A good friend of mine was terminated from her position of almost five (5) years duration today. I hired her back in 2009 and she was a very successful employee. Unfortunately, the organization for which she worked made some poor business decisions and that caused the need for fiscal responsibility in the form of personnel cuts.
Whether you have been laid-off or fired for cause or even unjustly, the termination is most likely an unsettling event. If you have worked at that company a matter of years, the news is even more devastating. Give yourself some time (the rest of the day) and space to process what has come down. Do not spend a lot of time analyzing what went wrong because even if you figure it out, the analysis will not change anything. The analysis will prolong the pain of the termination and waste valuable time.
The very next day, prepare to start a new chapter or phase in your life. Start thinking of your termination as an opportunity to try something new or different. Your attitude will be crucial in the next few days. You may not have had any control over your termination, but you can control the way in which you react to the situation. Channel your energy and focus on new employment. Your disposition will be infinitely better because of it.
If you have the option of filing for unemployment insurance, do this first and any income will help and give you some relief. You never know how long a job search will take. You may never need the unemployment insurance, but you might and the process usually takes a few weeks. Once you have this priority settled, the next step is to undertake a full-fledged job search. If you were laid-off from your previous position, a reduction in force scenario is easily explained away on a phone screen or an interview. Reasonable people understand and the chances are, they themselves have probably been in the same boat.
If you were fired from your previous position, explaining your circumstances becomes a little more difficult, but still very manageable. While there are people who have never been fired, there are a lot of people who have been fired. Those people are also usually sympathetic to your plight. Honesty is the way to go, but you can be honest and not be blunt. “I did not see eye to eye with management” or “We (the owner or management) agreed to disagree” are examples of how to explain a firing. The most important aspect of this type of explanation is that you do not belittle or speak badly of the organization.
I’ve been fired and laid-off and I can tell you that there is plenty of life and opportunity after termination.
Romans 8:28
