Are You on the Layoff List?

Jan 13, 2009

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Here are some signs that you might be on a list of people to be laid off.

This chapter is from the book 

Rebound: A Proven Plan for Starting Over After Job Loss

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So many people report that being laid off came as a total surprise. One morning they show up for work as usual. An hour later they’re sitting behind their steering wheel stunned, with a box of pictures and books in the backseat.

It’s bad enough to lose your job. But to have it take you by surprise is just unfathomable. How can you read the tea leaves on something like this so that it doesn’t happen to you? Or so that it doesn’t happen to you again?

Here are some signs that you might be on a list of people to be laid off:

Your company has hit hard times and has publicly announced that it will institute “cost-cutting measures.”
Your industry sector has taken a dive on Wall Street.
Your company has been acquired, and there’s someone just like you already ensconced in the acquiring company.
Your company just bought your competitor, and there’s someone just like you in the newly acquired company.
You work for a closely held family business—and you’re not family.
You work for a publicly traded business that prides itself on being “one big happy family.”
You’ve been asked to research ways the business can reduce expenses.
Your otherwise congenial boss starts avoiding you.
Your otherwise congenial boss starts snapping at you.
Your boss starts looking at you strangely.
Your boss starts looking right through you.
You inexplicably feel compelled to ask your boss if there’s about to be a layoff.
You are one of the highest paid people in the organization.
You are one of the lowest paid people in the organization.
You’re somewhere in the middle.
You wonder how your long-time coworker could be taking such a lengthy leave of absence without saying good-bye.
There is an unusually bulky FedEx package from headquarters that’s addressed to your local HR department.
There is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary going on in the company whatsoever.
You picked this book up just out of curiosity.
You have a job.

The best thing you can do:

Recognize that everyone is subject to being laid off.
The worst thing you can do:

Think it won’t happen to you.
The first thing you should do:

Keep in mind that getting laid off has nothing to do with your performance.

Voice of Experience: Rob

As a company, we had already gone through a challenging time in 2000, and my company was one of the few in Silicon Valley that didn’t lay off anyone. In fact, we became famous for the way we all pitched in to save everyone’s jobs. I took a 6% hit to my salary that year and took a lot of vacation time. Everyone was doing it, and morale was really high.

Even after that crisis was over, though, the sales force—where I worked—still went through many changes and restructurings, which I think were detrimental to the business. The focus shifted to what particular people were doing rather than the greater good of the company. So, when I was relocated from headquarters in San Jose to Colorado, the thought did cross my mind that being so far away from headquarters might put me at a greater risk for being laid off.

I was in Colorado two and a half years when my boss called me over a weekend and said that the sales force had been restructured again. And he had good news and bad news. The good news was that I still had a job. The bad news was that he was no longer my boss. My new manager was a guy in Los Angeles now, a coworker and someone I’d worked with for over ten years.

I figured that if you were going to cut people, you’d do that during the restructure. So I thought, “Well, I didn’t get cut, so I guess I’m safe.”

Two months later my boss said, “I need you to come to a 7:30 a.m. meeting. Can you be there?” I knew this was the big day they were going to let people go. And I thought he was asking me to come in early to stand in for him at some other meetings while he was laying people off. When I walked in, he met me in the lobby and said, “I’m not allowed to say more than a couple of words to you. I have to let you go.”

Within an hour I had gotten my personal files off my laptop and my things out of my cube. I was walked out like a criminal. And that was the end of my 15 plus years with my company. I couldn’t even say good-bye to friends and colleagues I had known for 15 years.

I was in shock, but I was relieved at the same time. I could stop all this speculating with every reorg, and I didn’t have to look over my shoulder anymore. Then panic set in. We immediately put our house on the market. And I spent the next month fixing it up, landscaping, tiling a bathroom, and painting the whole house. The smell of anxiety is the smell of latex paint.

My wife and I bickered a lot during that first month. And the kids knew that “Daddy lost his job.” But we also worked very hard to reassure them that even though we didn’t know what was going to happen and that we might have to move, everything would be okay. The house didn’t sell.

The day I got laid off I did my resumé, having to build it from the ground up. I also sent emails to customers and friends I’d worked with, letting them know I appreciated working with them all those years, and that felt good.

I immediately started letting people know I was looking for a new job. Networking is huge. My wife even talked to parents at my children’s school. And it’s amazing how quickly people mobilize. I started interviewing within a month and a half, and within three months I found work, which is pretty amazing when you think about the fact that at that time the big high-tech companies in Colorado were laying off people.

At first I was worried that being laid off would be a problem for me, that people would assume that I had been a poor performer. But this is so commonplace now, people aren’t jumping to that conclusion.

The good that came out of this whole experience is the reminder of how important your network is. Contacts are so important, and I had taken them for granted. Every interview I had was because someone recommended me. And I wasn’t the ideal candidate for the job that I’m in now, but someone personally vouched for me.

On the flip side, I must have sent out 100 resumés and wasted about two weeks going on websites and filling out those stupid online forms. I did not get one callback. Not one.

The best thing you can do:

Keep your network active, no matter how comfortable you feel at your present job.

The worst thing you can do:

Waste your time with online applications. If you see that a company has an opening that interests you, use your network to connect with someone inside the company you can meet directly.

The first thing you should do:

Immediately get the word out that you’re in the market for a job. Don’t let the shame or negative self-talk stop you.

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