Please take this advice: always be ready to jump ship [View all]

[pnwmom]

Last edited Tue Apr 22, 2014, 06:52 AM - Edit history (2)

if you work for a large corporation.

Always be ready no matter where you work, but especially with a large corporation where you don’t personally know the people in charge.

If lay-offs or transfers have been announced in your division, or even if you’ve just been seeing suspicious signs of lay-offs, DON’T TRUST MANAGEMENT if they tell you you’re on a “protected” list, or a "priority" list, or a “critical list,” or a “safe” list. Don’t trust that your employee evaluation or rating means your job is safe. Don’t trust them no matter how much you like your direct manager. He might lose his own job if he tells you the truth.

You need to take appropriate steps instead so that you can land in a new job if you need to. If you wait till you know for sure, then other openings in your company (if that’s where you want to go) may be filled by the time you officially lose your job.

Five years ago, my sister saw the writing on the wall at her bank – and so did everyone else in the division. But for a year, the bank insisted that all the division’s jobs were safe – that only other people would lose their jobs. And then, suddenly, the whole division was given two weeks notice – and the chance to reapply for jobs a thousand miles away.

A nephew with a freshly minted engineering degree chose from three job offers for his first position out of college. Within three months, his entire 200-person division was laid off, and it took him almost a year to find another job. As a potential new hire, he wasn’t aware of the rumors that had been going through the company, but others were. And yet most were still blindsided by the cuts.

And now, another relative is a middle level manager at a large corporation that has announced layoffs and transfers in one of the divisions. The corporation is lying to individual employees about their status – telling them that their jobs are protected – but, at the same time and behind their backs, scheduling them for layoffs within the year. The only reason the manager doesn’t quit is because he’s trying to find landing spots elsewhere in the corporation for as many of his employees as he can. In the decades he’s worked there, he’s never seen anything like this and it’s making him sick.

But it’s the new reality.

So if you work at a large corporation and there’s even a hint of layoffs in the air, get your resume ready, put yourself in Linked In, and get ready to jump ship if you need to. Or maybe even if you don’t. If your company has already announced layoffs or transfers of jobs, start looking for options both inside and outside the corporation. Don’t for any reason let them lull you into thinking your particular job is safe. IT IS NOT.

Please figure out your options now, while you still have a job, because it will be much harder later. Don’t trust your corporation to play fair, no matter how long you’ve been with it, and no matter how important you think you are to them. And if you sense trouble, don’t ignore your instincts – trust them. You’re the only one you can trust. Don’t be in denial.

And if you think I’m writing about YOUR corporation – I AM.