Being laid off can be overwhelming and it's easy to miss important tasks. This runbook will help make sure you stay on track.
Note: this is primarily geared towards Software Engineers, although much of the information is general enough to be applicable to any professional.
Note: this is almost assuredly incomplete, please feel free to submit a pull request or email [email protected] ๐
- Make sure you can login to payroll with your personal email.
- If you can't, make sure to download at least your last paystub.
- Make sure you can log in to your 401k with your personal email.
- Make sure you can log into any equity awards system with your personal email.
- Make sure your address and contact information are correct with the company.
- You will still need to receive tax forms, and any error will be harder to correct after your last day.
- Document your accomplishments
- Make a list of your projects, contributions, and achievements during your time at the company. This information can be useful when updating your resume and LinkedIn profile.
- If your company does performance reviews, your self-reflection may be a quick source to find highlights.
- Connect with colleagues by sharing contact info and/or requesting to add them on LinkedIn.
- If you are receiving severance, sign the necessary paperwork as soon as possible so that your first payment is not delayed.
- While you still have access to Slack, ask your manager, previous managers, and/or colleagues you worked closely with if they would be willing to give a reference check for you for your next role
- Potentially also ask for endorsements on LinkedIn.
- If you're eligible, file for unemployment with the state
- Take a breath. Do what you need to do to relax (exercise, video game, music, etc)
- Remind yourself that you weren't the only one laid off, and that your company isn't the only one that's done layoffs recently:
- Keep up professional contacts which are not directly related to job searching. Go to user groups and set up drinks/coffee/lunch with former co-workers. Online too as long as it leaves you connected (in a way that you used to be connected at work) and isn't just doomscrolling. As much as you can, make this energizing in a way that applying for jobs or studying for interviews might not be.
- If you are in dire need of employment, take the first offer you get.
- If you are in less dire of a situation, consider following a variant of the secretary problem, where you commit exploring before accepting. E.g. if you can spend 3 months job searching:
- Spend the first month interviewing and do not accept any offers.
- In the last two months, accept the first offer that is at least as good as the best offer from the first month.
- The duration of your severance is a good starting point.
- Sign up for LinkedIn and update your LinkedIn status to 'open to work'
- Sign up for Wellfound (formerly Angelist)
- Sign up for Hired
- Hacker News "Who Is Hiring" monthly threads (searchable: whoishiring.me)
- Jobs at YC Startups
- StillHiring.today
- Technical Phone Screen
- Even if you can't solve or don't have time to solve, review solutions to familiarize yourself with common patterns (e.g. using binary trees, BFS/DFS, etc) for algorithmic interviews. The programming tasks are probably not like your day-to-day programming tasks, and it may take a while to adjust.
- Practice algorithm interview questions:
- General advice for technical interviews:
- Mock interviews
- Ask trusted engineering contacts if they'd be willing to do a practice interview with you.
- Pay for a mock interview on Interviewing.io to get the full CoderPad experience.
- Even if you can't solve or don't have time to solve, review solutions to familiarize yourself with common patterns (e.g. using binary trees, BFS/DFS, etc) for algorithmic interviews. The programming tasks are probably not like your day-to-day programming tasks, and it may take a while to adjust.