My Life After Layoff

If you’re not thriving in your career right now, maybe you’ve been laid off, or maybe you’re off work for some reason, or maybe you are employed right now, but you’re looking for a new better job and this video is for you. 

In today’s video, I share my life after layoff and how to thrive. In your career. 

If you are an experienced professional, I’m going to share a personal story of my own layoff experience, where I went from being at the height of my career to suddenly laid off and struggling to even get interviews for several months. This of course, was before I became a career coach. 

And today’s video is going to be a little bit different. You can see I’m in my backyard, I will explain that shortly. It’s kind of like a coffee talk. 

So I invite you to grab a coffee and sit back it’s going to be short and sweet. But my hope is that it helps you if you are struggling right now, looking for a better job maybe looking for your dream job, I will share the strategies that helped me go from layoff to thriving in my career. 

And if you’re an experienced professional looking to grow your career, I invite you to subscribe to my channel and hit the bell so that you’ll be notified when I publish new videos.

If you’re new here, well hello, and welcome. I’m Danielle of coach with Danielle. I’m a career coach and mentor. And I love helping experienced professionals develop a thriving career. 

Here’s what happened to me before I became a career coach. I was at the height of my career having been promoted two and a half years prior. And I was a senior sales leader had an amazing team and I enjoyed my work for the most part. 

And suddenly, the company wasn’t doing very well the economy took a downturn, and I got suddenly laid off at the same time as dozens of people. As a matter of fact, that year, that company laid off hundreds of people. And this came as a shock and I was completely unprepared. 

But I thought I have amazing experience, I can really deliver results for any employee or any employer that I would work for. 

And so I started looking for work. And I really did not have a ton of experience doing that. 

I applied to dozens of jobs online. And I got absolutely zero interviews. This was extremely baffling to me because and maybe you’ll be able to relate to this, it seemed like my job applications were going into this black hole, I wasn’t hearing back from anybody. 

I had a resume that looked really good that a professional resume writer had written for me. And so I couldn’t understand what was going on. And maybe this is happening to you right now. And I want to share what I learned and what helped me the most of turn things around to the point where I got multiple job offers. And I was able to select a role that was so much fun. So a little bit more about that in a minute. 

So here are the top two things that I learned. 

Number one, my job search documents were not outstanding. What do I mean by that? 

I mean, my resume, my cover letters, my LinkedIn profile, they were not generating interest for me as the perfect candidate for my dream role. 

That was a number one thing that I didn’t know that obviously I know now, that would have made all the difference. That was the reason why I went for months, without getting any job interviews, that was really challenging. 

And it was a blind spot. I thought I had great documents, but they didn’t turn out to be good enough. 

And that’s the number one thing that I tell my clients, I see this all the time 80% of the resumes that crossed my desk that you know are out there are just not positioning you as the perfect person for your dream role. 

And there’s an art and there’s a science to that. And it’s 100% learnable. But it can make all the difference to for you to start getting interviews and job offers for your ideal roles. 

The number two thing that I learned through that period is that mindset is everything. I didn’t know it then I thought I was pretty positive overall. 

And I was you know pepping myself up through my job search all those months where I was getting no interviews, but I didn’t know how deep I needed to work on my mindset and how protecting my mindset and cultivating a mindset that would be serving me the most through that period would make all the difference.

Now once I started getting the interviews that I was seeking because I had perfected my documents and also my process for generating interviews, I also needed to learn how to navigate the ups and downs that a job search will have. 

You get all excited when you get an interview. And then two weeks go by and you don’t hear back. And then you find out that they actually went with another candidate, I had to learn to manage myself through all of that. 

And fortunately, I ended up getting certified as a life coach through the Life Coach School. 

But really what I learned is how to manage myself through all of the things that can happen, not only in a job search, but in life. 

And that made all the difference. 

So I’d love to know, have you ever gone through a really challenging job search? And what was that like for you share in the comments below. 

So eventually, I was getting interviews, multiple interviews with certain companies. And sometimes the outcome was that I didn’t get the job. Sometimes they shut down their job search, the state of the company changed, or they changed their complete strategy on who they wanted to hire. 

And I have to share, there were some very disappointing moments where I thought I really wanted certain jobs, and I couldn’t understand why I didn’t get it, or you know what happened, and when was I going to secure that dream role for myself. 

And what ended up happening was pretty magical. Eventually, as I managed through my mindset, and all of the hurdles in being able to find another job is that I ended up getting three job offers all within 24 hours of one another. 

And one of them is the one that I took in that was an amazing role with an incredible company called Weber. Yes, the barbecue people. That’s what you see in the background. 

And I now own seven barbecues, if you can believe it, I ended up working for them for a number of years. And it was the most fun job that I ever had. 

And when I look back on those times, when I was looking for work and not getting those job offers that I wanted, there was a couple that really stick out where I was so disappointed. 

And now after I got the Weber role, and I look back, I was like, thank God, I did not get those roles, there was one that was with a ceramic tile company, I mean, it would not have been nearly as fulfilling as the role that I ended up getting and accepting. 

And so all this to say that what I was telling myself at the time, is what helped to get me through. 

And I wanted to share that with you because you get to choose what you’re going to tell yourself about what’s happening in your job search. And that will help you to stay motivated and compel you to continue to really strive to get that ideal role that you really want to have and that you deserve based on your experience. 

Now, on the other side of all of this, this is exactly why I decided to become a career coach and mentor. Because of all the trials and tribulations that I went through and everything that I learned in the process, including becoming certified as a coach, I really wanted to share all of that with other people who might be struggling just as I was struggling during those months and months of job search. 

If this is resonating with you in any way, and you don’t want to miss any of my videos, hit the like button and subscribe to my channel. 

And also if you are in a job search right now and you are not getting those interviews, then I have a free resource that can help. It’s called the resume booster. And it talks about why your resume is failing you and four steps to quickly fix it. All you need to do is go to coachwithdanielle.com/boost to sign up for that free resource. 

So I hope you’ve enjoyed our little coffee chat and I will see you next week for my next video. Bye for now.