After almost 19 years, I’m being laid off in February. I’ll be the first person laid off since I started my job. We are on our second company president since the president who was president when I was hired on.
The current president announced that I would be laid off as of February 2026. Of course, it would be negligent of me to not to look for another situation before then. So here’s the thing. I have about a hundred companies whose data I receive that I should let know about my departure, I could contact them to let them know that I am leaving, and ask if they have any positions that I might fill remotely. (They’re mostlly in the Seattle area, and I’m about 100 miles north of there.)
So should I make a post on LinkedIn saying that I’m looking for a position, knowing that the current president and the previous president are in my LinkedIn contacts? Would it be unethical if I were to contact all of our data-contributing members to ask if they have any open positions?
Sorry this is happening to you. First off, I would not hesitate to let your contacts know you are coming available. Your company is cutting you loose - what do they expect? Perhaps LinkedIn has a way to hide your posts from your bosses, so you can do this more discreetly if you prefer?
Secondly, unless your company expects you to stay until the end (with some sort of bonus), or is basing your severance package on at least applying to other jobs in the company, or had you sign something restricting you in some way, or something like that, you should feel free to enliven your network, without hesitation. You gotta look out for yourself. My 2¢.
It’s certainly not unethical to start looking for a job sooner rather than later. Do you have a severance agreement with your employer? If you’re under no obligation to stay until February then do you have a compelling reason to stay until then? I mean aside from getting a paycheck. I think it’s fair to put something on LinkedIn but you might not want to approach your employer’s customers or business partners via any communications through your current employer.
Rather than broadcast this out to everyone right now, maybe you can figure out a handful of those 100 companies that you would really like to work for and reach out to them directly. If by mid January nothing has worked out, then I would certainly feel comfortable doing the LinkedIn route.
Just be aware your company may show you the door the moment they find out you are reaching out to the companies you currently deal with in the job you are about to lose.
Does your employment agreement include any non-compete restrictions regarding your network of professional contacts? Depending on your local laws, blanket clauses of this kind are getting harder for companies to implement and enforce (my own country has prohibited them entirely, which is nice, and I know some US states have started trying to do this), but there may still be language that applies to your situation. Double check that before you start spamming your contact list.
b) where you have a plausible “in” with them; some connection to a worker or better yet manager there who knows you as more than just the email address of their monthly data dump to your current employer.
Prioritize that shortlist for contact once you do.
Other thoughts:
Knowing a bit more about your daily work than most posters I’ll point out that a lot of what you do for your current employer is sanitizing the f-ed up mess of data these clients send you every month. So you’ve got a dichotomy here: Would you rather go work for one of the places with a quality IT org that has their data stuff together, where there might not be much similar work for you, or would you rather leverage your extreme data janitor skillz by working for one of the places whose shambolic IT is mostly Excel and Band-Aids. The former might be pleasant if they have a spot, but the latter probably has more headaches offset by more job security.
Here’s another topic not mentioned: If you have anybody significant working behind the scenes working on your behalf towards you keeping your current job, I would not contact any of your clients until after you’ve cleared it with that mentor / benefactor. Kneecapping their efforts would not make them look good. OTOH, if they report they’ve tried and failed, then they’ll also perhaps be an asset in your search within your clients. And beyond.
Either way, you want them in on your job search plans before you take them public.
It depends on why you receive this data and the agreements your employer has with these companies. If they are just commercial contacts, like suppliers or customers, you’re probably okay. If they are companies who have provided this data under certain conditions (e.g. your company does credit checks ON these companies for lenders) then it would be a lot more dodgy.
For example there was a time when my employer contracted with a firm to do due diligence on [Merger & Acquisition] targets. The target companies provided a lot of information to the due diligence firm. They’d be very pissed if someone at the due diligence firm was using that information in a job search.
As for LinkedIn posting, unless you have specifically agreed not to disclose your impending departure for valuable consideration you should be posting that NOW and adding the “open to work” and start “engaging” with companies and people in your field.
Forget Linkedin. Send your resume via e-mail to every client you have contact information for. Do it from home on your time. Your current employer expects you to do this, and if they don’t, they are deficient.
You owe them nothing. You owe yourself everything.
Corporations chose the current “everyone is a mercenary” approach to employment.
My last three jobs were never advertised. I reached out to friendly colleagues (or they to me) about a new role. One I contacted said he was thinking about bringing on someone like me, one came about because when they decided to create the role someone on the team knew me and asked for my resume, and the one I have now came when a friend was retiring and wanted me to take over.
And I hate to say this, but Enshittification of LinkedIn makes it useless for applying. Jobs are getting 500 applicants the first day they post, and there’s no way that many resumes can be properly reviewed. People I know posting positions are frustrated, and people I know looking are equally frustrated.
I am being offered ten weeks’ pay and unused PTO (I should have around 90 hours by February). If I do not leave before February 5th, I’ll get a $1,000 retention bonus.
There are no other positions in our company. When I’m gone, there will only be 11 people.
Yes.
If I had someone working behind the scenes, the benefactor would know that ‘what’s done is done’ and advise me to contact everybody.
We are a membership organisation. Our members pay dues to have access to our credit reports, educational opportunities, seminars, etc. and to connect with other companies in their industries. Some members contribute their monthly accounts receivable files that we send to a couple of large credit reporting agencies. I would never contact the companies that are in those files. As for the members, I have ‘friendly’ relations with some of them. i.e., Communications are not all business.
We are an affiliate of a national organisation. There’s another affiliate in Oregon. I noticed on LinkedIn that the person I talk to there just had her 28th anniversary there. I’ll have to shoot her an email.
Agree with this point - do all your networking from home. Do not use your work email or work phone number for any of this - you don’t want your soon to be ex-employer to have any reason to show you the door sooner than you expect.