4 Layoff Facts:

1. Layoffs should NOT be taken personally, except by the CEO. For everyone else, a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time – not bad performance!

2. A job seeker is more interesting to another employer when still employed (a.k.a. “passive” job seeker). Unemployed (a.k.a. “active” ) job seekers are less desirable.

3. Employers are NOT be happy to discover that an employee is looking for a new job, and that can hasten the  job loss.

4. Once the layoffs have begun, the longer an employee stays in that situation, the greater credibility gap they will have with potential new employers. The logic is that the people who leave earliest are the best performers with the most salable skills while the ones who stay until the end are the poor performers with few options (or they’d have left sooner).

3 Layoff Survival Strategies

1. Run a “stealth job search” so the current employer doesn’t terminate employment for “disloyalty.”

2. Practice Layoff Self-Defense -

Set up a job-hunting-only e-mail account at Yahoo!, Google, MSN, etc.

Print (or have printed) job-hunting “networking” business cards with personal contact information on it, like the job-hunting-only e-mail account, and even the new job target.

Start collecting the personal contact information of co-workers, “just in case” the workplace relationship disappears.

Increase networking outside the employer’s organization –  attending professional, industry, local association meetings.

Expand the LinkedIn network; set up (or revise and update) Facebook, Twitter, etc. profiles and visibility.

3. GET FOCUS! – Figure out what the next job should be and who good potential employers would be. An unfocused job search (”Oh, I could do anything you need…”) is a VERY long job search.

For more information and practical advice from a 2-time layoff “graduate” (me), see Job-Hunt’s Layoff Center

Good luck!