What a Potential Employer Won't Realize about Unemployment

Getting laid-off from a company that you trusted and dedicated several years of your life to is a traumatic experience.  A sense of lacking self-worth grows tenfold after weeks of rejection from potential hires for the same position, and debilitating after several months on unemployment benefits while you are attempting to get jobs in lower-paying positions, finally tanking what's left of your self-confidence when it seems like potential employers see your unemployment as the result of your actions.

A potential employer will not recognize the fact that there are no positions available in your field. If you were so highly qualified, why did they ditch you? But they won't ask.

What they will see is incompetence.

A potential employer will not see that while you weren't working for six months, you were trying to get another job, and balance that with losing your house, keeping your spouse, and finding an attorney so you can see your kids after you did lose your spouse.

What they will see is financial instability.

A potential employer will not understand that going to the gym every day was the only way to convince yourself that you had something to commit to.  It made you set your alarm and go to bed on time because without your family or a job, there wasn't much reason to get up in the morning. 

What they will see is poor time managment skills.

A potential employer will not recognize the fact that your pride, self-confidence, and general life satisfaction make what comes out of a meat-grinder look like a sweet, happy cow in comparasin.

What they will see is emotional instability.

And finally the potential employer is correct.  There is no emotional stability when you had to learn loss on a fast-track.  When a layoff to becomes a head-game, its easy to believe that everything you worked toward for your whole life was in vain.  You were the most valuable player.  You gave up a social life to work on that education.  You climbed mountains of ladders, smashed glass cielings, and now what? 

 

Now you have choices:

 

     1.  Give up

     2.  Press on

 

How did you answer that choice all those years back?  That same answer remains the key for your success, even now.