The unthinkable has happened: You’ve been handed your walking papers.
Shock, shame, humiliation, fear, fury, grief and disbelief are all are part of the post-firing emotional landscape, particularly when you didn’t see it coming.
What to do when you’ve been fired
What do you do? First, recognize your feelings. Go ahead and vent; get it off your chest. Wallow in self-pity. Scream and rage. Just get it out of your system, because the only way you’ll be able to move on is if you experience – and release – the feelings that surround your termination.
It may not seem like it now, but losing your job could be the best thing that ever happened to you. It presents an unparalleled opportunity to reinvent yourself and – who knows? – do something that is even more fulfilling, gratifying and lucrative.
After you’ve unburdened yourself and can look beyond the immediate hurt, examine your termination as objectively as possible:
- What caused it?
- How much do you need to own?
- What can you learn from it?
- What will you do differently going forward?
This will lay a strong foundation for your job search.
What have you done — serious, dumb and fun?
Then it’s time to move on to Part 2. Sit down at your computer – or if you’re the old-fashioned type, with pen and paper – and make a list of everything you’ve done in the last 20 years.
Yes. Twenty years. It sounds insane, but it’s well worth the effort.
If you don’t have 20 years of employment experience behind you, college and even high school is fair game.
You’ll probably begin with the serious stuff, major job (or school) accomplishments and that’s great. That’s part of what you’re trying to identify.
But don’t forget the fun stuff, too. Have you traveled overseas? Volunteered at the local library? Mentored a high-school student? Taken a CPR course? Served on a non-profit Board of Directors?
If you’ve done some really dumb things – like hike in the desert without enough drinking water, or run out of gas in the middle of the interstate at 3 in the morning – put that down, too.
Capture it all. Let your mind go wherever it likes.
If you’re like most of us, your list will sound a lot like a resume – that’s OK – and you’ll naturally begin to create major headers with subcategories below them.
Some of the things you’ve done can be grouped under the major headers you’ve already established. Smaller stuff often can be used to flesh out the biggies.
Unrealized skills and talents
You will be surprised to learn, looking at the list as a whole, that you have a bunch of skills and talents that you never even realized you had.
Give yourself two bonus points for that – you’ll get a little ego boost and at the same time you’ll identify quantifiable accomplishments (remember, this is about what you’ve done, not what you think or what you know) that can help you get to where you want to be.
Go ahead and luxuriate in that feeling for a while. It’s soothing for your battered ego and it’s a good place from which to launch your next step: Narrowing down your now-voluminous list to just three.
And you thought 20 was bad! Relax. At this point, it should be relatively easy.
Maybe you’ve discovered that you’ve got tons of experience in helping people solve problems. Or that marketing is where your expertise lies. Or your communication skills – written and verbal – are off the charts.
Or that running out of gas on the freeway or hiking in the desert without an adequate water supply led to improved planning skills.
You may even see that all three of your top knowledge-based skill groups are interrelated or complementary to some degree.
Now here’s the really hard part: Be open enough to explore how these skills can apply to a wide variety of jobs (or creating a business) that you may have dismissed out of hand because you’ve never worked in those fields.
As ugly as it is, being fired is a great chance to learn more about ourselves and give us the shove we need to strike out in a new direction.
P.S. I’ve been fired twice. I survived both and moved on to something better each time. You can, too. If you’d like to talk about how, let’s set up a time for a free consultation. Email jackie@key-dynamics.com and we’ll go from there.