Losing a job can impact far more than your finances. As well as shaking your confidence and sense of worth it can also challenge your identity and sense of who you are without the role you’ve had. This can be especially hard if you’ve followed a linear career path over many years.
Don’t take it personally
While you may need time to process a redundancy, it’s important to consider the broader context of an evolving job market, rather than questioning your worth or value.
Technology, global competition and ongoing economic pressures are rapidly changing the way organisations operate. Businesses are constantly adapting, restructuring and reconsidering the skills they need. As a result, employment is much more fluid than it used to be, and career changes and transitions are becoming a normal part of working life.
Flexibility is the new security
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report highlights the significant transformation to employment across occupations and around the globe. This is supported by job mobility research, which predicts that people may need to move through as many as 18 jobs over the course of their working lives.
This makes it important to see your career as bigger and broader than any job. Rather than relying on an employer, modern professionals need to create their own security by becoming more flexible and open to change. These skills can help you handle transitions with greater confidence and move into new roles and opportunities more easily.
Embrace your future
While your previous role is part of your career story, it does not define what comes next. Instead of trying to recapture past successes and ruminating on what was, it is more inspiring to focus on what you can become.
The focus here is to reconnect with who you are beyond your work by exploring your fundamental qualities, values and interests. This can provide a source of strength and stability as you navigate this period of uncertainty.
Being true to yourself can also help you identify a direction that genuinely resonates with you and feels right at a deeper level. With clarity about what you really want you’ll be in a far stronger position to communicate an authentic and compelling professional story.
Project Placed is a not-for-profit organisation. We provide free career coaching and do not promote any paid services. Book your session and you’ll connect with experts in the areas of career development, mental wellbeing, LinkedIn and CV writing, skills profiling and interview preparation.
