Layoffs present opportunity to find enjoyable employment

“Lay-offs are great,” says Gene Hodge a training consultant that provides career transition workshops and seminars. Layoffs force you to get out of your comfort zone and do something else. They present opportunities for unemployed individuals and those in career transition to assess their age, skills, abilities, interests and experiences; and give you the time to think about what you would like to do.  It also presents an opportunity for you to find not just a job, but enjoyable employment.

Most workers fear a layoff or wish they were not layed-off. They tend not to understand the benefits of a being laid off. Most likely, if you survived a layoff, then you must perform your job and someone else’s job too. The company doesn’t give you double pay.  Instead, they rename the job title because you have more job responsibilities. The fear of being laid off makes workers perform more work and thus produce more. In most cases, companies that downsize and remain open tend to make more money with fewer people during the same time period. In reality, each of us has the ability within us to be more productive or produce more when forced too.

We all really already know what we are good at doing and what we enjoy doing. We just do not know what job title to put on it. To gain awareness of what you enjoy doing, think of it this way. Let’s say you work an 8-hour job. It’s takes you an hour to get to work and an hour to get back home. So 10 hours of your day is spent working for someone else. That leaves 14 hours left in our twenty-four hour day. I say that outside of the time you spend sleeping, you do exactly what you enjoy doing. Nobody forces you to do what you enjoy.

Larry Labelle, a workshop participant probably sums it up best. He said, “This workshop helped me realize skills and abilities I never thought I had but, more importantly, jobs in the future that I have not yet identified. For that alone, the workshop was awesome”.

Here are some tips to finding enjoyable employment.

Don’t just say job titles when you are describing your background.  Job titles do not describe what you know how to do. When describing the jobs you’ve had, always speak about the responsibilities you had in the various jobs.

Don’t use words like: qualified, qualifications, skills, talented, intelligent, etc. because they are subjective to the other guy’s opinion. Plus, none of these words describe what you know how to do.

Don’t bring up your credentials unless you are a recent graduate high school or college or skill-based training program. People as well as employers really want to know what you want to do (goals) and what you know how to do (background). You credentials only describe the training you received and not what you know how to do.

Do focus on what you are good at doing and what you know how to do. Never bring-up what you don’t want to do or didn’t like doing.

Do focus on what you enjoy doing. What you enjoy doing tells a lot about the type of person you are.

Do remember people are looking at you, watching your body language, listening to how you describe you and making judgments based on what coming out of your mouth.

Remember, employers are always looking for ways to improve productivity. What you enjoy doing naturally makes you productive and it requires the use of multiple skills and abilities.