Sounds like your company was a good one to work for. Sorry all of this is happening to you.
Kick in the gut isn’t it. Mine was at 28 years. Mid 50’s, expert on a legacy system used by only one company in the world (obviously the one I just left), three kids in college. I got close to a year of severance so I wasn’t panicked but also didn’t think my chances were very good. A month or so before the severance ran out (I continued to get paid bi weekly) I found a job description that sounded like it was written for me. Applied and got hit with a flurry of interviews etc. (I guess they thought I was created to fit the listing). I’ve now been there a year and a half, make more money, work with great people, am appreciated for what I do, moved from a cube to an office, a shorter commute that actually happens to be in the same building as my wife so we can eat lunch together.
Take some time to feel miserable and worry, then take a little more to relax. Something will come up and hopefully it will be a wonderful thing.
I’ve been there. It sucks, but you’ll get past it.
The first thing to do is to go ahead and feel like crap for a couple of days.
The second step is to not panic. You have severance, unemployment, health insurance and an outplacement service. And 20 years experience doesn’t make you out of date, it makes you ready for anything.
I don’t know how things work in the US, but here in the UK, no one will really be hiring between now and the new year. So you have two months to prepare for the onslaught you’re going to make in the new year. Aside from sorting out your redundancy, writing your CV, and the like, you should take some time off for yourself. Family permitting, of course. Go visit those relatives you haven’t seen for a while. Go visit that museum. Have a party.
you know it might be just me but my dad worked for gm delco his entire non military career and he was "laid off " several times when there wasn’t anything for him to do but eventually went back (of course being related to 85 percent of the entire town and factory force probably didn’t hurt )
He was UAW too although he didn’t care for the unions in later years (although he has enough of a pension to pay me 1k a month via social security )
But I thought being "laid off " meant “were retooling the plant so heres an unpaid or really reduced pay vacation” , and they called ya back to work later
Hey, you could move from Florida to Kansas! You’d only have to worry about tornados and not hurricanes.
I wish I could say or do something to make it easier, but I can’t. Keep us updated on how things are going.
- It’s a good idea to file for unemployment as soon as you can — even before you’re technically “unemployed.” Get your name and info into the system if you can.
- You mentioned getting drunk as a reaction, which is understandable. But keep in mind that being laid off often leads to substance abuse. Be careful with that.
- I’m sorry — and I’ve been there. Based on my experience, I’d say: try to keep busy. Finding a job, volunteering, reconnecting with friends and family — just don’t sink into isolation. It’s easy to do so, and the worst thing for you.
Those were the “good old days” of being laid off. Now it is more referred to as a RIF or reorganization or some other politically correct term the company uses. It gets lumped into being laid off because you weren’t fired, but you aren’t coming back.
Yeah, in my case, “laid off” was “position has been eliminated” so there was nothing to come back to.
There’s many other fields which need corporate-sales people, both first-line and ops; it’s a completely different skillset than when you’re selling to individual people and one that’s in high demand. The chemical and metallurgical sectors for example are all company-to-company. You’re experienced in that kind of work; you’d need to learn the specifics of the company but that would apply if you went to a different cable tv company as well and you’ll learn it a lot quicker than someone who’s never done company-to-company sales ops.
It’s more sales support, not sales. I’m not extroverted enough to work sales.
If you’re good, there will be jobs regardless of your age. Everyone needs sales support, and I’m sure you can come up to speed on whatever new technology is needed.
I’ve been laid off three times in my career, and in retrospect each one was a blessing in disguise. It’s scary, for sure, especially if you’ve been in a safe role for 2 decades. But change can be good.
I was laid off about a month ago myself. It sucks, but long term it’s probably a good thing for me as the company I was working for isn’t growing (and hasn’t for 10 years as far as I can tell). I spent the better part of my time there on the “bench” (unstaffed) or trying to pitch work for stuff that our firm had zero capabilities for (i.e. cyber security, block chain, “big data”, all sorts of buzzwords).
I actually hired a career coach who helped my wife’s friend. Not like I don’t know how to do a job search. But they are useful for helping you figure out what you want and putting together a plan.
I also had a professional look at my resume. It cost $150, which seems more reasonable than $250. Unlike what another poster said, it’s less about getting seen by the recruiting system. If that was the goal, you could just go to jobscan.com and just toss in all the keywords from a job spec. But then when some human sees it, they’ll be like “wtf”? The resume professional is useful for when an actual human sees your resume to make sure that it tells a story about what you are and what you are looking for. They are also helpful in that as an outsider, they can make sure you are including things you might not think of including.
I want to talk about this a bit. In the cottage industry of giving people career advice, having a “side hustle” comes up a lot. I also see a lot of professionals start their own “company” when they get laid off (i.e. getting into the “career coaching” or “resume professional” business. Or they just hang up a shingle and say they are “consulting” while they conduct their job search.
Unless I’m mistaken, starting any legitimate (as in, profitable enough to replace your corporate paycheck) business is a difficult, costly and time consuming process. So unless you were a successful investment banker or executive who managed to save a ton of money or received a golden parachute, or you’ve been already thinking about pursing your dream business and have been making preparations, simply up and “start a business” doesn’t seem realistic for most people.
Even if you become a freelancer in your profession, it still doesn’t change things that much, as you are simply transferring your job search to a search for new clients.
Search keyword suggestions?
It’s not a long-term solution, but we’re at the time of year where there’s a lot of seasonal hiring by retailers to get through Black Friday and the Christmas holidays. This might be a way to keep money coming in while allowing you some time to consider how best to approach the search for a permanent job.
Just be careful with this. Unemployment is supposed to be a bridge to allow you to look for meaningful work. Check the details in your state but on-the-books working (almost all retail chains) of too many hours &/or too much income will reduce or eliminate your unemployment income. The income from unemployment & retail might be about the same but in the latter case you have two jobs, working retail & looking for a new job. It might not pay to take that job.
I talked to the outplacement agency. They have not received any information from my former employer (probably because they laid off 100+/- people yesterday) but they will request the information and get back to me.
I did talk to HR about spacing out my severance package over 20 paydays and she told me legally they can’t do it. I will get my normal paycheck next week, then the following payday will be my last four days of work plus my unused vacation time. She said the best they can do is give me my bonus in December and the lump sum payment in January. I’ll go over things with the accountant on Monday.
I’ve filed for unemployment compensation in Illinois twice, after being laid off. My recollection is that the unemployment payments, at least here, were very skimpy – maybe on the order of $150 a week or so. Had I chosen to work a temp job while looking for a permanent gig, it wouldn’t have taken a whole lot to get something that paid better than unemployment.
Right, and lots of companies need sales-support people. Also, you’re used to dealing with sales of… publicity time? Even in the frontline, company to company sales for non-customer physical products are to sales of adspace what a half-hour walk is to the 100m dash. Markets need to be researched, capacity can’t be multiplied magically and the product needs to get where it has to go when it has to be there, but the markets tend to be more pull than push.
They can also make sure you’re writing the kind of resume that’s usual for that sector. My usual is at, let me check… 12 pages. I can scrunch it up to 2, by taking every job whose description is 90% the same, making the header the list of companies involved and the description a general one, but that’s not what this sector expects: they expect every damn project to indicate every damn task. Then again very often the interviewers have no idea what the kind of projects I do imply*, so… better spell it out about 20 times!
- The last ones were surprised to hear that, since I use several hundred fields in each project, and since each project can be in a different language (so far I’ve parametrized in 4 languages and trained end users in 7**), I don’t bother memorize the multiple names of every field and screen. I know, weird of me. Maybe I should start indicating “languages parametrized” and “languages used in training” in every project?
** Including 2 I don’t speak well enough to list them in the resume.