How to Receive Multiple Job Offers After You’re Fired
By Marta L. Driesslein |
The more you try to be in control, the less you really are...in life and at
work. You just got fired and you think it’s the end of the world. You’re looking
at the wrong end. Ask survivors of the most popular reality television shows and
they’ll tell you “If you have to eat a cockroach, don’t spend too much time
thinking about it.” Keep focused on the end-game and move on.
Know
yourself, have a plan, make a footprint. After you’re fired, the raw power
needed to convert a job loss into a high-voltage catalyst that gains multiple
job offers is surprisingly simple. Consider these energizers:
Who you
are?
Detangle your sense of job from your sense of self
Where are you
going?
Design a five-year plan for career focus / direction
What can
you do?
Maintain a life-long log of your career achievements
“Getting
fired is a lot like getting divorced,” says Steve Johnson, Vice President of
Information Systems for R. L. Stevens & Associates Inc.,
http://interviewing.com/
a leading international career marketing firm
headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. “All you hear is ‘I don’t want you
anymore’,” he says.
Own your success and your failures. When he was
fired from a multi-billion dollar petroleum company earlier in his career,
discernment gave Johnson, a business-world veteran, the inner strength to get up
and get on instead of rolling over and playing dead.
Despite an
impressive portfolio of documented achievements that solidly contributed to the
bottom line through process reengineering, he was still let go. His stellar
performance though appreciated, was undervalued by his employers. Johnson made
sure that this unexpected event did not end his career or dampen his spirits.
“The time I was given the pink slip and told my talents were no longer needed, I
faced a decision to either continually bemoan the shut door or look forward and
find a new door I could open.”
Possess the wisdom to know the difference
between opportunity lost and possibility found. Johnson, an avid golfer,
expertly swung himself out of his job loss bunker and found customers wanting
his talents by taking the same approach in his job search as he does in his
sport. “Getting fired is like an awful day on the golf course. You’ve got to
stay in the game, play the holes, and adapt, improvise and overcome,” he says.
“Every time a bad thing happened in my career, I always landed on my
feet and good fortune proliferated through increased earnings, greater
fulfillment and expanded opportunity to learn new skills. Using multiple career
marketing strategies simultaneously I made sure that failure was never an
option,” he added.
Quickly create opportunities for yourself by changing
your mental and physical state. Here’s what you can do to restore order out of
your job loss chaos:
Want to deactivate your fears?
•Take a
vacation now to clear your head and get perspective
•Don’t feed your anger by
calling past colleagues and revisiting the past
•Welcome your firing as an
unexpected career advancement to the next level
•Limit your pity party to one
business day (8 hours)
•Forgive, let go, accelerate onward
Want to
reactivate your confidence?
•Volunteer your time to someone who needs you
– a charitable organization
•Convert your resume from a career obituary to a
marketing promo piece
•Inventory your portfolio of skills and question their
relevancy / currency
•Showcase your business talent by serving on a community
task force
•Upgrade your self-marketing campaign to strengthen your
branding
Change your focus from retribution to restoration and you’ll
find the key to layoff survival and increased employer interest. Swallow your
pride and take control of your career by morphing yourself into a consultant.
You might even be able to reverse your misfortune and sell your talents back to
the boss who fired you. Many ingenious job searchers have done just that and
leveraged their talents by filling a void left by their departure.
If
you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect
yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.
Got any valid reason to settle for a bad-tasting insect when a juicy
steak is just around the corner? Get on with it.
About the Author
Marta L. Driesslein is a
senior management consultant for R.L. Stevens & Associates Inc. http://interviewing.com/ a career marketing firm and
organization celebrating over 24 years of providing strategic marketing
solutions for its clients’ career transitioning needs.
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