Layoff and Life After – Not the end but a Beginning.

image courtesy: http://gearpatrol.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01//gp3-surviving-a-layoff.jpg

Just like corporates announce their annual results, few companies decide to lose weight by shedding or offloading, which is marked metaphorically as ‘deadwood’. In some fiercely competitive employment, top 10% is generally booted out citing uncompetitive or poor performance.

Some layoff in the recent days shook the very ground – just like blindsided. Hundreds of developers lost their jobs.

The most perilous is the pink slip. Nothing scares the daylight of a professional, especially in the IT industry than the prospect of losing the job. A status of ‘looking for a job’ isn’t exactly tantalizing. It means ‘moving mountains’.

The first thing to lose is not the job: it is confidence. And then the slow undoing of everything built thus far. A typical domino effect that comes down crumbling like a pack of cards. Nothing can be as disturbing, particularly when you didn’t see that coming or failed to detect those distress signals.

Your credibility is on the line. Confidence erodes, confusion prevails. Like a vision becoming blur, the future looks bleak. Questions of survival and means for sustenance crops from all corners. The wherewithal withdrawn, individuals accustomed to a certain living standards will find it disturbingly difficult in being displaced.  And that is to put it mildly.

When the curtains are down in your services offered to a company, its not the end of your career – just that the engagement you were roped met its logical conclusion wherein your services are no longer required. Fine. Look  elsewhere.

Very early in the career, when someone close to the author of this article was ‘fired’, devastating as it was in having shattered dreams and aspiration that dies premature, the CEO  commiserated ‘well, may be we don’t find a fitment here but this doesn’t mean you will not shine and succeed somewhere. Play up to your strength’.

You might be initially dismayed and distressed. Of course dejected, but never get depressed. ‘Play  to your strength’ – and that’s exactly what one should do in the given circumstances.

We are in the edtech industry for some time and, Professionals walking into our premise for consultations with regard to professional certification and career counseling makes us under better the anger and unrest when such unexpected misfortune scuttles and chokes career path.

‘Expect the unexpected’ – be prepared always. Learn from the defence services – why is that the army does the drill day in and day out?  That’s preparedness.  Keep educating yourself. Reinventing – is learning new things and innovation is about iterations in ideas. Figure out your strength and try channeling in many ways – that’s what makes you versatile.

Its not about hour hard you get hit – but to collect yourself and stand up to the challenge. You may be down but not out.  There is always an opening for those who pursue relentlessly. The reason why we insist on  professional certification – to be certified in as many as possible is to become recognized instantly. May be that company doesn’t need you, fine, but someone wants you. There is always someone.