With over 9.3 million people furloughed and over 150,000 redundancies in the UK since the start of the Coronavirus epidemic, like many other people, you may be feeling anxious about your immediate and future career prospects.
To compound that anxiety, as the level of UK government backed support for businesses is reduced over the coming months, that may create some difficult staffing decisions for many business owners if the Coronavirus epidemic continues to keep its current stranglehold on normal daily life. The consequences for individuals could be stark. Loss of livelihood, loss of self-esteem and loss of sense of purpose, to name but a few.
However, even during the darkest times, there are a number of things that you can do to give yourself the best chance to rebuild and move forwards positively. As someone who has previously experienced early enforced retirement and rebuilt their career from scratch, I’d like to share some thoughts on how you can remain positive and help yourself to put your best foot forward again, if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of encountering career difficulties in the coming months.
1. Don’t blame yourself or others
One of the easiest traps to fall into during a career crisis, is to try and find someone to blame for the situation that you find yourself in. And one of the easiest people to try and point the finger at is yourself!
Whilst looking back and dwelling on ‘what might have been’ had you approached things differently might help to temporarily soothe the ego, the time and mental effort used to do that can be exhausting. To be quite frank, at a time where you might be feeling like you’re in the middle of a dark forest without a torch or compass, wasting your valuable energy is the last thing that you need! In any event, nobody could have predicted the impact of COVID, so realising that career uncertainty is neither your nor anyone else’s fault, will help you to get a better sense of perspective about things.
The quicker that you can stop and acknowledge that, the quicker you will be able to get back onto your feet and plan how best to move forward.
2. Activate your support network
In any life changing situation your ability to move forward confidently depends on how you process any resulting shock or trauma. If you have mentally blamed yourself or others for the position that you find yourself in, you may find it hard to reach out to others, because you may think that you/others have wrecked your career and as a result, you might find it more difficult to put trust in people.
However, adopting that frame of mind is ultimately both toxic and unhelpful and can seriously derail your chances of moving forward successfully.
Instead, activating a support network of people who know you well & who will listen to you impartially over a cup of tea, provides you with the vital audience to be able to talk to about how you feel, whilst feeling listened to as well. That network could be family, friends. mentors or others. If you don’t feel that you can speak to anyone in your immediate support network, there are a wide range of counselling options, many free to use and run by fantastic volunteers and charities. But don’t sit and suffer in silence, because activating a strong support network will provide you with the tools and emotional support that you will need to put things into better perspective and start planning for a brighter future.
3. Give yourself some space
Processing the loss or breakdown of a job or career takes energy and can take its toll mentally. Just as with any job, it is therefore important that you give yourself the space to look after yourself properly.
Taking regular exercise, eating a balanced diet and getting out of your normal environment for some fresh air will all help in providing the support and nutrients that your body needs to help you to adopt and maintain a positive mindset. It will also mean that you are in good shape when it comes to starting your next job or career!
4. Read some books, listen to some music, have a go at painting, or do something else fun!
To move forward from a career setback also requires an element of creativity and imagination, but if a job or career ends, it may feel like all creativity and imagination has been sucked out of you and left behind.
As children, our natural curiosity comes from various outlets, but simple things like reading a book, listening to music, getting a paint box out or doing an adventure day can all ignite our childlike curiosity.
If you make moping and self-pity a routine, it will get you nowhere fast. However, the more that you indulge in these types of activities, the more you will also tap into your creative thinking, which in turn will help with the next topic….
5. Ideas, ideas, ideas!
To move forward from a career set back requires some new thinking and new ideas. You may simply want to try and find a similar role to your old job, but that’s not always going to be possible or straightforward, so it is always good to have a range of options that you can consider.
The four previous steps build a framework from which you can start to explore ideas. Reading a business book or biography may give you inspiration to start your own business or partner with others. Reading recipe books may give you an idea about exploring a career in food, photography, graphic design, writing or publishing. Going on a walk or a journey may open your eyes to a new location and provide a sense of excitement about working somewhere new. Going for a long walk and revisiting your childhood memories may bring up a previous passion that you always wanted to explore.
Of course not all ideas may necessarily be suitable or feel like the right thing, but by giving yourself options, you stand a much better chance of finding something new that you not only enjoy, but which provides the spark from which you can start to carve out a new path forward.
6. Do a skills audit
Once you have some ideas, you can do an audit against the skills that you have acquired and developed both in your previous role(s), at school/university and in any voluntary work.
You may have a dream job in mind and think you have no skills for that job (for example you might be thinking can I start a business without an MBA, or become a lawyer without a law degree?). However, if you are really passionate about a particular vocation, the necessary skills can be acquired if you are patient and in today’s age of social media there is a huge array of information available on how to start out in a new career. In any event, you may need less formal qualifications than you think to get started!
Starting afresh after a career setback is always likely to require some degree of work and dedication. However, by investing in yourself, you will also be expanding your skills base and making yourself more attractive to future employers, or discovering ways of how to get that business you always wanted started.
6. Keep on top of the basics
The commonly trodden path to a job takes the form of all or some of going to school, going to college/university and/or doing some on the job-training/an apprenticeship. During these formal years of education and training, building and developing our communication skills is essential. However, as you settle into a job or career for any length of time, these skills can sometimes be taken for granted, as we focus more on career progression and building business.
However, communication whether in person, in writing, over the phone, or increasingly over video conference is a vital part of any person’s toolkit.
Whilst nobody wants to go through the pain of an enforced career or job change, not practicing these basic skills can make it more difficult to recover. However, by spending time practicing these core skills, it will provide you with confidence with which to able to have new discussions with potential new employers or business contacts. It will also make you come across better to them too.
7. Education & re-education
Taking new career ideas forward and keeping on top of the basics may mean that you decide to go back to college/university to do a course, or do one of the many online courses that are available today.
However, a career set back is sometimes a good juncture at which to assess our basic competencies and consider whether some re-training could help to propel us forward on a new career path.
For example, taking a course on more effective or empathetic listening could help you to explore a role that you had never thought about which requires good listening skills. Or a course on critical thinking could open your eyes to new ways of thinking, which may be relevant to career that you have thought about in the past, but ignored.
Life-long learning is an often overlooked and undervalued skill, but it is essential in adapting to new work environments and new technologies and in making businesses more creative in their thinking. The more that you can take the responsibility for your own learning, the better the career outcomes you are likely to obtain in the future.
8. Don’t feel ashamed about the type of work you do whilst you recalibrate your career
Following the loss of a job or career, jumping into something new that pays the same or more, or which gives you the same peace of mind isn’t always going to be instantly available.
When I was forced to retire early from a successful music career because of a repetitive strain injury, I didn’t know anything apart from music and it was a while before I decided to go to law school to retrain. However, in the intervening period, I worked on a supermarket checkout, as a credit card application form processor and in a music shop.
In hindsight, all of those jobs taught me one hugely valuable thing. How to speak to customers and how to help them. So if you need to do some temporary work to help to pay the bills, you might just find that the work that you do teaches you more useful skills than you think and helps you to practice giving excellent customer service, which will undoubtedly help you to exceed in any job.
Put your best foot forward!
The loss of a job or a career are life changing moments that need to be handled delicately and with care. If you fail to take stock, let emotion take over and do not plan a sensible way forward giving yourself the time and space to recover from unfortunate circumstances, moving forward with confidence will be challenging.
However, by not blaming yourself, looking after yourself with the help of a good support network and giving yourself the time and space to open your eyes, ears and mind to new things, you will help yourself to provide the platform from which you can rejuvenate your career.
In turn, the resilience and experience that you develop on that journey will help you to weather any future storms more easily, allowing you to enjoy your life and career more – and ultimately become a role model and mentor for others who through no fault of their own, find themselves in similar difficult situations in the future.