A person I know was recently laid off from a mid-sized Oil&Gas company as an operations manager. We’ll call him John. He was given a healthy parachute of a severance package and took a bit of time off after leaving his employer. He traveled a bit and then came back several months later and several $ lighter.
He started searching for the right career opportunity and wound up applying to anything online or in print that was close to relevant with the mindset that he would then have lots to choose from in a short period of time. As well, if people that saw him applying for a job he was clearly over-qualified for would then see the value that he was bringing and offer him something more substantial.
John rarely got a response to any of the positions he’d applied on and when he did, they were quite often form letters or emails saying thanks for the application but we are moving ahead with someone else. No reason, just goodbye. Nevertheless, John kept applying to things he’d see and wound up taking a subsistence job at a warehouse while he waited on the ‘right’ opportunity. He posted his resume on several websites, and kept applying.
He did get several opportunities to talk with people, but there was always something wrong with the opportunity, money, travel, location, role, or some combination of those things and others.
Finally, the market started coming back and his subsistence job had become unbearable and was not keeping up with his needs. A previous colleague, named Dave, called him from one of the roles he’d applied to and asked if he would interview for a more junior role than he had done in the past when they were peers. He said yes, thinking that it would be close to the same money and expectations, without doing much investigation. Before he knew it, they had made him a job offer as he was certainly more than capable of doing the job.
In the end, though, he found out that the compensation was much lower, with more travel and higher expectations of results and time commitment. John’s lack of planning had forced him into a role where he didn’t want to be, for less than he was worth or wanted, and his stress level was increasing because of the excessive workload. Not ideal, and yet, I’m sure you can think of at least one person that this has happened to in your career. The flip side of this situation is coming next and the outcome couldn’t be a more stark contrast.
