Right now, I’m not the Consultant who Cooks!
Well, folks. It’s happened. The tech layoffs of 2023 has finally hit my doorstep. At the beginning of August, my firm decided to undergo a global corporate restructuring and my position was made redundant as a result.
Ironically, what made me step away from this blog was a combination of life factors (I’m two years into a relationship and we just moved in together!) and, as you may expect, the demands of my consulting career itself. While I’ve been spending the last two-and-a-half months (outside of our trip to Europe) networking, applying, and interviewing in the midst of an admittedly slow job market, I figured now’s as good a time as any to revive this blog and see if anyone finds it helpful.
Me visiting the Louvre in Paris for the first time!
The intention of this blog was to offer wellness strategies for consultants. I think it’s equally important (if not more so) for consultants who are impacted by the current layoffs to maintain their health and wellness. I think the most useful format for this post is a series of DOs and DON’Ts that laid of consultants can do.
DO vent about how you’re feeling to someone you trust. I grew up in a conservative Indian family that encourages men to be stoic in the face of challenges. I think it’s important that you are honest about how you feel to someone you trust to not judge you for it. This can be your significant other, a close friend, or a therapist (yes, seriously! Part of a therapist’s job is to listen to you and not judge you!). But…
DON’T air your grievances about your former workplace out somewhere where people can see it, particularly on social media or anywhere else on the internet. Not only is this counterproductive as it will certainly cast you in a negative light to any future employer, but saying negative things about your former employer can open you up to a lawsuit, especially if you signed a severance agreement.
DO seek advice from qualified people. I was fortunate to leave my firm on a positive note with my former immediate teammates. One of my former managers (who has since been RIF’d himself) has even offered to give me career coaching to help me through finding my next role. In addition, while I don’t think it’s necessary for me, I once again recommend professional psychological advice if you need it. But...
DON’T go down the self-help rabbit hole. Scrolling through social media, be it LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok, I’m seeing all sorts of self-help career advice, almost all of it the opposite of helpful. One extreme I see is the Brigette Hyacinth/Oleg Vishnepolsky “It’s not your fault. The reason you’re not getting what you want is because those big bad corporate meanies are too shallow to see how amazing you are.” The other extreme (and equally unhelpful) is the motivational “huslter porn” that seems to have all this advice for becoming a badass entrepreneur without having any insight as to what poster’s successful business is — the only insight you get is that you’re not succeeding because you’re not waking up at 4am every day and practicing the 8 (or 7 or 10 depending on the Instagram page) Japanese Techniques to Overcome Laziness and Be More Awesome.
Actual Instagram results I get when I start typing “the business” into the search bar
As a younger millennial, I’m from the era where there was stigma around getting laid off and receiving unemployment benefit — “Of course he was let go. He wasn’t justifying his continued existence with his employer and now he’s mooching off the government!” And yes, applying for unemployment from New York State, with its site repeatedly crashing and probing questions asking me, “Are you sure you were laid off and not fired?”, still ranks among the most humiliating experiences I’ve had in my life. Thankfully, particularly with the number of workers these layoffs are impacting, being laid off doesn’t carry as much of a stigma as it used to and now people are recognizing it for what it is: an employer, for whatever reason, deciding they can’t afford to keep you on anymore.
DO engage in fulfilling hobbies. If your hobby eventually turns into a side hustle that you can monetize, great! If not, then it’s still beneficial for your mental health and will also just generally make you a more interesting person. I, for one, decided to revive this blog and I started a food and fitness TikTok here:
DON’T start a hobby with the specific intention of monetizing it. People can recognize inauthenticity, particularly in the case of social media influencers, and odds are you will fail if this is what you set out to do.
DO focus on your job search. Regardless of your financial situation, your new priority will likely be getting yourself re-employed as soon as possible. While I am cash stable for the short term, I realize I miss having health insurance. That said…
DON’T focus on your job hunt at the expense of your physical, mental, or emotional health. The mistake I made, contrary to the advice seniors have given me, was jumping right into the job hunt and panic applying to any position that even vaguely sounded like what I was doing before. While I’ve been returning myself to my pre-layoff gym routine and healthy eating, I still discovered the hard way that this is the fast track to burnout. Something I’m forcing myself to do (to varying degrees of success) is to concentrate my job hunting activities to normal working hours Monday through Friday from 9 to 5. While it is true that job hunting is itself a fulltime job, HR and hiring managers are almost certainly not working evenings or weekends, so neither should you.
DO find healthy outlets to blow some steam. I think the gym is the perfect place to burn some pent up energy. While the challenge can be, especially if you’re like me and you live in New York, finding good things to do that don’t involve spending money, some good ways to take breaks include just stepping out and getting some fresh air, spending time with your loved ones, and yes, the occasional beer with friends. But…
Spotted at least twice in Belgium
DON’T find yourself slipping into unhealthy habits. It goes without saying you should be mindful of your consumption of alcohol or other substances; I, for one, found myself slipping into the tendency to stress eat like I did as an engineering student with the current rate cookies are disappearing. One thing that I personally found useful is checking in with myself to see if I’m about to bite into a cookie or sip some whiskey because I actually want it, or if I was looking to numb or distract myself from what is going on.
Of course if you suspect yourself (or someone close to you suspects you) of actually slipping into an addiction, then absolutely go get professional help!
So these are the best tips I can come up with if you are like me, and find yourself in a less-than-employed state. I’ve had many people close to me who have been laid off over the course of their lives, some even more than once, but they all agreed that their next roles were almost always bigger and better than what they were doing before. I’ve been unemployed for nearly a quarter now, and I keep reminding myself that it’s just temporary.