Before the Layoff…You’re still employed! 🎉
One of the most important parts to surviving a layoff is having an emergency fund that covers 3-6 months worth of expenses. Great got the basics down ✅.
Bouncing back from a layoff often focuses on tactical but a lot of this wisdom omits the fact that you are human and have feelings. When you get laid off, you’re going to have A LOT of them. It’s important that while you build a financial fund you also build an emotional fund. What does this mean? This means having a group of people who you trust and understand your emotional needs. These are individuals who know what you need without you asking. They are often folks you can have trusted and intimate conversations with. This group of people are going to show up for you and provide for your emotional needs as you make your way through job search post-layoff, which is very different than job searching while employed or on sabbatical. Making sure you invest in these relationships is very important.
The Layoff Has Happened😞…What now?
Take time to process.
This will look different for everyone. For me it was an already planned, extended long weekend to Yosemite, where there was no cell service, a big plus. There were a few things that made this trip so refreshing. There was the act of engaging with physical activity, something that I always find to uplift me and engage me mentally. Being in ACTUAL nature. I've lived in city centers for well over 10 years. Sure Central Park and the Presidio provide great access to nature but Yosemite was a whole other level. Lastly, I would be neglectful if I didn’t say spending quality time with my partner and building new core memories with him. All of these things, exercise, nature, and quality time with my partner, really gave me the opportunity to approach my job search feeling refreshed and focused.
An extended weekend worked well for me but I know some folks take a month or multiple months. It really is very personal. In my case, I didn’t want to take too long because I wanted to spend time contemplating what I wanted out of my next role.
Evaluate
I took a few days to go through some exercises and do some reading to help me really understand what I should be looking for in my next role, team, company, and compensation package. I focused on a few key areas (thank you dev/color!):
The technical day to day work
What type of work do you thrive at?
What are your best skill sets?
What do you want to learn?
Where do you have room to grow?
The Experience Style
What kind of people do you prefer to work with?
Do you plan to manage others?
What kind of team culture do you prefer?
Your Lifestyle
What kind of work life balance do you need?
Remote? Hybrid? In person?
What kind of financial compensation do you expect? What kind of benefits do you require
Values
I was able to craft a short vision statement for myself. I also reflected on what skill sets and relationships I would need to help me achieve this vision. I also spent some time reading this blog post on Staff archetypes by Will Larson given my seniority.
This time helped me formulate what I was looking for next in my career. It helped me narrow roles, teams, and products that were potentially a good fit. It also helped me rank roles while I was interviewing. The more things aligned the higher a role would rank.
Prepare & Network
Once I had done the self work, it was time to prepare to interact with others. I needed to be ready on a technical level, which for me meant practicing those technical screening questions. I used sources like LeetCode, HackerRank, and CodeSignal (love CodeSignal!) to get back in the habit of technical screens. I made a point of timing myself, keeping it to 30 minutes, which is typically what you would encounter in an interview.
This was also the time I started to source roles. I started with recruiters who emailed me or sent me LinkedIn messages in the last 2-3 months. I also set up LinkedIn notifications. If a good role in my LinkedIn notification came up I would search to see if there was someone in my network who could help me connect with the company better. Folks in my network were also able to help me prepare for interviews, giving me insight into the organization and folks I would interviewing with.
Interviewing
Having understood what the optimal role, team, company, and compensation looked like, I could now evaluate if opportunities were a good fit for me. To be honest, preparing in a virtual environment is great but nothing beats the real thing. In running, we always start every season what we call a “rust buster”. It’s basically an opportunity to participate in a real race with little expectation than to reengage with the behavior of running a race, not too dissimilar from the NFL pre-season for those sports oriented folk. I did the same with my interviewing. For a few interviews, if I know it’s not a fit but the product is interesting, I would take the interview with little expectation than to be prepared for the roles that really were good fits. My advice here would be to keep these types of interviews to no more than 3 companies. You want to make sure you’re using both your time and the company’s time effectively (that’s why I did this with companies where I was interested in the product or the mission, but maybe the role wasn’t a great fit).
Now that I’m prepared and ready to interview in real time how did I approach the various phases of the interview process:
Sourcing
A recruiter might send me a LinkedIn message or an email. I like to review the role and the company. Does the role fit a majority of the things on my list? Does the product and or mission align with things I’ve evaluated for myself? These are usually the primary things you can glean without talking to anyone.
Recruiter Screen
This is a great time to get details on the role. There are few key things I like to get out of this call. I want to know what the company culture is like. I want to make sure this aligns with the expectation I’ve set for my work life balance and values. I also want to know what the compensation is like for this role. Understanding these details are key to whether or not I would choose to continue moving forward with a company. If a company can’t meet my compensation needs, I need to spend my time interviewing elsewhere.
Technical Screen
We’ve been preparing for this! Show ‘em what you got! 💪
This is also a great opportunity to ask your interviewer about key qualities you are looking for in a team. For me I want to know what cross collaboration looks like with other teams and how they handle disagreement. It’s my opinion that how you handle discourse says a lot about a team. If a team can handle discourse gracefully, it’s probably the kind of team I would enjoy working on.
The (virtual) on-site
This was where having contacts inside the company helped a lot. It helped me understand my interviewers better and what to expect behaviorally from folks.
Preparing for the on-site also included documenting projects I worked on, reviewing commonly asked behavioral questions, and practicing System Design questions and techniques. I personally work better from notes. It helps me to be more confident. So I compiled some projects to discuss, including why the project was important, the design we chose, tradeoffs, and the impact the project had to the business. I also prepared notes for commonly asked behavioral questions using the STAR technique (Situation Task Action Result).