I was laid off on March 20th, but I was back to work on May 6. It took persistence, patience, and luck. And also some crying. The four pillars of long distance running. Here’s how to go from laid off to employed.
27 Job Applications, 8 Initial Interviews, 3 Second Interviews
I applied to 27 jobs from March 20th to April 18th. Of those 27 jobs, I got eight initial interviews. Six of them were HR screening phone interviews and two were in-person interviews. When it was time for the sixth first-round interview, I had strong indicators that I was about to receive a job offer at an organization I really wanted to be a part of. That, plus the fact that the sixth company was in a sketchy part of town, led me to cancel the sixth interview so I didn’t waste the interviewer’s time.
From those eight initial interviews, I received three 2nd interviews, all of which were in person. As part of my 9 tips on how to get through being laid off, I studied for hours for each of my in-person interviews like I was studying for a test. I prepared answers for possible questions that the interviewers might ask me, from my strengths and weaknesses, to situational circumstances.
To learn about the companies, I read through each company’s website, as well as their Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles (if they had them) to prepare questions to ask. I also Googled any names I was provided or could easily look up to feel a little more connected with each interviewer.
From Laid Off To Employed
I received the official job offer 37 days after I was laid off. I started at the new employer 10 days after that. A few days before my start date, I received another job offer from one of the in-person interviews for a higher position than I had initially interviewed for. Because I had already accepted an offer that I was very excited for, I graciously declined the second job offer.
During my 47 days of my faux vacation, I tried to keep a routine during the week. Most days I did a few house chores, applied to 1-3 jobs and sometimes did an errand or two. I also have a few bookkeeping clients, so I was able to tend to their needs during the week rather than the weekend like I had been doing.
At the beginning of my lay off, I was excited about the prospect of running or working out during the day rather than in the evening. My days were so filled with chores, job applications and interviews, errands, and other tasks that I actually did only a few daytime runs or workouts.
Most of the job applications were just a click of a button once I had the resume prepared. But there were a bunch where it took an hour or so because the employer required me to enter the information in their own database.
There are “I’m unemployed” tasks too.
And then there were the administrative tasks of being laid off that I dealt with. Applying for no-cost health insurance in my state took several hours in total. Applying for unemployment and providing the requested paperwork took another several hours.
Other tasks that I worked on during my faux vacation were my taxes (talk about last minute!), returning my leased vehicle, learning the accounting software Xero, and preparing for a team relay running race.
Every year I say “I’m not going to procrastinate on my taxes” and every year I file them in early April. This year is no different, and I filed them on April 7.
My car lease ended in late April and I was inheriting a great car from family because they bought a new one. I cleaned out my other car to get it appraised in case it was valued high enough to purchase the lease. Of course the dealership priced it just low enough. So we turned in the leased car on a sunny Friday afternoon. I was expecting them to hand me a bill before we left but the young sales guy handed me the vehicle plates without an issue and said “Have a good day!”
Of course, the bill for nearly $1000 came in the mail a few weeks later.
Learned a new skill.
I also signed up for the free month trial of Xero. I have several years of experience with Quickbooks and Quickbooks Online and wanted to expand my skills to Xero. I’ve also wanted to digitize my personal financial records for years. I downloaded January – February financial activities across about 20 financial accounts that my household has into MS Excel CSV format using Google Sheets and imported them into Xero. I now have to do March and April. And by the time this post is published, May too.
I’m an accountant so I created a spreadsheet for running.
The weekend I received my job offer, I participated in a running relay race called Seneca 7 where seven runners ran around the beautiful Lake Seneca in upstate New York. In true accountant mode, I created a spreadsheet that calculated the estimated ending times for each of the 21 legs. It also calculated how far ahead or behind each runner was compared to their expected pace. As we progressed farther into the race, you could see the gaps between the expected time and actual time for each runner grow bigger as we all went faster during our last runs to get that shit over with. I was still making tweaks to the spreadsheet up until the night before I left for race weekend.
The day I was laid off, I figured I could use this time to complete my annual 40 continuing education credits. I was busy enough that I did only 4 credits before I started at the new job. I have since completed 32 credits.
After I started at my new employer, I received my eighth request for an initial in person interview from an organization that I’ve applied to before over the years. I’ll admit that I was a little sad to decline their interview request.