Long gone are the days when an individual started working at one company, slowly but surely worked his way up the corporate ladder and then retired from that same company thirty or forty years later with a gold watch. Nowadays, you are considered lucky if you can stay with one company for longer than five or ten years. Some people believe they can never be fired or laid off, but it happens every single day. When you get hired with a company, you don’t sign a contract saying they absolutely positively can never lay you off or fire you, so financially, this is something one should always take into consideration by having an emergency fund or a backup plan. However, not everybody thinks of these things. In fact, most people don’t. Here are some key items you will want to take action on if you have been recently laid off or fired.
* If you have an emergency fund, or if the company has laid you off with some sort of severance package, it is much too easy to idly sit back in the comfort of your own finances until you have depleted them. You must immediately take action. The first thing you will want to do, especially if you have no padded savings or money market account to fall back on, is to apply for unemployment. Usually, if you have been laid off, it will not be a struggle to start receiving unemployment checks, but if you have been fired, they may deny your claim. Always file an appeal, especially if you feel you were wrongly terminated. Bear in mind, if you do start receiving unemployment checks, they will only be a fraction of your previous salary. Also, you must be demonstrating your ability and willingness to find work to continually receive your unemployment check, so now is not the time to look at this as an extended vacation.
* The next thing you will want to do is sit down with your finances (and your family) and determine what extraneous items can be cut so that you can pay your bills every month. For example, if you are currently paying over a hundred dollars for the maximum cable channels experience, go back down to standard cable or get rid of that expense altogether. If you were buying a cup of coffee every morning on the way to work, cut that out as well. Items like maid services, lawn services, gym membership fees and things of this nature can easily be removed from your budget (barring no contract has been broken). You and your family must determine what you can live without. It may be difficult at first, but, for most people, they will realize how many luxury items they can easily live without. When you find a job again, you may decide just to remain living without these items. For example, when a good friend of mine was laid off, he and his wife determined that over half of his salary was paying for luxury items. They cut out all of these expenses and, when he found a job again, they realized they could still live without them.
* You will want to take a good hard look at your resume and rework it, looking at examples online or going to a workforce center to get some help making the resume look its best. Add your most recent job and any experience and classes you may have taken as a result of that job.
* The first people you will tell about your recent layoff or firing, after your family, will be your friends. Ask them to put out feelers for open positions in their companies that might be up your alley. Depending on the job you had and are looking for, you may want to hire a headhunter who will work for you as a job agent, of sorts, looking for open positions in corporations and putting your name out there.
* You never know how long you may be without a job, so instead of being idle, keep building up your resume. If you have had a long period of unemployment, I can guarantee you that one of the questions you will get at an interview is what you did during that extended period to stay abreast of the technology and advances in your field. For example, if you were a programmer, you may know that the technology associated with computers is continually evolving. You do not want to be left behind, so take some courses at a local community college so that your mind is always challenged to learn more.
