from the tech team or the business team were asked to come and join an interview.
- The business or IT partners of the hiring manager
This group is going to be talking to each other about you AND several other candidates they interviewed. If you want to make sure you don't get lost or misrepresented in that mix, you want to be able to tell clear, memorable, relevant stories:
- You want them to say "Oh, yeah this is Ralph! He's the one that changed things up and they hit their goals!" "Oh yeah yeah yeah! HE was SHARP!"
- You don't want them going "Ok so...Ralph....what was he like again? I don't remember." "No, he was nice and all, but I couldn't get a read on him"
Stories are core to how humans relate, understand, build trust and make decisions. When you are finding your next big opportunity, the stories you tell - and the way you tell them, and make them memorable - will help you find your next opportunity - and find it sooner than you otherwise would have.
You want to be able to tell clear, simple, results oriented stories of how you played a unique role in solving urgent issues and making great things happen for your company and customers.
And they need to be SHORT stories...Stories can be a double edged sword. If your stories take too long to get to the punch line, they'll sabotage your interviews. When I interview people or help people prepare for interviews I advise them to leave out ALL the typical "interesting" details and focus on 4 things in as few words as possible:
- The situation (for example, "we had a disappointed customer"),
- Your role (establish that you were not just an observer or non-involved part of the team, but you actually had a role),
- Your action (what you did and why) and,
- The results (did the customer renew the contract? was there recognition of increased revenue?)
Your goal is to truthfully share a story where you stopped something bad from happening, or caused something good to happen.
Important tips:
- Explain what you specifically did. Don't say "we", say "I". (In interviews, whenever I hear "we" I always stop the person I'm interviewing and ask, can you share what you specifically did). If the story doesn't involve actions you personally took that changed the outcome, then it's not a good story.
- Keep it short. Why: Sometimes when we get into the flow of talking about something important to us, our minds tend string things together and we keep talking longer than we need to - beyond the purpose of the conversation. Practice cutting your comments short, and stopping to check for understanding.
This is why it's important to 1. know your success stories, 2. practice telling them in the shortest way possible.
An effective short form of a story could be:
"We had a key customer who was disappointed. My manager asked me to learn the root cause. I met with the core team, discovered a flaw and showed the engineering team how to fix it in a way that restored the customer's confidence. Long story short, the customer regained trust in us and ended up renewing their contract - which wouldn't have happened had we not addressed the issue."
This story takes all of 30 seconds to tell, but it says a lot:
- "We had a key customer who was disappointed..." - this shows it was a specific real situation, not a hypothetical one. It was also an important customer the company didn't want to lose.
- "My manager asked me to learn the root cause..." - this shows that you had a specific role to play, and it also indicates that your manager has confidence in your customer relationship skills. They were willing to rely on you to handle a delicate situation with an important customer.
- "I met with the core team..." - this shows the actions you took, again with some good indications of your skills and abilities...you knew who to meet with, you knew how to get to the root cause, you were able to interact with the engineering team to fix the issue to the customers satisfaction.
- "Customer regained trust...renewed contract..." - this shows you understand the importance of trust, and you also know how to build/repair it. It also shows that having you on the team increases the financial security of the business...you focus on bringing bottom line results.
When you've finished the story, you can say, "Happy to share more details, but that's one example of my customer skills in action."
This way, if the interviewer wants to ask more detailed questions about this story, you've given them the option. But if they need to move on to asking you for another example that demonstrates another skill of yours, you've given them the option to do that too.
Interview anxiety: Understand the needs and anxieties of the hiring manager and the team who is interviewing you:
We often think of interviews as nerve wracking, anxiety inducing events. They certainly can be. I want to share something with you that will help you turn your anxiety into empathy and curiousity. You'll see interviews differently after this.
"I'm having an interview today and I'm so nervous!" That may be a true statement.
Do you know what else is most likely a true statement?
"I'm having an interview today, and the hiring manager who is interviewing me is so anxious about so many things!"
But did you ever realize that the person being interviewed isn't the only one having anxiety?
Think about the common anxieties of a person who is trying to hire the right person for a role:
- Anxiety #1: Am I hiring someone who's not going to work out? If they hire someone who doesn't work out, it's embarrassing to them. They look like they don't have good judgement.
- Anxiety #2: Is this another interview that is a waste of my time? If you come across as someone who talks about a lot of stuff and doesn't seem focused, they'll feel even more anxious about this.
- Anxiety #3: How will this person get along with the rest of the team, my own leadership and my key business partners? If you tell stories where you were always right, or you "told them how it was"...their anxiety level goes up.
Think further about the possible backstories in play:
- This is a new role, in a new team, and there are so many unknowns, how will I know this person is ready for the storming and norming we'll probably go through? OR
- This is a replacement for someone who didn't work out. The business customer already feels like we let them down. If I don't hire a strong team member this time, they're going to lose patience with me.
Knowing this gives you a different perspective based on empathy and curiousity. You can redirect your mind away from your own anxieties to seeking information about how you can better understanding their anxieties and needs - and share how you could help them!
In addition, when you focus on their needs, questions like these should come to mind:
- I wonder what they're going through?
- I wonder what chain of events led to this job opening?
- What are they most worried about, or most eager to achieve or solve?
And when they say "Do you have any questions for us?" You can ask meaningful questions like:
- "This is seems like such an impactful role, can you share in your words the top advice you'd give to someone in this role?"
- "Can you describe the key relationships that a person in this role needs to build and maintain?"
- "What do you see are the must crucial opportunities for building trust with customers?"
Always stay aware of the person you're talking to. This applies to the conversational dialogue: Are they wanting to hear more? or do they want to move on to another interview question? It also applies to the overall situation: what are the hopes and fears of the team you are interviewing with.
If you can demonstrate this kind of awareness and empathy in your interview and interactions, you will stand out.
Summary
Thank you for joining the Layoff Recovery Workshop! Remember, while being laid off can feel personal, layoffs happen for business reasons that have nothing to do with your worth and accomplishments.
Layoffs can happen to anyone, even top performers, and they don’t define your value or potential.
In this workshop you've learned how to take ownership of your story, how to share it, and channel your energy toward exciting new paths.
Turning your layoff into a level up, is all about learning how to share your past success stories so people in the right way, so get excited about working with you to create future success stories.
So stay strong, focus on the future, and remember—you’re on your way to something even better.