After you have found yourself laid off from a company you’ve been loyal to for many years, I know many people would advise you to take some time to compose yourself and figure out what your next move is. I say there’s something very important about getting started in your new job hunt immediately.
I’ve talked to many people who have taken both approaches. And more often than not, those who’ve told me they took some time off, sometimes several months, have regretted that decision. Some people ran out of severance or savings and moved in with other family members or were just trying to live off of unemployment benefits and things were very hard for them as a result. Even if you are collecting severance or you have enough savings to last several months, I think it’s a good idea for several reasons to jump in with both feet and get started.
When I was laid off from my job, I was home with my wife and kids by about noon that day, I had a few moments to talk about it with my family, cry about it a little bit and gain my composure. That very afternoon I was working to get my resume brushed up and ready to start sending out and by midnight that night, I had already applied for a couple jobs online.
Here are the reasons I found it beneficial to get started immediately.
1. Feeling of accomplishment
I just didn’t want to sit and wallow in pity. For me, I felt it was important to get moving and feel like I was getting something done. I realized very quickly that I now have a new job and this is it — to find a new job. And so I resolved to get started on that immediately.
I had to do it for my own mental sake but also for that of my wife and kids. I needed them to see that this didn’t break my spirit. I wasn’t going to be a couch potato and everyone nagging at me to get moving or asking me “what did you get done today?”. I was out to prove to myself and everyone else around me that I can and will conquer this and I will rise above it.
I didn’t have everything perfect to begin with — my resume, my cover letter, even my approach. It certainly wasn’t as good as it was by the end of my job hunt. But I had something to start with and I was now doing on-the-job-training. It was good enough to begin with.
2. You don’t know how long the job hunt is going to last
Now this is not something I really thought about immediately. But as time progressed, and as I began networking with people who had been out of work for a very long time, I realized that the length of the job hunt is not all that predictable.
I heard some “experts” say it takes a month for every $10,000 of pay you make to find a job. I don’t know where those stats come from but I’m sure many experts have studied it for many years and have settled on that theory with some level of accuracy. I can tell you I beat that statistic but I know of many people who have missed that by far. So I’m not sure what percentage of accuracy goes along with that statistic.
So, since we don’t know how long the job hunt is going to last and no matter how cocky we are about our ability to land that perfect job in the perfect amount of time, my recommendation is that you just resolve that it’s probably going to last longer than you think it will and longer than you have money to last and you should probably get started.
What you don’t want to do is find yourself out of money and regretting your decision to take a break for a long period of time at the start of your job hunt.
3. The initial boost will help motivate
I did eventually take a break and took some down time or vacation time with the family. But that initial effort I spent on getting my job hunt started helped put an initial boost of energy into my search that I didn’t have to go looking for later. I feel that if I had not done that, it would have been harder for me to get motivated to get started.
Now, I know everyone is different and has a different make up. Not everyone is like me and perhaps you’ll be able to pick up later and get yourself motivated when that time becomes necessary. For me, it was easier to find time to slow down later than it was to speed up, get motivated and get started at a later time. The idea of “Once in motion, always in motion” comes to mind
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