Outplacement Transitions to OWN YOUR career

Outplacement Transitions to OWN YOUR career

Transitioning out of a role can be overwhelming, especially if unexpected. Yet, it’s also an opportunity to regroup, refocus, and relaunch. The transition involves three key phases: dealing with the loss of a role, finding the right next role, and starting a new role well. Each phase brings unique challenges, but with the right approach and support, you can turn this into a period of growth.

Phase One: “I Have Lost My Job”

Losing a job often feels like grief—it’s emotional and disorienting. While processing those emotions, focus on what you can control:

  1. Handle Logistics
    • Address total reward including severance, last pay, vacation, health care, 401k and documentation for unemployment insurance.
    • Secure references promptly—they’re most willing to help now.
  2. Organize Your Career Assets
    • In the midst of the change, we recommend you make sure to collect and centralize all of the important treasures of your career. These treasures include the kudo’s received in email, awards, certifications, performance appraisals, samples of your best works, and assessments.
  3. Clarify Who You Are: Personal and Professional Inventories
    • Reflect on your personal values and goals. In essence, reestablish your foundation of who you are and what matters most. Starting with your values, take time to understand your deeply held beliefs and how you see the world. This leads into reflecting and documenting what personal goals are most important in this time of transition. These personal goals provide your greater life requirements that include how you are to prioritize your use of time or requirements to make certain rewards in the future.
    • The Professional Inventory is the reality of how you create value in your work and where you have opportunity to develop. You should be able to declare mastery in certain areas of technical competency or leadership competency. In order to declare mastery on any certain competency, you should be able to reflect and document a STAR experience, citing the situation, task, action, and results, highlighting your success utilizing such mastered skills. Not only does this professional inventory exercise build confidence in how you create value, you are now more prepared for answering questions about your experiences in the future phases of securing the next role in interviewing.In this professional inventory, you can assess how you may target the next role and begin to look forward into what areas of technical or leadership competency you need to improve or develop. This creates a set of professional goals that will require actions plans for future development.
  4. Reaffirm Your Purpose
    • The biggest question to answer is WHY. Why am I in this situation? Why am I working? Having a purpose after being separated from work is critical. In this first phase of transitioning, we want to make sure you feel a higher purpose beyond the immediate loss. When you feel purpose, you’ll focus on larger outcomes and fulfillment.

Once you have sorted out the first phase of job loss by gaining personal and professional clarity (Values, Goals, Inventory, Purpose), you will have the confidence to move into Phase two: beginning the search for your next role.

Phase Two: “I Need a New Job”

The urgency to find work can be stressful, but this is also an opportunity to redefine your career. Often, when done well, we find people that have experienced outplacement become grateful for the change as it was a catalyst for improvement and provides a new opportunity for success.

  1. Create a Strategic Career Plan based on the realities of who you are and why you work
    • Develop the right one to two career paths (“lanes”) that align with your values, goals, inventory, and purpose. We help you identify and target 15–20 companies and people in these lanes for outreach and warm networking based on your Mastery (strengths in delivery) and Freedom (personal choices).
    • Build and activate a network of supporters, including a coach and a small Board of Advisors, to guide and connect you.
  2. Engage the Market strategically with Humans
    • In today’s world, applying to jobs and getting the right interviews are not the same process. Be strategic in how you network and secure meetings that lead to the meetings of most value. Nothing is wasted if you have the right targets to pursue in the right lanes to secure meetings to discuss ideas, not the need for a job. Plan each engagement proactively to add value by bringing ideas and asking for feedback, not a job. Yes, asking for a job is a good thing at the right time, but be sure to show your knowledge and capability by discussing ideas that impact the company or markets of the person you are meeting. Everyone will take a meeting on ideas. It is very difficult to secure meetings to help you get a job.
    • In every meeting you secure, you should look for two outcomes – 1) a next step to meet again, 2) while not a good fit for this person, the next person they think you should meet. These outcomes will prove both your humility and competency. People want to help highly competent humble people.
  3. Tell your Story well in all circumstances
    • To be most effective in the market, you must be able to tell your story well in all types of moments. By continuing to reflect and document who you are, you have collected the main tenets of your story – your values, purpose, your strengths as told in your STAR experiences, your personal and professional goals with actions to achieve growth tied to your lanes of career interest. These stories should be captured with consistency in a variety of formats to include a resume, LinkedIn, presentations, and responses to questions in preparation for interviews or coffee meetings.
    • Start a meeting by stating your values and purpose tied to your future growth. Everyone is impressed by the thoughtfulness, clarity, and confidence displayed. In addition, having market ideas to discuss are also part of your story that allow people to provide feedback and have a reason to engage in the future.
  4. Win every meeting
    • In every interaction – from an email to a phone call to a coffee to and interview – prepare with humility to win. Winning means the other person you have been with knows you, understands how you can help them succeed, and is willing to help you.
    • This type of preparation shows a commitment to success by spending time to understand the person you are meeting and what problems you may be able to help them solve – as a person, a leader in a company, or the industry they work. Lean in. Spend time to research available information and even speak to others to gain knowledge and understanding that may even surprise the human you are meeting – make a real impression. Never show up without an agenda and ideas to discuss that reveal your competence and energy for succeeding.
    • Ask for a next step: How can I help you? Which prompts the question in return…opening your ability to ask for support in your transition. Which may result in a offer to introduce you to another.
    • If you don’t get these kinds of supporting next steps, it is a point to consider as feedback – maybe you didn’t win an advocate for your ideas and plans. Take this feedback and continue to improve your approach. This is true for interviews to warm networking to securing a new role.

Phase Three: “I’m Starting a New Job”

It is proven that starting a new role has a unique mix of stress and challenge. While the interview and hiring process provide certain insights to the company, leader, and role, it is only when you start the role that reality strikes. In addition, the existing leader and team have elevated expectations for a new person coming into a vacated or new role. In this third phase of transition, often you can be too cautious in your approach to your new company, team and leader due to reduced trust and new relationships.

Having a holistic 90 day plan, like the one outlined below, is very helpful.

  1. Build Relationships
    • Focus on “winning every meeting” in phase three as you would in phase two. Humbly share your story. Share your values and goals with colleagues to foster transparency and trust.
    • The key relationships you must win include:
      • Your direct leader in securing clear expectations for success in the first 30-60-90 days.
      • Your immediate team mates to gain trust and support.
      • Your most important internal or external customers on key details of execution that is required.
      • Peers from other functional areas that help drive the outcomes of your role, such as collaborative peers in marketing, sales, supply chain, finance, manufacturing, customer service, etc.
    • Listen and learn from these key constituents to understand their goals, culture and processes.
  2. Focus on Early Wins
    • Identify ways to add value quickly. Small successes build confidence and credibility.
    • Determine the top three areas and measures for success and gain agreement with your direct leader.
  3. Plan for the Future
    • Envision long-term career goals, both for this role and beyond. Keep your strategic career plan alive and aligned with your purpose.
    • After your first 90 days, revisit your understanding with your leader and other key stakeholders to update a longer term vision of success for your career at the new company.
    • With a focus on your continuous development that makes you more valuable, develop the top three areas for professional development in leadership skills and technical development.

Be aware: The hiring leader and the team want you to succeed, but may not remember how stressful the first days to weeks are for starting a new role. Own your career, your development, and your growth.

Career Security Through Planning

Job security may not exist, but career security does. By owning your career plan, reflecting on your values, and remaining adaptable, you can navigate transitions with confidence and purpose. Each phase of this journey is an opportunity to grow and set the foundation for long-term success.