Dealing with a Job Loss

By
Isaac
 – 31/07/2009Posted in: Article, Performance Edge, Personal Evaluation, Technique
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Losing your job can be one of the most devastating experiences in a person’s life. After the loss of a job, even the most confident person is filled with self doubt and a sense of  ‘what have I done wrong ?’.  To make the experience even worse, the days leading up to the eventual day are filled with rumours, panic and sleepless nights. When the day finally comes, the office is filled with an air of tension and desperate hope that your phone won’t ring. When it finally does happen, a person you’ve never met from HR tells you about the company’s decision. Now that the inevitable day has come, what to do ?

The most common response is to get your CV updated and start the job hunt. If money pressures are a big issue in your life, this may be the best thing but if you have some time before the money worries kick in starting a new job may not be the best thing for your. I would agrue that the best thing to do would be to use this time to evaluate the things that are important to you in a career.

If you are like most “people”, you choose to study a subject that sounded right or your friends did, started a career path and before you know it you’ve lost 10 years of your life and don’t really understand how to got to this point.

I know losing a job is not the best situation but what it does give you is the time to reassess the thing that are important to you in your career and life.

Before I left my previous employer, I had a chance to use an online tool created by a company called Career Innovations that helped assess your goals and capabilities. I found the process of  defining what was important to me very liberating and gave me a sense of direction. I have found a version of this at the Unilever website and would recommend that people have a go. Just to be clear, I am not attached in anyway to Unilever of Career innovation in any way.

Link to Personel Evaluation Toolkit

This is my first blog for the site and would greatly appreciate your comments and thoughts.

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