Say you just got laid off. For many of you, your first thought may be to take a little time off to consider the next best step in my career. That’s a bad call for most engineers.
Consider 2 scenarios: i) an engineer over 40 and ii) an engineer nearer to the start of their career.
If you haven’t reached the big 4-0, then finding a great next job to advance your career is a logical next step. No doubt you will be under some financial pressure, but there should be a reasonable number of jobs for somebody with your skill set. First you’ll look locally in your industry, then expand your search to other industries in your city. If that doesn’t work out within 2-3 months, then you’ll have to look further afield. That’s a pretty logical flow. But in any event, you need to start looking now because you can’t count on the current economy to return a good job quickly.
If you are over 40 years old, there is a whole other dynamic going on. You may have accumulated enough wealth or negotiated a big enough severance to allow you to survive a long layoff. You may have been at your last employer for a long time and so you might want to find another perfect job you can stay at until the end of your career. That’s a really bad idea.
There is an age bias in our society that makes it tougher for older engineers to find work. If you are over 50, or (egad!) over 60, this bias can become a significant hurdle. And it gets even worse if you have been out of work for a long time. Recruiters look at candidates like fish in a grocery store – they’ve developed an innate bias for the freshest candidates.
So even if you can hang on financially, your career may not survive a long layoff. So what to do? Since you can’t change the odometer (your age), I suggest you change your speedometer (your work status), by accepting a new position quickly. That doesn’t mean you have to take on a menial job 100 miles from home. But if you could get a position with a fancy sounding title that maybe doesn’t pay so great, you will have gone a long way towards addressing this issue.
And what kind of position might that be? Well, almost anything might work. Broaden your horizons to include jobs outside your industry, jobs at smaller companies, contract work and part-time jobs. Your goal should be to stay fresh and learning rather than earning the top dollar.
You might ask, “But won’t that strategy reduce my market value?”. Recruiters typically ask your salary expectations, but if one should ask directly about your current earnings, you can still reference your previous job – the one you just left rather than the one you have at the time – as the benchmark for your market value.
And one last point. Even if you are employed, now is still a good time to be looking for a job. You never know when it will end. Somebody told me that work is something that we do between job searches. Go forward with that mentality and you’ll do well. But you already knew that.
Good luck,
John