You Just Lost Your Job: The First 72 Hours

One day you have a job. Then somebody calls you into an office, schedules a meeting, or gets on the phone and tells you that you don’t.

Maybe you were laid off. Maybe you were fired. Maybe they called it being let go, restructuring, downsizing, eliminating your position, or something else entirely. The words matter later. Right now, the result is the same: you walked into the day employed and came out of it wondering what you’re going to do next.

I’ve been there more than once. Sometimes the economy turned and people were laid off. Sometimes companies changed or bought out or had to close. Every time, I did what I thought I was supposed to do. I started looking for another job.

Looking back, I wish I had approached those first days differently.

If this just happened to you, I’m not going to tell you to have your life figured out by tomorrow. You probably have bills coming. You may have severance and a little breathing room, or you may have walked out with nothing but your final paycheck coming. Those are two very different situations.

The first thing is to find out exactly where you stand.

Before you start sending resumes everywhere

Your instinct may be to open the laptop, pull up your resume, go to LinkedIn or Indeed, and start applying. I understand that instinct because I’ve done it over and over again.

Open the laptop. Look at the jobs that are out there. Pull up your resume. But don’t convince yourself that you have to solve unemployment in one afternoon.

First, read your resume as if you haven’t seen in a while. If you haven’t evaluated it in years, it may describe a person you were several years ago instead of the person you are now and your aspirations. Ask yourself what it says about you. Does it show what you actually accomplished? Does it show how your responsibilities grew? Does it tell somebody what you can do, or does it simply list where you worked?

Don’t worry about making it perfect yet. Make notes. We will come back to it.

Get the employment paperwork together

Put everything you received from your employer in one place. Find out when your final pay is coming, what happens to your benefits, whether there is severance, and whether there are deadlines buried in the paperwork.

If you’re given an agreement you don’t understand, don’t pretend you understand it. Read it. Ask questions. Get qualified help when you need it.

Also, don’t decide for yourself that you aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits. Eligibility depends on the circumstances and the rules where you live. Check with your state’s official unemployment or workforce agency and let the agency determine whether you qualify.

Health insurance and other benefits deserve the same attention. Find the actual end date of your coverage and learn what continuation or replacement options are available to you. If you have a retirement account through work, don’t make a frightened decision with it simply because you suddenly need money. Find out what your options are first.

Now look at the money

This part can be uncomfortable, especially if there isn’t much in savings. Do it anyway.

What money do you have right now? What money is still coming? What bills are due in the next seven days? What is due in the next thirty? Which expenses can be reduced or postponed? Which ones absolutely cannot?

You aren’t trying to create the perfect household budget for the rest of your life. You are trying to see the ground underneath your feet.

Be careful what you do while you’re angry

Losing a job can make you angry. Sometimes you have every reason to be angry. But anger doesn’t need access to your keyboard.

Don’t spend the evening attacking your former employer online. Don’t send the message you will wish you could retrieve tomorrow. Don’t take company information that doesn’t belong to you. Save your own legitimate records and contacts, but leave proprietary information where it belongs.

You have enough to deal with. Don’t create another problem for yourself.

A short first-72-hours check-in

Take out a notebook, print this section, or answer these questions in a document on your laptop. Don’t overthink them. This isn’t the big career questionnaire we’ll work through later. This is simply a way to get yourself centered.

• What exactly happened to my job?
• What paperwork did I receive, and what questions do I still have?
• How much money do I have available today?
• What income, final pay, severance, or other money may still be coming?
• What bills must be paid during the next seven days?
• What bills are due during the next thirty days?
• When does my health coverage end?
• Have I checked my state’s official unemployment or workforce agency?
• When did I last update my resume?
• What is one thing I did particularly well in my last job?
• What do people regularly ask me for help with?
• Who are three people I can contact without feeling as though I’m asking them for a job?
• What is the single most important thing I need to handle tomorrow?

That’s enough for now.

What happens after the first 72 hours?

This is where I wish I had done things differently.

Every time I lost a job, I concentrated on finding another job. I applied and applied. When the answers didn’t come, or the answer was no, the time started wearing on me. Meanwhile, the bills didn’t stop because I was unemployed.

I eventually found another job. I always did. But I didn’t spend enough of that time asking what else I could build, what else I could learn, or how I could make myself less vulnerable the next time a company or an economy changed.

That’s what we’re going to do differently here.

We’re going to look for work. But we’re also going to look at what you know, what you’ve done, what you might be able to earn outside a traditional job, what you want from the next part of your working life, and how you can use this time instead of letting it use you.

On Monday, we’ll start looking forward.