If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been recently laid off. In which case, my heart hurts for you. I don’t like to use the phrase ‘funemployment’ as going through that process is one of the scariest and most stressful things a human can go through. I’ve had the rug pulled out from 3 times and in each instance I lost a lot of sleep and weight from the process.
That being said, after the 3rd time, I learned walking through that fire is actually one of the most empowering processes we can go through because I learned how truly resilient we can be.
My intention is that these stories serve as a bit of a handbook. Lessons I learned the hard way, so you don’t have to. They are a list of things ‘I did’ that I hope you feel you can do too. I appreciate that your situation is likely different than mine. Please know that this is written with the intention to help someone get through.
I set new rules for my spending
I kept tabs on my bank accounts through each of my bouts of unemployment. In each of them, I ended the period with more money in the bank than I started. The most severance I ever received was 2 weeks. Though Washington does have one of the most generous unemployment systems, I’d still be taking a pretty big income cut, and needed to make up the difference. Cutting my discretionary spending made the biggest difference.
Setting hard rules for myself both kept me accountable AND made me feel better in that I was doing something. My rules were pretty simple. They felt hardcore at first, but got easier each time. Food was the easiest one to widdle down. I cut out out beef, dessert, and alcohol. Certainly no avocado toast. I didn’t eat out, period. My wife and I took up hiking as a passtime, but didn’t do any hike further than 10 miles away from the house to keep auto expenses down. I didn’t go to sporting events or concerts where I might be tempted to spend money on drinks, cabs or merch. I canceled memberships and subscriptions.
My wife also played by these new ‘hardcore’ rules. By our math, it saved us well over two thousand dollars a month. That was a big lever to pull, and it got easier with every layoff.
I served others
I never got hooked into a formal volunteer program during my times in unemployment, but I tried to find natural ways to simply help other people. Many of my neighbors got a free lawn mow every time I was working on mine. I babysat my nephew. I helped an old mentor remodel a house. I drove my grandmother to appointments.
These small ‘jobs’ gave me a reason to get out of bed and put on real pants. It gave me a sense of ‘job well done’ I desperately needed when I was feeling constant rejection in the job hunt. It gave me a sense of providing value to the world, even if small. They gave me purpose.
I stopped being shy about asking my network for odd jobs
At the time of my first layoff, Crossfit had become my ‘church.’ It was also hard to justify the expense while unemployed. Losing that part of my life was terrifying. None the less, the first day after my first layoff, I approached the owner after everyone had left. I was embarrassed and didn’t want anyone in the gym to know. “Hey uh, I just lost my job, I’m going to have to pause my membership until I find a new one.” He smiled, which had me almost offended. “I’ve been having a helluva time finding a handy man to fix some things around the gym. I’ll pay you $15/hr in gym credits to work on a list of things I need done.” He gave me a key, and I got to work. I was discrete about the arrangement; waiting for the others to leave before working on the jobs or coming in when I knew the gym was closed. 2 weeks later, I’d smashed through the list and generated 3 months of credits, which ended up being about 2 months longer than I needed.
I was a little better prepared when I went through my second layoff a few years later. I had a pickup truck and more home improvement skills. My father in law needed some exterior walls painted but couldn’t find a professional to bid the work because it was such a small project. I asked him what he thought that project was worth since to a pro. “Oh, I dunno maybe $1,000?” Not wanting to take advantage of his generosity, I said “I’ll do it for $500.” It took me a single afternoon, that I now remember fondly. It was a beautiful June day. Once I landed the job and had saved up more in my reserves, I donated that $500 to a charity I knew he liked so I didn’t feel like I owed him anything.
On my third layoff, I literally posted on Facebook - “Hey folks, I’ve been laid off and could use some work. I have a truck, yard equipment, carpentry skills and charge $15/hr+mileage.” I was overwhelmed with inquiries. Ended up raising my rates to $30/hr and had to turn some work down so I could allow enough study and interview time.
The money helped keep my health insurance and stay out of debt. The work kept me sane. Because my rates were still pretty low, I was neither ripping anyone off or taking charity. Everyone I worked for was super relieved to have those jobs done by someone they could trust.
I systematized my job hunt
I took the same muscles I’d built to be good at my job and applied them to keeping my job hunt running smoothly. There’s not really a manual for ‘how to hunt for a job’ but I hope this is close.
I:
Set up email folders for all those ‘thanks for applying’ emails. This made the unemployment audit dead simple.
Kept a spreadsheet of all the companies I was actively interviewing with. It had things like points of contacts, location, salary range. Most important columns were ‘last point of contact’ and ‘next point of contact.’
If I got a formal rejection, that company was instantly moved to a separate list that I didn’t look at. On 2 occasions, companies on the second list came back to me for interviews on a different teams. Having the details handy made recall way faster. One of those callbacks landed in a very quick offer that I was able to leverage against another.
Kept 2 different resumes on file that were both honest, but framed me better for different types of roles. My LinkedIn was a combination of the two.
Had a standard set of questions for each stage of the process
Setup and maintained a Squarespace as a portfolio with screen grabs and in depth discussion of my projects.
Wrote a blog post every other week about happenings in tech or simply unsolicited advice to others.
Only actively searched for jobs on Tuesdays, for at most an hour. Turns out new jobs don’t get posted that often.
If a job board had a push notification system for new jobs that fit my criteria, I set it up. I set up inbox rules to go to a specific folder that I’d look at once a day, and maybe apply to the jobs if I felt like I was a good fit.
Added positive value to a conversation on LinkedIn at least once a day. I did have to limit myself to 30 minutes a day, otherwise I’d find myself doom scrolling through junk.
Added every recruiters full name and company to my contact list so answering the phone was more natural.
I actively managed my personal schedule
Time can be a flat circle when you’re unemployed. One of the simplest habits I changed in all of my layoffs was sticking to a stricter bed time, setting an alarm and ‘out of bed time’ every day. This kept me from some nasty habits I know I have when I get stressed that keep me in bed until noon.
During my second bout, I learned to manage my personal schedule more actively. It kept me grounded and feeling in control of my world. I put EVERYTHING on the calendar from interviews, work outs, social plans, study time, grunt work, and reminders. Things I never would have when I was employed. I slept much better not worrying about the schedule for the week because it was all there, right on my phone. I was never late to an interview.
I prioritized self care
A neat side effect of being so anal about managing my schedule was that it helped keep me more balanced. One of the harder parts of a job hunt is that there’s very little you can do to make it go faster. A single loop is going to take a month minimum, probably closer to 2. On my 3rd, longest and hardest bout, I thought I could simply ‘study harder’ and apply for more jobs. That was misguided. It turned me into a desperate stress monster after a month. I’m certain the recruiters and interviewing managers picked up on it.
So after that first month, I timeboxed my job hunt and did my best to spend a third of my time in my office studying or interviewing, a third of my time working for or serving others, and a third of my time on self care; things I genuinely enjoyed and getting exercise. My wife told me I was an entirely different person once I started prioritizing self care. I’m sure I came off better to those who were interviewing me.
I refreshed my skills
It was at that one month mark where I also realized my skillset had become un marketable outside of Redmond. After spending a month blowing through LinkedIn learning courses and not feeling any traction, I’d resigned to the idea that this layoff was going to take some more thorough retraining, and frankly, more time. I thought maybe 6 months to a year. I spent $500 on a self paced React course that was much more thoughtfully put together than LinkedIn Learning. It felt expensive not knowing if I’d be good at it or if it would work. BUT it was way cheaper than any other in person education. I chipped away at it for about 6 weeks and only got about 2/3rds of the way through before getting a job offer.
That 6 months only ended up being 3. And that was followed by a very blissful month completely off as I had negotiated a delay in my start date around the July 4th holiday.
I’ve since left that job, but stayed in touch with the manager. I asked him one night why the heck he even considered me for the role, as I’d had no professional experience with the new tech stack.
“I could see from your earlier experience that you take pride in your craft, and you like to get good at it. I saw from your course work that you’re not afraid to work hard at learning something new. That’s not a very common set of traits.”
I laughed, and sipped my beer. At the time, learning React felt like one of the scariest things I’d ever done.
I practiced Extreme Ownership
In all of my layoffs, I focused intensely on myself and only what I could do or control to improve my situation. Criticizing others either out loud or in your head only leads to negative thinking (even if you are right). It’s then very easy to fall into a spiral of anger and negativity. Turns out those emotions do nothing to help land a job. I’ve had recruiters pull some slimy moves on me. Rather than get angry at them, I simply tried to understand their motivation and figure out what I can learn from each situation to prevent that from happening to me again.
One unfortunate situation was when a recruiter moved me forward in a role that anyone in the business would have seen I wasn’t a good fit for. She saw I had C# experience, which is what the hiring manager asked for and she pushed me along. I waited eagerly for 3 weeks for the next conversation with the manager, which ended up being very brief and very hard.
After the fact, I learned from her LinkedIn profile that she’d only been a tech recruiter for 2 months. She had an HR and liberal arts background, so of course she didn’t understand the difference between front end and back end developers. That was red flag #1, but I should have seen that well before our conversation. Had I approached it knowing a little more about her, I could have saved myself a bunch of time and frustration by framing myself more accurately around my value proposition.
I also reflected that in our a half hour long informational interview, she spent the first 20 minutes giving me a sales pitch for the company, 5 minutes talking logistics, leaving me only 5 minutes to ask questions (red flag #2). I realized in being rushed for time, I’d only asked questions about the company, and none about the role or the hiring manager’s background.
That’s when I stopped asking about the company, HR policies, compensation or benefits in early stages. That’s all (mostly) available on the internet, or will be provided in later stages. I started focusing on the role, the team and the manager.
All my interviews magically started going a lot better.
A few months ago, I expressed anxiety about getting laid off to a new friend of mine. He looked at my with a raised eyebrow, and asked simply “Why?” The conversation went as follows:
‘Well, are you worried about money?”
“Eh, a little. I could find something new. We’d have to tighten our belts. It’d be hard, but we could do it.”
‘It’s not like your wife or friends would leave you?”
“Ha, ‘course not.”
‘Could you still afford to do the things you love to do?’
‘TOTALLY.’
‘So the worst thing they can do to you is take your job away? Why are you so worried?’
I’ve stopped worrying.