Do you have a plan for yourself if your company were to give you a termination notice?
What will you do when suddenly your career just ends out of the blue, maybe because of the pandemic?
A lot of people I know have been retrenched because of the pandemic, and a lot of them don’t know what to do when they’re given such a notice.
Now, if you’ve ever gotten a termination notice, you know how scary it can be. You suddenly lose your income and still have bills to pay and it becomes really stressful especially if you don’t really have a plan.
When you don’t plan for a potential future where you don’t have employment, then you don’t know what to do and you start to look around.
It becomes a mess, you become stressed and you become disorganized.
So in today’s article, I’m going to share with you two key tips to allow you to overcome any kind of potential situation where you may be sacked.
You Need 10 People
The first tip that I have for you begins with a question: do you have a circle where people can actually help you to get a job?
So I call this the top 10 people that you need to keep close to you so that you can find opportunities easily.
Now, a lot of people don’t really build relationships with that in mind.
But if you do know some people who are really good at what they do and are in the same industry as you then you need to connect with them. Build a strong relationship with them so that if you are ever in a situation where your employment is at stake, they are somebody that you can go to.
A lot of people don’t have this.
In fact, they don’t even have relationships where they can go up to someone and ask for help or referrals.
This kind of relationship doesn’t happen overnight. It has to be built.
You need to kind of reinforce and add value to people before you even require any kind of help from them.
That’s where a lot of us are struggling because maybe they just think that, you know, after you’ve got a job, it’s not the time for you to be networking, but networking has to be done way, way, way before you actually need help from the other person.
It is because the better your network and the stronger your network, the more opportunities you will find for yourself.
So that’s the first thing you can do.
Leverage LinkedIn
The second thing you must do is always maintain your LinkedIn profile.
A lot of you have a LinkedIn profile, you set it up, but it is just collecting digital dust, right?
It means there’s basically a profile. You’ve done it up and then you’ve left it there and you’ve not had any kind of activity.
In fact, there’s more activity on Facebook and Instagram and all those other social media platforms as opposed to the professional one, which could actually help you improve your career.
But a lot of people don’t know what to put out on a professional platform.
They don’t know what the company’s stance on putting out content is, but you don’t have to overthink it.
Just sharing a little bit about your day, right?
Sharing a little bit about your philosophies, like if today is Chinese New Year sharing what you did with your family, if today is Valentine’s Day, then what are you doing with your loved one?
These kinds of simple kinds of things actually helps you to build your visibility.
You don’t need to go too technical because, at the end of the day, the people that you’re interacting with are humans, and humans don’t just work. They also have a personal side to them.
So having an 80% personal and a 20% professional way of putting out content will actually give you a lot of leverage and visibility when you are on LinkedIn.
Make sure that when you start out on your LinkedIn journey, you don’t just stop there after you’ve created the profile, but you also continue to enhance your visibility by being active there, commenting on other people’s posts, engaging with them and building your network from there.
Find out who in your company is active on LinkedIn and reach out to those people and see how you can build a community to be something that’s much stronger online.
Having a strong LinkedIn presence where you are consistently active is something that will help you in any kind of dire situation, especially if you are going to be retrenched because then it is all up to your personal connections.
By following these two tips, you will ensure that if things go south, you still have a ledge to hold on to.
Hopefully, you will not need to use them, but it’s always a good idea to have a plan B.
That’s it for this one! You can check out my blog for other content like this.
I write on all these topics that will allow you to adult properly and live a life of fun, freedom, fortune, and fulfillment.