Do Not React Like This if You’ve Been Laid Off
Posted August 19th, 2015
In the hours, days, and weeks following notification that you’ve been laid off, tensions can run high. Sometimes to what feels like the breaking point. And while that feeling is natural and a certain degree of anger is even healthy, there is a right way to react moving forward and a wrong way. To help you keep your professional standing and personal sanity intact, below we have listed some of the ways you should NOT react following a layoff.
Do Not Obsess Over the Experience
The moment you first learned you had lost your job might play on repeat in your mind. You focus on the smallest of details and wonder if you failed to spot any warning signs. This behavior just keeps you focused on the bad and prevents you from training your focus forward.
Do Not Share Your Woes with Everyone
It’s understandable that you would tell family and close friends about what has happened. But if you find yourself venting to former colleagues from your past, old college friends, or even strangers on social media, you are just wallowing in the negatives. You might also share the wrong piece of information with the wrong person and suffer setbacks in your job search as a result.
Do Not Lay All the Blame Elsewhere
You will naturally want to blame your former employer for everything, but understand they were making a necessary business decision, and you may have been singled out for a layoff for a good reason. That can be difficult to accept, but if you can admit that you may have played a role in the situation, you can learn something from the experience.
Do Not Believe That You Have No Merit
A layoff can be extremely demoralizing, so much so that you might begin to question your skills and accomplishments. This is extremely destructive thinking that can send your career into a tailspin. Even if your were not a perfectly model employee, a layoff is not an indictment of your personal or professional credentials.
Do Give Yourself Time to Decompress
When your job is suddenly taken away from you, the shock and fear can cause you to start a frantic job search the minute you get home. That, in effect, bottles the negativity up inside you and usually leads to a woefully ineffective job search. Give yourself a few days, maybe even a few weeks to process what has happened so you can move past it.
If you have recently been laid off, you have a world of possibilities in front of you. Employers in a wide variety of fields are looking for qualified candidates to take on exciting responsibilities. Make the connection between yourself and those opportunities by contacting Bayside Solutions.
