I’m being made redundant next week after nearly 30 years working for the same company. As you can imagine I’m slightly concerned about the future, so any tips for reintroducing myself into the workplace bearing in mind the last time I had a job interview was 1989.
Thanks in advance.
Cripes, sorry to hear that. Must be a proper quizzer. What line are you in?
I’m a bookbinder/print finisher. And the way the trade is going soon to be as common as Lamplighters and Knocker Up’ers
It has happened to me twice in the last 6 years.
My advice is to hone your skills into what potential employers will look for in a future role in whatever area you are an expert in. My biggest wake up call was the rise of competency based interviewing and the need to evidence any claims you make on your CV – just stating experience wont wash.
Most companies will use a STAR format to evidence experience:
S – Describe the situation
T – Explain the task required
A – The action you took
R – The result of your action
Hope that helps.
@ip33 some while back I was made redundant after 22 yrs with same firm. I thought I knew nothing and was terrified of what was behind the wall. In reality the fact that you e been there fir so long is evidence that you are well thought of and therefore have loads of skills and experience that other companies will value. I found that there was indeed life on the other side , so good luck and I’m sure , like me , you will find it will work out.
What a horrible time for you. I hope that after that long with the same employer you’ll get a big fat redundancy payment to give you a soft landing.
What do you want to end up doing? If it’s more of the same as the current job, and there’s nothing wrong with that, then are there contacts who could use someone of your experience? If you fancy a change it’s all about transferable skills and how a new organisation will benefit from someone who sees things from a new angle. Or if there is anything you have always wanted to do it could be you never get a better opportunity to retrain and go for it.
This is all vague, possibly to the point of uselessness, but maybe the obvious just needs pointing out while your head is understandably in a spin. Chin up, manly slap on the shoulder, onward and upwards!
Edit – A PS I left my last career voluntarily after nearly 16 years (albeit because staying would have been disastrous for my mental and physical health). All I knew was that I couldn’t carry in as I was. Within a week of leaving I was interviewed for the entry level job and a totally different line of work, where I still am 14 years later. Things have a habit of working out somehow or other.
Make looking for a job a daily routine, leave house at around 9, go to a coffee house or library (with wifi naturally), and set yourself targets as to how many jobs you hope to apply for each day or week.
Find support groups that contain people in similar positions. Meet up once a week, talk to them about how things are going, share CVs, give each other leads.
Join linkedin and look for networking possibilities. A large percentage of jobs are never really on the market because of internal transfers, people put forward by colleagues etc.
Try not to get discouraged by rejection, on average it can take 5 interviews to get a job and you may need 50 to 100 applications to get 5 interviews.
Good luck.
I completely agree on the value of LinkedIn here. It is how I got my current job.
None of the recruitment agencies I was registered with even knew that it existed!
Don’t get me started on recruitment agencies!
I first saw the position I am in now (for 6 years) through an email from a recruitment agency. I contacted them and said I was interested. They refused to put me forward as they felt my experience was wrong for the job. I disagreed, so I just applied directly for the job and got it! They lost a fair bit of money there.
I find that most of the jobs one applies for has to be done through a recruitment agency. The adverts often given no hint as to who the employer actually is.
This is a huge problem all over the UK job scene, to my mind.
The agencies are usually run by and staffed by greedy know-nothings who are only interested in their commission. Parasites, for the most part.
If you end up taking temporary jobs through agencies, bear in mind that any talk they may indulge in about loyalty will be strictly one-way i.e. to their benefit and they will stitch you up without hesitation if it profits them to do so. They will happily lie through their teeth to you about how long a temporary post is for and what is expected of you.
OTOH any dire threats “You’ll never work for us again!” from them, because you have apparently let them down by refusing to be treated like a brainless lackey, will be immediately forgotten if they need a post filling urgently.
Anyway..
Is any aspect of your current employment customer-facing? Are you on good terms with those customer contacts? Can they assist you in securing a new role?
Any good relationships with companies or their people (suppliers too) that you have should be explored.
They’re a nightmare. As a hirer I had lunch with a guy who ran one and he said the margins are to thin now they never get to do it properly and don’t even review the CVs they get. Someone super inexperienced goes through looking for key words until they have say 15 which someone more experienced looks at until they have the 4 or 5 the client asked for. If you’re further down the pile forget it. One tip he gave me is if it’s got an end date, to ring the recruiter on the penultimate day and ask if they’re still looking? You never know, and if they are you have then jumped the queue.
Also you really have to get the key words in as they use CV scanning software and if the key ones aren’t there they never even see them! People add a load of key words at the end in white font so they’re invisible to the eye to fool the system.
This last point is a good tip. A couple of years back I was happily contracted to our local water & sewerage company, working on a big regulatory project, when I got into conversation with a work colleague about the shark pool of “CV doctors” on t’internet. I told him I’d considered dipping a toe to see what they came up with, until an exploratory phone call revealed the scale of the rip-off.
I’ve got a decent 20 year contracting CV that gets me called by agencies several times every week, so I knew my own was pulling it’s weight, but the CV doctoring chancers wanted a couple of hundred sovs to polish it up. F8ck that.
Anyway, turned out the bloke I was talking to used to work for one of these outfits, and offered to do mine as a favour – he still knew all the techniques they apply for their clients.
So back comes my CV a couple of day later, allegedly honed to within an inch of guaranteed non-executive-board-level-recruitment within days of being put out there. Blow me, I had to put the new version up on screen side by side with the existing one to spot any differences. “It’s pretty good already” says he.
The one obvious difference? A great big paragraph right up front within a text-box headed “Essential Skill Matrix”. (BS alert meter – full scale deflection) The text box was jam packed with all the obvious IT industry dog whistle terminology of the day, methodology-of-the-month catch phrases, and another couple of column inches of utter BS terms. “What the heck is that supposed to prove?” says I, “I’d be embarrassed to explain its presence to anyone with half a brain”. “You can stick that at the end if you prefer, and even hide it with white text if it offends you – works like a charm though, keeps you out of the bin for the first couple of triage passes at least” came the reply.
but I dont understand how the scanning software sees it if the font is white.
Yes, I realise I’m opening myself up to ridicule here – “have you been living under a rock for the past 20 years” etc… Bring it on, you wont be the first today.
I think it reads the data rather than ocr style reading the characters.
As Twang says, it’s not reading it like you or I would; as far as the scan software is concerned there are just words on a page – the fact that some of them might be in a font size so small you need an electron microscope to see them, or that they happen to be coloured just the same as the paper they might be printed upon is neither here not there. After all, it would find them if they were dayglo pink or any other colour; to a programme that’s colour-blind it matters not.
Yes VV. I had a”free assessment” from a CV doctor who has written to me constantly ever since trying to get me to pay for her to do it but I added said skills matrix and jargon in white font. Still waiting to see if it worked. The other thing about the skills matrix is you reword it to ensure the key words they’re looking for (which you have to deduce from the advert) are up front and central. Often it’s a minor word change but to them stakeholder management and stakeholder liaison are completely different. Tell them what they want to hear.
I’m in the same situation, @ip33. My last day is next Friday.
Good luck T. See below.
I’m so sorry to hear that Tony. I’m sure that we will both be in a better place in the very near future. Take care.
all best wishes for finding your next gig. I’ve been through that process twice. one key thing to remember – the POSITION is redundant. YOU are not. (That is LITERALLY how redundancy works).
you are still valuable and employable – the company can no longer make money out of paying for that post. that’s what a redundant post means.
take all the help offered – for CV reviews, whatever. contact former colleagues who are now out in the world – they will know your worth.
work at getting your next gig, keep a record of what you do. and keep your chin up.
good luck!
Like Hombre I’ve been through it twice – once involuntarily (though unexpectedly) the other time I literally asked for it and couldn’t wait to get out.
The general rule is the vast majority of people are happier in a better job within 6 months of exiting the old one.
Can you get outplacement? That helps a lot, just through the processes they use. Sometimes you have to ask for it / demand it. Well worth a try.
The important thing is to do a skills audit (as they put it) and to decide what you want to do. As Feedback says, you probably have a lot of skills you don’t recognise as such but in fact are marketable.
Another thing is not to panic and accept the first thing which comes along – make sure it’s what you want. Be clear what conditions you have for an employer lucky enough to have you and don’t compromise unless you’ve built that into you criteria (must have/should have/could have/nice to have).
Don’t pay anyone to help you. There’s plenty of help out there for free through the government etc, and vast numbers of good books. Most of it is you looking deep and getting your head together. Get someone to review your CV and give you feedback – in fact I just redid mine and there are any number of style guides and examples out there to download for nowt and are very helpful.
Linked In is useful – there are free guides to setting up your profile well, best practice etc – google it. Some of them are so bad I can only conclude it is a cunning plan to not get a job.
I’ve been in a constant state of near redundancy for 14 years as I’m freelance so if you need any tips or a natter or any other help PM me. I’d be delighted to help.
Count me in too, if I can help I will.
When considering the construction of your CV, and looking for professional things you’ve achieved that gave you pride, things that demonstrate what an asset you are to your employer, pay less heed to how technically difficult/challenging any job/task was but look for those where you got on best with your team of colleagues and managers – these are the things that glue successful businesses together and allow them to progress and grow, but these are the things that are all too often hidden by long clinical lists of projects and tasks concentrating on the ‘what’ that was done rather than the much more valuable ‘how, and in what spirit’.
Likely as not, your next job will be via someone you know. LinkedIn obviously helps, but phone calls and emails to contacts asking if anyone in THEIR network has something.
I resigned my last role in April because mental health. I just got offered a contract role via my network. The one thing I would tell you is be wary of the “make finding a job a full time job” – it simply doesn’t work that way. There aren’t enough jobs or activities to fill all that time.
Do complete a resume/cv. With your experience, and in your field, I suggest making it a skills-led resume and not a chronological one. Make a potential Hiring Manager’s life as easy as possible by telling him/her what you can do.
Assuming they’ve followed the right process, take the deal they offer – you’ll get the first GBP30K tax free.
Take a break. You’ve been at work a long time, and a small break may help you re-engage. Do your math ahead of time so you can work out how much money you need and when if/when the redundancy runs out.
You’ll have good days and bad days; your application:interview ratio will be bad. That’s not you, that’s the system. You won’t hear back from firms where you’ve applied. That’s not you, that’s the system.
Don’t be afraid to take a step back to take one forward. And ask what you want from your next role: money? Career advancement? Any job as long as it pays a certain $$?
You have a ton to think about, and take your time to do it. My career is HR, so I’ve seen this film from every angle – if you want me to look at any documents you get, your resume, interview advice, just message. I’m more than happy to help you.
The make it a job thing assumes you do loads of networking and research on companies etc but Si is right, opportunities generally come from people you know though you do have to ask (which people find difficult) and seek wider introductions. The thing is not to be hung up about this – generally businesses almost always are on the lookout for people and the trick is to get around the whole advert/agency/HR department which is a tough set of fences to jump – getting directly to the hiring manager via the network is much better. I tend to do mornings = job, afternoon = my time unless something comes up.
Yes, take a break and enjoy a rest from it all, but don’t take too long a break.
If you find yourself getting bored it’s probably time to get moving, because the next stage can be becoming apathetic.
I’ve had a year off. I am apathetic.
The hell you are, Mr. podcast.
Well yes. If the pods dry up you’ll know I’m in gainful again.
If you are an older white male it is tougher. I was actually told that by a bloke at the outplacement err place.
As we know recruitment agencies are largely yhe domain of younger women and anyone over 50 is like their Dad if you are closer to sixty then possibly their grand dad.
His recommendation was to work networks, people you know who can vouch for you with the employer. Linked in can be useful in seeing how far away from the relevant person you have a connection. Ok I don’t know them but I know this person who knows them etc.
Good luck.
I took redundancy about 4 months ago after 30 years of working and 18 at the same company. It wasn’t officially voluntary (as here redundancy payments are tax free if involuntary) but it was made known beforehand that I was happy to go.
It was a good decision and I am now healthier and happier. Whilst I enjoyed my job and the working with the team I had, I had pretty much reached the end of my career development and achieved all I wanted to. In a business with a declining market, new opportunities within the company were not really an option.
I decided that I would take a 6 month break (which I am still on) before I thought about what to do next. Fortunately I had been in a relatively high paying job and with a generous package, financially am okay. I have taken the opportunity to use these 6 months to get healthier – I go swimming daily and am cooking more.
One thing that I did do though was attend a 3 month package with a career transition consultant (paid for by my ex employer) which, whilst I was not ready to commit to working out what to do next, was very useful in developing the foundations for when I am – update of CV, LinkedIn profile, plan for how to contact potential recruiters etc etc. I can upload the ‘workbook’ that I got to Dropbox etc which has lots of good pointers (although it’s very American corporate speak) and send you a link via PM.
As mentioned above, LinkedIn is probably the key thing to get updated – it is now the most used tool for jobs. Update you LinkedIn profile and make sure that the first two lines of your header concisely summaries your skills and stand out. that’s what recruiters look at – if they do not spark interest, they don’t read further. Another thing the consultant told me is to have a photo that is reasonably professional looking – they do skip profiles with no photo and pictures of Mickey Mouse etc….
Build your network on LinkedIn as it increases your exposure. Ask contacts for recommendations and endorsement of your skills. I was also told to try and network / contact directly with management of companies that you know are in the same line / Loki g for your skills (you can search a company on LinkedIn and find easily). It may get ignored, but often there are roles that are not yet advertised and this may help get you in.
Overall, best of luck and don’t get disheartened. As mentioned above, it is the job that got made redundant, not you. Nowadays, the fact you have been made redundant has no impact on future employment opportunities.
I am convinced that medical science will soon give an unpronounceable name to the small part of the human brain that controls the amount of attention given to anything concerning someone who has a “reasonably professional looking” photo on Linkedin.
There are, at the last count, over 14 million* people with “reasonably professional looking” photos on Linkedin in the UK. Every single one of those “reasonably professional looking” photos is fucking boring.
Stand out. That doesn’t have to mean wearing psychedelic lycra, grinning from under mirror shades while perched on the seat of a unicycle parked opposite the Taj Mahal. But please, make yourself look human, not like another bloody gormless clone entry in Zuckerberg’s prototype.
*complete guess – it’s a lot anyway
Don’t fret. Something better will come along.
Don’t spend all your time at it. Twang’s mornings-only idea is good.
Make sure you get out of the house every day. I went cycling or swimming in the afternoons.
Good luck.
1. Don’t panic. It will all workout
2. If you can afford it, take some time to enjoy not working for a while and think about what you would like to do.
3. When you have to, do something each day that moves you toward finding a new job.
4. You have more skills and more value than you realise.
5. Don’t panic. It will all workout
You have all been so kind, you are just the best. Having the weekend getting myself back on an even keel (watching the Italian Job at the mo). Going to work out our monthly budget on Monday and see where we stand financially. Then take it from there. A few days sorting CDs and DVDs seems favourite.
Thank you to everyone who has given some fantastic advice above. It really has meant a lot to me.
By the bye, this little book is excellent when you come to it – also 1p on marketplace.