Author: dsackr

So you just got laid off and you are a little panicked. You jump onto LinkedIn and start messaging everyone you know that you were impacted, asking if they know of a job or have an opportunity for you. STOP! Don’t do that.

First off, take a moment to breath. Its a lot to process and you are going to feel a lot of emotions (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance maybe?). But I am not suggesting you take a lot of time doing nothing.

Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of those texts, “Hey Dale! I don’t know if you remember me. We worked at XYZ together. I was recently laid off and wondering if you had any openings available?”

Every time I got that text, my heart sank. Getting laid off is devastating but even if I did remember working with them and if they were impressive, I still needed a position available that was in a role they could do. Of course I would help if all those conditions were true. BUT that’s a lot of IFs.

Its tempting to ignore the odds of all those if’s aligning in your favor because what do you have to lose, right? Wrong – There is a better way.

If you haven’t kept your resume current, you will need to do that immediately. If you did frantically send those texts and someone actually came back with “I absolutely have something you would be great for!” but you aren’t able to send a resume over for another several days, you aren’t setup for success. You jeopardize your relationship if your connection put their neck out there for you and you don’t show up to even apply for several days or weeks.

There are job boards and corporate career pages that you can check out before you start asking people to find a job for you. Decide what role you want next. Be intentional here, do not fall into the trap of desperation. You don’t want ANY job, you want the RIGHT job for you. And only you know what that is. No matter how strong your network is, you cannot expect them to find a job for you.

Now that you have your resume updated, you know what kind of role you want, and you have found one or two job postings you believe fit – you are ready to reach out to your network. But instead of “I’m unemployed, do you have a job for me?” you can send “Hey Dale! I’m looking into a role at XYZ company. Do you happen to know anyone there?”

That does two things for your network connections:

First, you’ve asked them for something with a LOT less “IFs” – and its free for them to look to see if they do know anyone where you are looking to apply, and if they do, its free for them to make an introduction. Remember, its not their job to get you a job, but if they can get you connected with the hiring manager, especially if they include a recommendation, you are way ahead of the other applications on the pile.

Second, they now know you are looking. If they have an opportunity – if all the stars align and they remember you, think you are a strong resource, and have a role you would fit, they now know to ask you to apply.

If you are reading this because you’ve recently been laid off – I’m sorry. I know personally how difficult this can be. I hope you find your next big role and its better than the last, but I also wish you peace and joy.

I was watching a science video in class as a kid (maybe 25 yrs ago now) when the interviewer asked the scientist how he felt about his experiment proving he was wrong. I remember he said “I LOVE IT”.

One of the things I enjoyed about science experiments growing up was non-intuitive findings. This is when you form a hypothesis based on our perception of the world today but the results are radically different than that expectation.

When that happens, of course the first thing you do is validate you did the experiment correctly, but when the results are confirmed, you’re left questioning your assumptions; your likely incorrect assumptions.

The reason the scientist in that middle school video loved being proven wrong was that he understood it was a chance to move to more correct thinking. He learned to become comfortable with being wrong. He learned to embrace that feeling as progress.

That is not a natural state; evolution rewards correct intuitions and ignores or fatally punishes incorrect ones. Think about it. When you are right about danger, you lived. When you were wrong, you died. The result, our ancestors learned to trust their intuition, not because its infallible but because we survived. Challenging your intuition historically was dangerous. But we live in an age where we can safely experiment without being eaten by lions, tigers, and bears.

I don’t think human nature has changed in 25 years, but I do think the internet has given us the ability to find our echo chambers instead of forcing us to entertain alternative ideas, assumptions, and interpretations. What makes me a little sad is that this information age gives us the ability to increase our access to alternative ideas, assumptions, and interpretations but not the ability to appreciate how uncomfortable being wrong feels. That must be a learned behavior.

Everyday we see people trying to make sense of the world around them asking questions that challenge someone’s narrative. Its easy to challenge someone elses narrative, but I encourage you to find the narrative you subscribe to and challenge it.

You make it sound easy!

That’s what a co-worker said to me yesterday. Immediately I knew something was off about that statement because what I was suggesting was in fact a very difficult task. After I thought about it for a bit, I realized what my co-worker was saying is that while the task was easy to understand, actually accomplishing the task was going to be a challenge and my framing of the task seemed to ignore the challenge in favor of the clear understanding of what needed to be done.

An example task would be the successful completion of a marathon run. Get a running plan and follow it. That’s easy enough, right? Of course we intuitively understand that the execution of that plan isn’t “easy”.

I work for an international company and many of my colleagues speak english as a second language, most speak english very well in fact. Still, little turns of phrase can be lost in translation (especially humor). I read a book years ago titled Studies in Words by CS Lewis (yup, same author of the children book The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe). In it Lewis points out the precision rightly chosen words can provide and the value of making those choices.

In my career, I deal with terminology unique to my field. I often work to establish the nomenclature required to create new terms, and the semantics required to give those terms specific meaning in the company, giving the company a common lexicon. Why does that matter? Because Peter Drucker was right when he famously stated, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, and culture is fueled by a common language, a common understanding, and common experience.

I’ve wanted to address the topics of language and culture before but because of their importance, I hesitate knowing I can not give the subject the attention it requires. This post is more a placeholder – a passing thought in a much larger topic.

P.S. Originally I was going to refer to my co-worker as a colleague, but because I can’t spell to save my life, I googled colleague and found there is a salient difference between the two terms. Words matter and my conversation was not with a peer (colleague) but with a co-worker (in this case a subordinate). So my substitution of the easier to spell word co-worker was not as much of an Elmer Fudd moment as it set out to be.