Career Warrior Podcast #285) Dealing with Layoffs, Bonehead Companies Get What’s Coming to Them

Episode Transcript

Chris Villanueva 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast. If your goal is to transition to more meaningful work, achieve better pay or reach that flow state at work. This is your podcast. I am Chris Villanueva the Founder of Let’s Eat, Grandma, the world’s best resume writing service. You can connect with me by following me on LinkedIn, just make sure to send me a personalized connection request, letting me know why you subscribe to the show.

Bonehead companies finally get what’s coming to them. We’ll talk about layoffs, with all of us being impacted. Thousands of jobs have been cut across the board with many of them taking place in the tech sector. But why is this happening? What is the scale of this? And how can you deal with this as a job seeker to make sure that your livelihood is protected? We’ll get to all of this in a moment. But first, it has never been more important to update your resume. For some people, they just want better opportunities. But for others, they want to protect themselves and their families. Most of us won’t start the year without a good health insurance plan.

So why should your resume be any different? You don’t know when or if you will need it. But when it comes into play, you’re really going to thank yourself. So head on over to letseatgrandma.com and check out our resume packages. One of our awesome resume writers would love to take care of you. Alright, so what is going on? I’m not saying that all companies laying people off are boneheads, but there definitely is some bad business at play and some poor treatment of employees. Moreover, I hate the way that a lot of these companies are going about these rounds of layoffs. It’s downright disrespectful. But just to give kind of a lay of the land here, big tech giants have laid off 10s of 1000s of employees over the last few months as people fear recession, inflation. And as interest rates continue to rise, Google, Amazon and Mehta have laid off nearly 40,000 employees combined. And this is a pretty high amount. This is not your regular everyday layoffs, and even Spotify and my favorite platform ever for music has announced that they’re reducing their staff by 6%. Is it just tech that is laying off our fellow people? No, we’ve seen it spill over to other industries. And I think that this is just the beginning of what is going to be months or possibly even years of hurting in the labor market.

According to NerdWallet, media, construction, and even professional services are other job types that are at risk for layoffs. So why is this happening? So with these tech companies we saw during COVID that extreme valuations made it easy for people to issue stock or take loans that these companies didn’t really need in particular, so that they could expand aggressively and to offer amazing deals to customers. We saw a lot of this happen during 2020 and 2021, that these companies were expanding really aggressively companies like peloton because gyms were shutting down. It just makes sense.

But these companies were taking advantage of easy loans and issuing stock in this way. So what did this mean for jobseekers in general, you had companies that had been living on these loans, and we’re getting way too aggressive with their spending. And that spending, obviously carried over to hiring, there was a ton of hiring that happened in 2020, and 2021. And many of these companies acting stupidly, in the way that they were hiring. I think a lot of it was careless, I think at best, but a lot of these companies were trying to expand as quickly as possible, even though they knew it wasn’t a sustainable practice. So in order to improve their profit and loss statement, these companies began to cut staff because they had intentionally over hired which would have been a good thought not to do in the first place because they realized that this was just plain stupid and reckoning day was coming.

Moreover, and this is probably what pisses me off the most is that people were being blindsided by this by randomly getting let go in disrespectful ways to quote a laid off Google employee or alphabet. I’m devastated. I’m angry. And I feel blindsided by this random calling. And it tick tock video, somebody named Nicole sigh was a program manager at Google said that the layoffs were random and employees really felt like they were being blindsided. So this is probably what makes me the most mad like I understand companies having to do what they have to do because you have to build a sustainable business.

I feel that and I see that every single day whenever I look and make decisions to make sure that my company is doing the right things to be sustainable. But at the same time, this is just messed up. I mean, we’re seeing companies like pager duty sugarcoating their layoffs, with a quote by Martin Luther King just showing how resilient the company was during their time of layoffs. For God’s sake. It is not about your company. It is about your people who are doing the work. And this is what makes me so mad is the treatment of employees and job seekers who were all of a sudden having to scramble for work during this really tough time. Now, I’m not saying that companies alone are all to blame, we saw you can call it greed on the side of jobs. Here’s two people were taking salaries that they had no business taking. And we’re hopping jobs left and right, because they wanted to take better opportunities, even though they just graduated college and they were excited to take 90k jobs and like, Guys, what are you doing? But I kind of see where you’re coming from because of the grass looks greener? Wouldn’t you take it too? So with all this going on right now, it is more important than ever to protect yourself when it comes to your materials.

So how can you deal with layoffs. First of all, keep your head up. This unfortunately, is more normal than it was a year ago. And you are not alone. My dear friend, if you have just been laid off right now, I want you to know that everything is going to be okay. And you’re going to figure out your situation, you’ll end up in a better situation than you were before because quite honestly, the company that laid you off, not the right company for you. And you’re going to move on to a better position and take your career with clarity and proactiveness. And you’ll end up in a better situation than you were before I promise.

Second thing I recommend is getting your resume in order regardless if you’re laid off or not. Because really at the end of the day, you don’t want to be scrambling to rewrite your resume. If you’re in a situation like this, you want to make sure that your resume is in order, you want to make sure that you’re clear on everything that you’ve been doing in the last few months. Because these are the types of things that you may be asked to talk about in an interview. So step one is to get your resume and your LinkedIn profile in order, I recommend focusing on that summary because it’s the very top of the resume. And it’s often one of the first things that people look at, and the most recent position at the top. Now, I’m not saying you have to include that most recent position if you’ve only worked it for a few months, but we’ll talk about that in a second. But think about what you’re doing right now. Because oftentimes, recruiters and hiring managers want to know what has been most recent for you. So really take inventory and look at the past few months and assess what you’ve done.

Other thing I recommend, and this can be a fun thing, but get a fresh LinkedIn headshot, it will feel good, it will feel like the momentum is in your favor. And you will feel like you have more control and brand identity as a job seeker. I’m saying this because I just got a new LinkedIn headshot as of a week ago, and it felt really good. And what I would say just quick tips is you need a neutral background. Nothing too busy in the background, you need good lighting, this is incredibly important to make sure that your photos have quality. And I say to smile, a lot of people get way too serious and their LinkedIn profiles. So smile, because it’s more inviting for people to reach out to you or your LinkedIn. So get a fresh LinkedIn headshot, get your resume updated, and look at what you can update for your LinkedIn profile as well.

Now, if you are being laid off, then get your story straight because it can feel like you’re being caught off guard whenever you are asked about your layoff and it can kind of mess things up. So here’s what I recommend. Don’t waste space on your resume. Don’t include anything about your layoff on your resume, it doesn’t help. And if you’ve worked for a short amount of time for a company and you were laid off from this company, consider leaving it off altogether of your resume. You don’t need to include every single position you’ve had in your resume, especially if it’s just been a short stint, especially if you work for a stupid company that laid you off after two months of being hired because they didn’t get their finances straight. In a cover letter. Yes, you can address your layoff if you so choose, but make sure to keep it short and sweet. So here’s an example I like to use. I use this during COVID Its quote recently, Landry’s Inc announced a round of layoffs due to the COVID 19 crisis in my position was eliminated. I was consistently ranked a top performer at my restaurant, and I plan on delivering that same level of service in my next position, and quote. So this is just two quick sentences, talking matter of factly about your layoff and making it less about the layoff and more about how you’re a top performer and how you’re just going to do a backup job at whatever position you take next. So that’s the important thing is just to keep it short and sweet and make it more about you being qualified for the position. And moreover, this will prepare you for the interview in which you could get asked this question Why did you leave your last position what happened with your last position?

You’ll be better equipped, practice your answer in the car, in the mirror, whatever, but just make sure you have your story straight, just to be able to explain that the layoff happened and that you are qualified for whatever position that you’re going to be taking next. All right, cool. I kept this short and sweet but that’s because I wanted all Have you to get through this episode and especially if you’re dealing with this right now, my heart goes out to you. I understand how tough it can be to deal with career financial difficulties or uncertainty. And I know it can be really tough. So thank you for being a job seeker that takes your career in your hands. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I am here for you. I am going to be rooting for you during these next few months or so. And I will be following the news and listening to your stories very closely. So, as I mentioned earlier, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at Chris Villanueva. That’s my LinkedIn. It’s Chris Villanueva comments CPRW. I would love to hear your story.

And of course, why you subscribe to this podcast. And I will see you next time. This was a lot of fun. And I will see you in two weeks from now, Career Warrior Podcast and before you go remember, if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search, our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages. We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention. You’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to Let’s eat grandma.com forward slash podcast. Thanks and I’ll see you next time.