When you were made redundant, you may have thought outplacement help wouldn’t be of use to you… But now you’ve started your job search independently and it’s not going as well as you had hoped.
Fortunately accepting outplacement help can benefit you at every stage of your job search. From coping with change to assessing your options, writing a resume and right through to negotiating a job offer.
Struggling to get job interviews
This week we heard from a couple of unsuccessful job seekers. Although they’d been made redundant a while ago, they hadn’t wanted to access a support program when they first lost their jobs.
Now they were struggling to get job interviews and starting to despair of securing a job. Could they start their outplacement help now and get started on the career transition program, they asked?
Outplacement help is always a good idea
Although you get the most benefit from it if you start an outplacement program soon after redundancy, it can help at any stage in your job search.
Even if you begin late in the process, this type of specialist support can still be beneficial. Here are 10 reasons why.
1. Take advantage of free career coaching
If you’ve been offered support to transition to a new role, don’t ignore this assistance. You may feel you don’t need support coping with redundancy and finding a new job, but really you’ve got nothing to lose – and plenty to gain. Use your consultant’s career management knowledge and professional, recruitment and training network to find the job you really want.
As it’s being paid for by your previous employer, why not benefit from career advice at no cost to yourself? It’s free, and you get to choose what support will help you most.
What you discuss with your outplacement consultant will remain confidential and will not be shared with your former employer.
2. Cope with change
Redundancy can be highly stressful. It can take time to come to terms with the change to your circumstances. Identifying and understanding the emotions you may be feeling can help you better deal with them and come to terms with the situation.
Outplacement help provides both practical and emotional specialist career coaching support. This helps you navigate the competitive job market and move into suitable new employment as soon as possible. You may eventually see this experience as an opportunity, rather than a job loss.
3. Assess potential career directions
This support can do more than help you move smoothly into a new job. If you want to consider alternative options or make a career change, outplacement is a chance to explore all the possible avenues open to you.
With an opportunity for professional assessment, it can define your interests, goals and values, and assess your suitability for a range of careers. Whether you’re a senior executive, manager, administrator or in operations, outplacement help can assist you in achieving your career transition goal.
4. Find a better work/life balance
Fed up with working long hours and sacrificing time with friends or family? Through career counselling and assessment exercise you can explore alternatives such as part-time employment, self-employment, consulting and retirement.
If you’ve received severance or a redundancy package, you may at last have the funds (and the freedom) to investigate options and follow-up ambitions you have previously rejected for lack of time and money.
5. Learn about new job search methodologies
If it’s been a few years since you last searched for a job, you may be unaware of the latest search trends and methods. Social media in particular has become popular with employers as a means to recruit new staff. Outplacement help can introduce you to these new methods and enable you to use them effectively when looking for work.
For example, although a resume is still a key part of a job search, many recruiters and employers now search for potential candidates through LinkedIn. They use keywords to identify people matching what they are looking for. And as part of a modern job search strategy, you can use LinkedIn to find and apply for job postings, research organisations, identify contacts and so on.
6. Update your resume
If you haven’t been getting job interviews, your resume may not be selling your skills and achievements effectively to employers. By working with an outplacement consultant you can develop a results-oriented resume that increases its effectiveness.
As professional resume writers, they can enhance your resume and make it stand out from the crowd (for all the right reasons). They can highlight your achievements, challenges you’ve overcome, ideas you’ve introduced or business and awards you have won, impressing the reader with your past experiences and success. This increases your chance of securing a job interview.
7. Expand your network
Networking is a key part of job searching. But for those of us who are not natural networkers, it can be difficult making connections. But there are ways of approaching networking that can make the task easier.
An outplacement consultant can provide you with great tips on how to broaden your current network. This can give you a competitive advantage when trying to access the ‘hidden job market’.
8. Improve your interview technique
A job interview is when you go into greater detail about the skills and abilities you have included in your resume. It’s not enough to recite a list of skills. Employers will want you to provide examples of how you have used those skills and what you achieved.
By providing an insight into what interviewers want to hear, interview coaching as part of outplacement help can enable you to answer questions effectively. This can also give you the confidence to come across as engaging, articulate and likeable while still being yourself.
9. Strengthen your negotiation skills
Even if you don’t access outplacement help until you’ve received a job offer, negotiation coaching can help you to increase the salary package and benefits on offer.
Negotiating for your own benefit can be a challenge. It can make many job seekers feel uncomfortable – they don’t want to seem rude or greedy asking for a higher salary that what’s offered by a potential employer. Outplacement help can provide proactive solutions to the challenge and assist you to articulate your value proposition.
10. Future-proof your job search
Even if you have a job lined up already, career transition support can still help you if you need to search for a new job in the future. By taking advantage of outplacement services now, you will acquire skills you can put to use later.
Take up the offer of outplacement help
Investing in yourself will reap rewards, whether in future job opportunities, a different career direction or simply a greater understanding of what makes you tick.