Note: this is a somewhat personal entry that many people found useful. I share it here because who knows who might need to hear one of the points below.
October 1st 2023 will mark two months since I’ve been out of work, and part of my process of self-reflection has been many 1:1 meetings. Those meetings have taught me that there is a strong third wave coffee culture in Singapore, and that I can handle 3 cups of coffee before it starts affecting my sleep.
I also learned other important lessons, five of which are worth sharing:
I’m not alone in my job search. There are many people out there “between jobs”, recently let go, been away for a while, or taking one form or another of sabbatical. Two points starkly stood out: first, even if someone is currently gainfully employed, many have been through a redundancy at some point in their careers. Second, as is true of most social media posting, people on LinkedIn only share good professional news. Many individuals who are not currently employed, even months after the fact, still have their most recent roles on LinkedIn. That realization was comforting, taking away the stress and “why me” mentality that first came with losing a job.
It’s not about me. Companies are profit generating machines and as such cannot always care about their employees. Individuals care, managers care, HR cares, but their emergent phenomenon known as a company has no empathy or humanity; many decisions are taken based on the bottom line. When the decision is taken to reduce headcount it’s rarely about performance and impact, it’s mostly about satisfying some arbitrary targets set by shareholders.
Going it alone is not necessarily better for me. I had always imagined that business owners have it better off – no unexplainable decisions to follow, no shareholders to drive quarterly results, and you can work your own hours. The reality, however, for most small business owners, at least until they hit scale, is a life of constant hustle. One of my friends described his contractor role as “feast or famine” – a stressful state that I don’t think I’d enjoy. That said, it is also a state that many thrive in.
I need a thicker skin because finding a new job is a numbers game. There will be many more misses than hits. When I used to give advice to other job seekers, I used to liken the process to dating; there are many single people out there, but for the right people to meet each other, it must be the right place, right time, right status, right mental space – for both parties… finding a job is exactly like that. I’ll need to find a role that requires my experience, in a company that appeals to me, in the city I live, and they need to find me compelling enough, and be ready to hire, and actually complete the hiring process. There will be many false positives, and lots of ghosting, and many “thank you for your application, while your profile is strong, it didn’t fit” emails along the way.
The search will take time, but I will eventually be OK. Patience will need to be my friend. In addition to all the challenges in point 4, senior roles, by definition, are rare, and in uncertain economic conditions, tend to become lower priority (the roles either consolidate or get double-hatted). But once I do find something, I’ll look back and see a bump in the road rather than a cliff that I fell off, and most importantly, be all the richer for the interesting and inspiring people I’m getting to meet along the way.
Have you been through a redundancy before? What lessons did you learn from it?
