I started my career on July 1, 1995, with a big multinational company. On July 1, 2009, I was given the old heave-ho. What had started out as a very promising upward trajectory landed with a thud, and the reason I was being shown the door had nothing to do with me or how well I did my work.
The circumstances of my job’s demise were simple: I was only working on one account, and that customer had been sold to a company that in-sourced their IT functions. While my group was in the process of transitioning our work to our customer’s new owner, my employer was in the process of laying off tens of thousands of Americans and shipping their jobs to various Asian countries. Even though my work record had been exemplary, and I had received the highest possible rating on my annual review more than once, there was no room at the inn for me. I tried to find a new position with the company starting in mid 2008 up until my last day, but there were none to be had.
I did end up finding another job, but it took eight months to do so. While I was looking for work, I learned some important lessons.
Lesson One: Be very, very careful when applying for unemployment
The language on the unemployment benefits application is odd and non-intuitive, and it caters to classes of jobs that are sporadic. For example: “holiday pay” is an odd term. You might think this means paid vacation time, as I did, and we would both be wrong. No, this means “were you laid off right before the Christmas holiday, and were you paid for that holiday, even though you did not work, and do you expect to be rehired soon after New Year’s Day?” Apparently some manufacturing companies shut down on December 15 and start up again in the first full week of the new year, and they don’t give paid time for the entire time they are shut down, but they do pay workers for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Eve. Odd, but there you have it. Those days of pay have to be counted against one’s claim for unemployment benefits.
Lesson learned: Ask questions about everything. If any word or phrase seems odd or vague to you, get it explained until you are confident you understand it. Do not assume that you know what’s going on.
Lesson Two: You cannot spend all day applying for jobs
Almost everything about my unemployment experience happened online. I filed for benefits online, I setup accounts with Dice, Monster, Careerbuilder and ten other employment websites online. I submitted resumes online, as many companies had created websites for this express purpose. I exchanged emails with recruiters and HR people. I had very little human contact and became a resume-submitting junkie, sending in at least ten applications a day, every day of the week, customizing my resume and creating a custom cover letter for each application. This is insanity and I freely admit it. I now know that I should have scaled back my job search, maybe cut it in half. Sitting in a chair for ten to twelve hours a day, staring at a screen and typing furiously, hoping some magic combination of words would get someone’s attention was counter-productive. Unfortunately, that was my work style, as demanded by my former employer, so I didn’t know any better.
Lesson learned: Set a reasonable goal for a day’s work, complete your work, then get out and get a life.
Lesson Three: Learn about every benefit available to you and apply for it
There is a wealth of benefits available to the newly-unemployed. Most counties have a job training program you can apply for. The application process is byzantine, or at least it was for my county’s program. Also, the timeline to receive benefits is very long, so applying early and checking back with the aid office often are both critical tasks. Should you overcome all the hurdles these organizations put in your way, you can receive thousands of dollars worth of training for free, in skills that employers want right now.
Lesson learned: Allowing government employees to move at their own pace means they will ignore you. Prod them, that’s what they are there for.
Lesson four: Take advantage of having large blocks of time
Most of us work at least a forty-hour-a-week job for most of our adult lives. Some of us choose to work many more hours than that every week. When we don’t have a job to report to, we sometimes look for things to fill up the hours that we used to fill up with our former jobs. In my case, it was applying for new jobs. A few months in to my unemployment stint, I realized I was working much too hard on finding a new job. I started to take time to do the things I always said I wanted to do. I visited friends who live far away. I went on winery tours. I slept til 10 a.m. and took afternoon naps. I saw movies at the matinee. I took a wonderful vacation and for the first time in ever, I had no blackberry with me, no email to check, no voicemails to respond to. A for-real vacation with no nagging cloud of doom hanging over me, making me think of all the things that weren’t getting done while I was out of the office.
Lesson learned: You may not have this amount of time available to you, ever again. Make plans to do things that you never had time for when you were working full-time.
Lesson five: You are not your job
It’s a cliche to ask someone you’ve just met: “and what do you do?” For a decade and a half, my answer to that question involved a five-minute dissertation on the complexities of automating the supply chain. Because no one really cares about such nonsense, I shortened my answer to “I work with computers.” After being laid off, I suddenly had no answer at all. What do I do? I apply for jobs, that’s what I do. Do you have one I can use? After a couple of months of unemployment, I simply didn’t answer that question any more. If pressed, I would say, “I don’t do, I just am!” Yes, I know, I’m not the originator of that quote, but it sure came in handy.
Lesson learned: Do not tie your self-esteem to your employment. Love yourself for who you are, not for what you do for money.
Image credit: Clementine Gallot
