Career Opportunities

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Lend your ears and your network when a friend suffers a layoff

When a friend is laid off
By Douglas E. Welch

Listen: When a friend is laid off

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Within the next several months there will be few of us who will not be effected by layoffs in some way. While we might retain our own jobs it seems certain that someone we know will lose theirs. In my case, I already know of 1 close friend who was laid off after more than 15 years of work for the same company.

When someone is laid off, there are a myriad of emotions that surround them. They might feel shame, anger, apathy, sadness and much more. This often leaves those around them struggling for what to say or what to do. Common phrases of support can sound distinctly hollow and might even be taken with offense. That said, these people need us, their friends, for support and assistance in accepting the loss of one job — and in getting the next. I have found over the years some of the best ways to support your friends no matter what they may be feeling…

Listen

The first, and most important, thing you can do for anyone is simply to listen. They might want to vent. They might want to ask advice. They may want to rail against people they blame for their problems. It doesn’t really matter, because all you are going to do is listen and nod your head. Whenever we suffer a setback we need to absorb what has happended before we can start to develop new plans for the future. A sympathetic ear is often the first thing we need. If you look back on your own setbacks I am sure you can remember the person who put up with your complaining and whining while you worked through it all. Do the same for your friends.

Avoid giving advice or telling them what they have to do next. They simply aren’t ready for that type of discussion yet. They probably already feel lost and having you point out their lack of options is not going to make them feel any better. If they ask for advice, cautiously give it. In many cases, people don’t want your advice, they just want you to agree with them. You’ll have to figure out which they want.

A kick in the seat

This mourning period can sometimes go on for a week or so – and can last longer if, as it often happens, the layoff occurred near the holidays, but if your friend continues down the road of anger and self-pity for longer than feels right, some “tough love” might be in order. For me, power is found in action so the way I move forward from a setback is to take some action, no matter how small, to get myself moving again. Sometimes we all need someone who is willing to give us a kick in the seat to get moving again and you might be called on to perform that role. Again, try to gauge where your friends are in the mourning process and wait until they need a dose of reality to put them back on the path to productivity.

Offer your network

Finally, one of the most concrete actions you can take for your friend is to offer up your network to them. Help your friend create an email note explaining the work they do and the work they would like to do. Once this is refined, offer to send it to your network of both strong and loose tie connections. While your friend might know some of these people through you, they will likely be introduced to others for the first time. If your friend has several of their friends working for them in this way, their job prospects increase dramatically.

You always want to use these networks when searching for a new job above and beyond the typical resume and want ad path. Connections, even lose connections will always trump the “cold call”. You will be directly contacting the people with the need and authority to hire you instead of slogging through HR with everyone else using the traditional methods.

Whether you are helping a friend or have been laid off yourself, listening and helping are always the best first steps to moving on with your career. Help others, help yourself and you’ll find yourself on the road to a new job and an even better career.

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Raise your visibility to protect and enhance your career

Visibility in a down economy
By Douglas E. Welch

Listen: Visibility in a down economy

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I have written before about the importance of visibility in your career. (See Visibility for you and your career and A Year of Visibility video) Now that the economy is slowing down, I want to reiterate my call to Visibility and reinforce the need for it in the coming year. Not only are you seeking to develop a better career, you might be facing the creation of an entirely new career. Even worse, you are now competing with a host of talent that is also aggressively searching for new jobs in a market that is reducing the number of jobs available. If you want to continue to have a productive career or recover from a layoff, you have to do everything you can to let people know what you do and how well you do it.

Beyond the resume

If you want to raise your chances of finding a new or better job, you have to do what others are not yet doing – despite the obvious benefits — You have to use new techniques and new avenues to get your message out. You have to move beyond the “just showing up” that most people do and find a way to raise yourself out of the crowd. Everyone has a resume. Everyone has letters of recommendation. Everyone has their personal network of friends and family. You need to find the new job-hunting tools of this new century.

The first step, if you haven’t already taken it, is to create a blog and start sharing your knowledge with the world. First, this blog provides a place where you can refer people when they ask “what do you do?” Like George Carlin once famously said, “We all need a place for our stuff” and the blog is where it starts. It doesn’t matter if you are an executive vice president or a machinist on the shop floor, you have knowledge that can and should be shared. A blog exposes your knowledge to people who might not have otherwise met you. It also clarifies your knowledge to those you already know. Many of us suffer from friends and family that know nothing of what we do. This is your chance to show them.

Next, start building — or continue to build — your network of online connections. You never know where your next job might arise and connecting to others around the world might just provide an important link in the future. It also expands your job search from the local 50 mile area to, possibly, the world. Sometimes your next job is across the country, not in your own back yard. But it’s very important to engage in conversation with these people, don’t just promote yourself. Let their knowledge of you grow naturally from these conversations over time. You are building relationships for a lifetime, not simply mining people for your own advantage.

Finally, use the media. It is only in the last several years that the individual has won back the media from large network conglomerates. Each of us now has the power to easily create our own radio or television show and directly deliver it to a global audience. You need to embrace the tools of podcasting and new media to spread your message and raise your visibility. Thousands of people read and listen to the same words you are reading not because I am a network star, but rather because I take the time to spread my words as far and wide as possible. I seek to increase my visibility with each passing day and each new project…and you need to do the same.

Into the future

The time of scanning the want ads and sending out resumes is long, long gone. If you want to develop the career you deserve or simply find a new job in this down economy, you have to reach beyond the old ways and old ideas and embrace a new kind of job search. This new job search uses all the tools at your disposal to communicate directly with those who might have a position for you. These tools communicate directly with the people who can help you most, even when you don’t know who these people are. These new tools allow you to star in the movie that is your life, sharing your knowledge and skills and reaping the rewards of your hard work.

Let people know what you do and how well you do it. Directly demonstrate your successes with words, audio and video. If people do not know you or your work, there is no way they can help you on the way to a new career. Give others the information they need to find you and then to see that you are the person they and their company need. You have a tremendous story to tell and no one will tell it with your passion and feeling. You need to use these new career tools to tell your story directly to those who need to hear it most. Raise your visibility and you will raise yourself above those around you and place yourself on the right track to a new, and even better, career.

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Be constantly aware of how technology fundamentally changes the nature of your business

(This podcast is pulled “from the archives” and presented here as a service to more recent listeners — Douglas)

In many businesses, technology is a two-headed beast. On the one side, it fosters innovation, productivity and income. On the other, it produces seismic change in business practices once thought stable, fosters discontent, and can even make a business obsolete.

Succeeding in your high-tech career, and helping your company to succeed, requires deft handling of both sides of this equation You need to be constantly applying technology without ignoring those facets that could change the world beneath your feet.

Putting down roots

As I was walking through my neighborhood the other day, I saw a very common sight. Along one street there are some very large, and very beautiful Ficus trees in the area between the sidewalk and the street. Despite their beauty, though, Ficus trees have very prominent and aggressive root systems. In several spots, these roots had disrupted the sidewalk cement, in some cases, lifting it up several inches and cracking it.

As I continued my walk, I began to see parallels between these roots and the way we deal with technology in our companies. We want the benefits of the trees and the beauty they bring to the street, just as we desire the benefits that technology brings to our businesses. Unfortunately, we seem determined to build our sidewalks up against the base of our trees, knowing full well what is going to happen. The roots will not stop and cannot be resisted, They will first raise the concrete and eventually destroy it, if allowed.

We often find the same problems in using technology in our businesses. We take wonderful new technology and saddle it with out-dated business practices, cumbersome bureaucracy and limited thinking. Just like the cement sidewalk, cracks soon appear. Left long enough, these cracks will lead to destruction…destruction of productivity and profits. Technology causes change as surely as the roots of a tree, slowly, day by day, week by week, it can crack apart your company, if you allow it.

Fighting the roots

Of course, many homeowners will try to fight the roots and the problems they cause. First, they might try to gloss over the problems with little ramps that attempt to prevent neighbors from tripping over the seams. Then they might become more aggressive and try to tear out the roots. Finally, they may remove the tree altogether. In extreme cases you will even see cities banning certain types of trees to prevent the problem from ever occurring. You will find the same types of battles being fought in corporate IT departments.

In some cases, companies try to ignore the fact that there is a problem altogether. You might hear them say, “That technology doesn’t apply to us” or “Our industry is different.” Meanwhile, their business is being destroyed beneath their feet. Technology can either destroy their business from within or without.

Perhaps a new piece of technology exposes inter-departmental squabbles or a new report shows up errors in accounting practices. Almost immediately, little fixes, like the ramps in the sidewalk, are thrown up to hide the problem, without truly solving it. In some extreme cases, a company might not recognize that a new technology is about to make them obsolete. They’ll attempt to tweak their services and product lines, without really addressing the true issues. It is only when they see the total destruction that they realize the true source of their problems.

Finally, some companies simply ban certain technologies outright. They are unable to see the benefits the technology might provide. They only see the problems. If a technology threatens to be disruptive, in any way, they ignore or dismiss its usefulness. This is akin to tearing out the tree, no matter how beautiful it might be.

A better solution, in all these cases, is to carefully evaluate the technologies you use, and those that might be effecting your business from the outside and then adapt to them. Build your “sidewalk” farther away… use different, more flexible materials…plant different trees and shrubs. Don’t ignore the problem; hoping it will go away, because I can guarantee that it will still be there, under your feet. waiting to crack and destroy everything you have so carefully constructed.

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