Winning - Jack Welch [95]
“I told my wife I was going to get it, and I did.”
Charlie’s rational response floored me because usually after people have been let go, they become very defensive.
Defensive—and depressed.
Both conditions, albeit natural and common, are what kill you when you go out to get a job again. An employer can pick up low self-esteem across the room, and people want to hire winners.
But how do you act like a winner when you feel like a loser?
I asked Charlie that question.
His approach, he said, was to draw on what he called his “reservoir of self-confidence”—his strong family and his store of positive feelings about himself and his achievements in the past. He used that internal capital to stay connected with business colleagues and to network for new opportunities. He also used it to stay active socially and in community activities.
“At first, maybe people were looking at me differently and talking about me because I wasn’t working anymore,” Charlie said. “I tried not to pay attention to that.”
The goal, if you’ve been let go, is to stay out of what I have always referred to as “the vortex of defeat,” in which you let yourself spiral into inertia and despair.
One reason why people often get sucked into the vortex is that they wait too long before they start looking for another job. This is a tricky matter. It makes a lot of sense to take some time off after you are let go—say, a month or two—to reflect and compose yourself. On the other hand, the longer you wait, the more likely you are to start doubting yourself, and the more likely it is that prospective employers will think something is wrong. You just don’t want any hole in your résumé to be too gaping.*
Prospective employers will, of course, ask you about why you left your last job. Come right out and say you were asked to move on. Every manager in the world knows what “I resigned” or “I left for personal reasons” really means.
Just as important, take responsibility for your departure, like my friend Charlie did in our conversation. His ownership of the situation made him infinitely more appealing than the typical kind of defense I heard a hundred times. “My boss was really difficult” or “They don’t care about customers as much as I do” or my favorite, “It was all politics there. It never mattered what you did; all that mattered was who you knew.”
Compare that to Charlie’s approach—even recognizing that he is on the far end of rationality! When he got back into the job market, he didn’t blame a soul but himself. He told interviewers what he learned from the experience, and what he would do differently in his next job. “I’m determined to be more externally focused from now on,” he said, “and I will definitely move faster on underperforming people. One of my objectives is to prove I don’t make the same mistakes twice.”
If you’ve been let go, you never want to present yourself with a swagger. But you do need to project realism and optimism. Draw on your reservoir of confidence. Say what happened, say what you’ve learned, and never be afraid to ask, “Just give me a chance.”
Someone will.
Due to my vintage, I belong to a very small club—people who have spent their whole careers at one company. When I got my degree from graduate school, in 1961, that was the norm. Today, statistics show that college graduates change companies multiple times in their first decade out and newly minted MBAs do the same.
I can’t say if that’s good or bad, it just is. People are very hungry to hurry up and find the right job.
Here are some thoughts, though.
First, finding the right job takes time and experimentation and patience. After all, you have to work at something for a while before you know if you can even do it, let alone if it feels right.
Second, finding the right job gets easier and easier the better you are. Maybe that sounds harsh, but it’s just reality. At the end of the day, talented people have their pick of opportunities. The right jobs find