Your Call
You are mid-career, perhaps on the back-nine of your career and wondering ‘what’s next?’. You have had a good career, plenty of successes, many learning lessons, and have built more strong business and personal relationships than you could possibly count. You also know you have left great impressions everywhere you’ve been, and feel that you have made a positive impact on many lives by virtue of your focus on the people side of business rather than simply products, tasks, projects, and deadlines to which many spend a career dedicating all of their time and energy. And now, you find yourself on the outside looking in. In the midst of what was a successful and promising career, with awards, commendations, promotions, bonuses, all of the big ticket items bestowed upon the consistently productive, hard-working employee who know the importance of building good business relationships with not only direct colleagues, but other key, well-placed, players who can vouch for you when needed and make the difference in your career.
So, what happened? Despite your hard work, and proficiency in your role, the company as a whole was struggling and elected to downsize. Often, products miss the mark, or fall victim to poor timing, economic downturn, or were recalled, causing customer loss and huge revenue impact, which lead to workforce reductions. Markets change, and business strategy and planning along with it, and teams and organizations are realigned, often at the expense of partial, even full, teams being cut or reassigned, invariably there are those who have no place with the new organization, no matter how much of an asset they may have been. No matter the reason, you are one of the unlucky ones, and need to figure out how to pick up the pieces, pull yourself off the mat, and take action if you are going to continue to build on what you know in your heart has been a successful career that still has a long way to go.
Once you shake off the ‘shock and horror’ of being displaced from a job and company you have come to know and been incredibly loyal to, you know that figuring out the next step is solely up to you. Acknowledging that there is an emotional toll, like any loss, is critical and will take some time to fully absorb, process, and get over so that your focus on what is next is not clouded in resentment, pain, and self-pity. You need a clear mind to avoid subconsciously going through the motions, even finding yourself in self-sabotage mode where you spend eighty-percent of the time blaming anyone and anything for your situation instead of going full-force, all-in on the future. Taking the first step toward your next step in life, and the next leg of your career journey, will more quickly bring you to the place where you look back and call this difficult phase a ‘blessing in disguise’. You can get there, but only when you have the right mindset, looking only forward, not back. As difficult as it can be, the sooner you are able to look at the bright side, find that silver lining, and channel your inner-optimist, the closer you are to identifying and beginning that next important step. “How could there ever be a ‘silver lining’??!! I had it all, a job I liked, was good at, felt well-compensated. I was able to live in a nice house, raise a family, put kids through college, travel wherever my family wanted to go, and provided so many experiences for so many thanks to the income and security I worked so hard to earn. And now it’s gone – all gone!”
But it’s not. Right now, you likely still have many of those things. You have not lost your family, your house, your cars, your vacation plans, nor are pan-handling or wondering where your next meal is coming from. Don’t go to extremes because it is simply your fear talking, not reality. Will there be a time that you will have to make choices about things you may be no longer able to afford? Sure. Is that today? The short answer is no, but the smarter answer is that it is always a good time to look short term and long term, and recognize that should that next job, or opportunity, not happen for an extended period, cutting out the unnecessary expenditures is certainly a good step(and probably something you, and we all, should have done some time ago!). So, be realistic and stay in the moment to keep yourself from jumping to extremes, taking on the stress, and more importantly, sharing and giving that stress to those around you. It is no good for you and what you need to do, and no good for the people who care about to see you spiraling. As a parent, the emotional toll seeing on family members to see the leader of their family falling apart can be quite a bit. It may be easy to say or to think, but staying strong, believing in yourself, and sometimes, particularly in the early days of such a transition may sound simplistic or obvious, but it will work wonders to put yourself in the right head space.
Shake of What’s Happened, and Make Something Happen!
- Assess Your Skills, Strengths, and Interests:
- You built your career on doing something you liked, or felt you could do, and over time, were able to develop skills, strengths, and ideally the passion to do them over and over again as you took steps to keep your work interesting and move ahead whenever possible. Now is the time to deep dive into all of it and pull out how you’ll leverage those skills and interests to focus your strategy on bringing it all into your next career step.
- Know your Industry:
- What is going on in your primary industry? Is it trending positively? Is there a growth sector that makes it good timing for you? Is there particular demand for your skills, experience and strengths that also line up with what your most passionate about, and can thus make what has happened that true ‘blessing in disguise’. Before jumping in to apply anywhere and everywhere, know where to look, what to look for, and who needs it before you jump in to an area with no solid landing spot.
- Keep Learning:
- It is so easy to get complacent when you have been in a job for a while. The more time that goes by, we get a sense of security, and rightfully so, that we will be there for the long haul, or at least for as long as we choose to be. Then, as we’ve learned, life and business happens. The economy does not cooperate with our career plans, and it is often after it derails our plans that we realize we have been stagnant in our learning and building of new skills for some time. Is it too late now? Certainly not. This too is ‘Your Call’. New Skills, Courses, Degrees, Certificates, Languages, are always additional bullets on your resume, and also desired by employers who look to bring in people with a diversity of skill and experience, and even when they don’t have use for your fluency in three languages, they will take that as a sign that you are intelligent, serious, and someone looking to learn continuously.
- Work Your Network:
- The majority of jobs filled, of business deals, mergers, and acquisitions, happen through networking. Knowing the people within your industry is a sure-fire way to get yourself seen and considered when you are in the job market. When you are employed and looking to move ahead or into something new and you are unable to find it within your current company, your network is where you make the right contacts, get the key referrals to make it happen. When you are seeking a new role, those same contacts, and those you continue to build are usually the ones that ‘know the person who knows the person’ that can bring you into the loop of a new or upcoming job opportunity. Much like we advise to keep learning, you should always be networking. Those within your network in someway throughout your career, often times when you are not expecting they will.
- Don’t Go It Alone:
- While you may be an expert in your primary field. You may have an MBA, or a PhD, or have run organizations for companies large and small, which tells you how valuable you are in your field. But are you an expert in Hiring, or in Job-Seeking? If not, don’t presume that you will simply find the way, or that just because you are available that potential suitors will storm the gates to bring you in. It is not how it happens typically. Seek Help! Even if it means swallowing your pride to do so, and acknowledge that, despite your high intellect, advanced degrees, and vast experience, this is likely unfamiliar territory. There are incredible resources for career counseling, mentoring, that can help you strategize on how to bring you to that next career step, more quickly and qualitatively, and keep you from finding your way through months and months of ‘clicking apply’, and getting little to no response.
- I’m Too Old:
- It is a powerful thing going through a career that sees each of us as the ‘Young, Energetic, Bright-Eyed’ new employee ready to take on the world and make their way through a company. And even if we never lose that spirit, and always think and approach our work like that, none of us can stop the clock from ticking. As years, then decades go by, we realize that, while we see ourselves as that Twenty-Something setting the world on fire, the rest of the world does not. Eventually we all move from the youngest workforce demographic, to the median, to the older and oldest demo. Yet, it feels like all of that experience and skill is pushed aside, usually very quietly to avoid bias-labeling, in favor of the younger, less experienced but qualified, and less expensive worker. It can be an uphill battle for the older worker, but there are resources, forums, networks, and many millions of people over fifty in the same boat and want to help their peer group stay in the game. AARP – American Association of Retired Persons (aarp.org) and Next Avenue (www.nextavenue.org), are just a couple of resources that are out there offering help to the older worker looking to continue their career on their terms until they determine it is time to retire. Tying back to building your network strategically, connect with those people and groups consistently so you don’t miss opportunities from those people and companies who value what the later workforce generations have to offer – which you know is Quite A Bit!
We are all decision-makers in our lives. Where to go, what to do, whom to do it with, where to vacation, what car to drive, what route to take to work. We make tens of thousands of decisions, mostly little ones, every day. And sometimes the biggest ones that impact our lives are made by others, and thrust upon us to figure out how to manage through them. A layoff, job elimination or separation of any kind is devastating, no reason to call it anything less. Like healing or grieving of any kind, the length of time you do it will likely impact how quickly you take the actions to pick up the pieces and get to where you want to be, and know you need to be.
Once you realize that the situation is not hopeless, but merely a setback, you will take steps every day to turn things around. Will you ever look at such a life-change as that ‘blessing in disguise’? Maybe – but even thinking about that will delay or distract you from what is most important, which is the Present and your Future. You are not, and never are, alone. Whether friends, family, colleagues past and present, or the many networks available through various social online platforms, there are people just like you, in the same boat, looking for kindred spirits. There also are those who have moved past this space, found their ‘blessings in disguise’, and can help you do the same. Get Up, Get Out There, and Start Connecting. Every step you take, every day you fill with positive actions, is bringing you one step closer to being exactly where you need to be. So, wipe the tears, put down the remote, stop scrolling through social media, and Get To Work!
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