Surviving Redundancy - Part 1

It’s been a couple of years now since I was made redundant, right at the peak of the recession. Since then, I’ve stumbled blindly from one temporary job to another, and am still in search of that illusive permanent full-time job – but that’s another story. Here, I want to share with you my thoughts, my regrets, and how I would do things differently if I had my time over. The following tips and guidelines are things that I wish I’d known and taken heed of, had I been given a crystal ball to see into the future. Take from it what you find useful, and feel free to reject the rest.

Let it settle.

We hear every day about someone being made redundant, but until it happens to us, we don’t consider how it actually feels to be in that position. If you’ve been in a job for a long time, you’ll have no doubt made some close friends, got to know the routines and procedures like the back of your hand, and even if you don’t wake up every morning with a buzz of excitement in your stomach, you think it’s a pretty ok place to be. So when you’re given the news that you’re services are no longer required, it doesn’t matter who you are, it will be a shock. So my first tip is to let yourself feel whatever it is you’re feeling. Give yourself some time. You might feel angry or rejected or just downright upset; let those feelings happen. Talk to people about it – if not your boss or your colleagues, a trusted friend or your mother or your partner. When it happened to me, my first reaction was to panic, and then pretend I didn’t care. You don’t have to be brave. Tell people about your worries, and listen to their advice. But don’t feel you have to take it.

Plan.

Did you get a redundancy package? Well, good for you. That’s a relief, isn’t it? But don’t think that this means you can sit idle. You might have a couple of months pay – perhaps more if you were lucky, but you will need to put at least some of this aside to keep your bills paid while you look for more work.

One mistake I made was to think that I didn’t need to worry about claiming job seekers because I was going to get a job next week. Well, it didn’t happen, and I had absolutely no income for almost 3 months. Alright, so I would only have got 60-odd quid a week, but even that would have meant that I wouldn’t have had to spend all of my savings on living. So don’t wait – even if you think you will get a job next week.  You might, but in case you don’t, make that claim immediately. I can’t stress that enough – MAKE THAT CLAIM IMMEDIATELY. And if something comes up, it doesn’t matter, you can always cancel your claim. Nothing lost.

If you feel you need some time, that’s ok. Don’t feel guilty about it. You’ve had a stressful time, give yourself a break. But while you’re on that break, do some research. See what jobs are out there, consider training or college. Phone around some recruitment agencies as soon as you can – at least if you’re registered with one or two – or better still as many as you can find – you can talk through the kind of jobs you want to be looking for, and tell them when you want to start working again.

Agencies.

A bit more about my experience with recruitment agencies. When you look around, you’ll find quite a few. Some of them are very good, some of them are very bad. You’ll soon get to know which are which. I advise you to keep in touch with the good ones, and not to worry about the bad ones. There’s one in particular that I’ve been registered with for almost 2 years, and I’ve never even got an interview through them. In fact, I don’t think they’ve ever telephoned me at all, and on the odd occasion that I’ve phoned them, they have had a less than pleasing attitude. But I’m losing nothing by having my name on their books.

In part 2 of this article, I'll talk about Finances and where to get advice following redundancy.