Mitigating the Risk of a Lay-Off

Chanelle with a look that might surprise her boss.

While I usually make posts on dating as I simultaneously figure things out on my own, building my career early on also plays a huge role for me. To provide a point of reference, I am currently a senior in college with one more semester before graduation. In about a week, I will begin my sixth internship in my field of study, which is most commonly known as construction engineering.

Construction is a very risky business to be in, health-wise and financially. Thus far, aside from low-level job in food service and retail, I have held 5 mid-to-high level internships in 5 different companies, which include general contractors and specialized contractors. Only 2 of these internships were termed, meaning they had a defined start and end dates. This leaves me with three internships on the table that had only start dates and were given to me until my graduation date in December of 2016. Problem is, I was let go early from all 3 of them. Being laid off sucks, no one will disagree, but imagine if you were to be ready for it and had great prospects to turn to in case of nuclear apocalypse! Regardless of what your career field is, construction, marketing, legal services, actuarial science, finance, or whatever else, I am here today to give you some survival tips, so listen closely and take notes.

1. Learn not only new skills at your job, but also as much as you can find about your company. You have to get to know its financial standing, current customers, current workload, backlog of work (where the company is headed in the future), and most importantly, their employee retention rate (a company that changes employees all the time may not be that attractive to work at).
2. Get to know the customers and partners of your employer and build connections early on. Even if everything is great, having a network of valuable contacts is great for business and could help you advance in the company. If things go sour in the company, you can turn to your contacts for work or even leads to new contacts for work.
3. Learn the company’s financial history. Ask the middle or upper management about the highs and lows of the company. Don’t ask the middle management if there ever have been lay-offs and why as that could raise eyebrows. If you ask about the highs and lows, the management will tell you what you need to know without you having to twist their arms. Taking a significant person in your company out for drinks or lunch could be helpful because if they feel at ease with you, you definitely will not have to twist arms.
4. Diversify your knowledge and skills before you start thinking that you could lose your job. Develop your other talents, take special training, take some side classes if you have time and financial opportunity, and think about anything else you could be great at. While the industry of your current employment could be doing poorly, another industry could be doing well and you have an opportunity to apply yourself and succeed.
5. As the old saying goes, the best time to look for a job is when you have one. It is true. I saved myself from my second layoff and signed with a new employer as soon as I had begun suspecting I might lose my job. Two weeks later, I found that I will lose my current job for sure and it did not bother me as I had found work with the same pay, but much more flexible hours. That was a significant improvement from my first layoff, when I just took up classes and focused on school almost double-time and a little better than the time of my third layoff when I began thinking of new prospects when business slowed down.

Tags: featured, life skills

Category: Transgender Opinion