1 post tagged “outplacement”
This one appeared in the Guardian 9th Nov 1996, again heavily abridged.
“I’m terribly sorry, but we’re going to have to downsize the department and your job has to go. You expats are too expensive.” Dread words, and at a particularly bad time for me, with a new mortgage and a pregnant wife. At least my employers weren’t as savage as some. Maybe I could stay on, on local terms? No good, the mortgage was too high. So they offered me Outplacement. I had never heard of it, and Personnel were rather vague when I asked them what it was all about, but the bottom line was that I would have a chance to hunt for jobs for a few months while being able to say, quite truthfully, that I was still in employment, and not under notice.
In the event I found Outplacement a valuable and rewarding experience. If you’re ever offered it, jump at the chance. You’re career is in ruins anyway - you may as well salvage something from the debris.
The first thing I noticed was how smart the building was. “Good money in outplacement anyway, whatever it is” I thought cynically. They handed me a number of self-assessment psychological tests to fill in. Suspicions welled up. A friend of mine once had to fill out the same sort of thing at a job interview, and not only did he fail to get the job, but they also sent a letter advising him to seek psychiatric help. So I was wondering if I would be told “I’m afraid, Dr Birkett, you’re the archetypal square peg, temperamentally unsuited for any form of paid employment.”
Reality was almost as bad. One of the tests draws up a character profile, and then lists the professions where that profile is most commonly found. I was horrified when I saw the results: Lawyers!! The shame of it. Yet, to tell the truth, I was intrigued by the process and what it turned up. There were elements of my personality that I had long suspected - unsurprisingly, seeing these were self-assessments - but also facets that I had not imagined, although my wife and others confirmed them.
The next stage involved going through my career and highlighting my achievements - things I had actually done, rather than what I was responsible for. We then analysed each of these to pick out what it was in me that had contributed to the success, and the satisfaction I had felt at the outcome. Putting these together with the personality profiles pointed to the sorts of jobs I ought to be aiming for. In my case the answers were predictable, but the exercise was invaluable later on when it came down to interview preparation.
We then tackled my c.v. Many of the people who run outplacement courses are former human resources managers, so they know what to look out for. The first thing my coach did was to turn my career details upside down. Instead of starting off with what I did twenty years ago at university, or whether I was a school prefect, we put the most recent job at the top, then worked my way back through my career. For each career step we would put in some of the concrete achievements analysed earlier. The idea is to direct interviewers into asking questions to which you already have the answers, as well as to point out that you have actually done something useful for your previous employers.
Next came the search itself. I had thought naively that this would be a matter of combing through the job adverts in the relevant journals - that was how I had found the job I had just lost. This turned out to be only a minor part of the process. When you reach middle management relatively few positions are filled that way. The trouble is that an advertisement for a half-decent job, placed in the national press or the main magazines for your profession, typically receives thousands of responses. It’s then very difficult for both sides - how does the personnel department or the recruitment agency screen the right applicants? How do you make yourself stand out in such a crowd? A large and increasing percentage of openings are filled through the head-hunters or through personal contacts - networking.
Sending your c.v. in a mail-shot to all the head-hunters active in your area is probably the most time-consuming element of the whole show. The outplacement agency will probably offer you secretarial help and so may your current employers (it’s worth their while if they are trying to get rid of you), but if you have access to a modern word-processing package with merge facilities it’s often best if you do it yourself - you can check each letter to make sure it says exactly what you want it to say. It’s always going to be a long-shot, with the odds getting more unfavourable the more specialised you are. You have to be at the right place at the right time, which is when a specific agency has an assignment that happens to fit your profile. Most of the head-hunters don’t keep databases of speculative applicants, so be prepared to have a depressing number of c.v.’s returned. In my case this approach only turned up two half-interesting possibilities.
Before I was let loose on networking I was put through a module on telephone technique - the sort of phrases to use to get people to listen sympathetically to you. I could then start calling up contacts in firms I was interested in to see firstly if they had any suitable vacancies, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to ask if they knew of anyone else who might be interested in someone with my experience. The aim is never to put the phone down without getting at least one name for a future call. I must admit I was rather doubtful about this at first, but in fact it only took three phone calls to bring me my first real lead, and eventually my current job. Coincidentally the head-hunters for this position had been spreading their web and found me at about the same time. Although I had contacted one office of this agency, the search was being carried out by another, which illustrates the importance of making as wide a mail-shot as possible.
My coach was delighted that I had been given an interview so soon, and wanted to take an immediate look at how I would handle it. I wasn’t sure at first of the value of this - apart from one or two early disasters as an undergraduate I had always managed pretty well at interview - but I thought I had better humour him, which meant dressing up in my best suit and sitting in front of a video camera while he fired difficult questions at me. Would I be over-hesitant, would I pick my nose or fiddle with my flies? No, I was confident enough but I did slouch back too much in my chair, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. He suggested holding a pen and paper - it kept my hands occupied, but looked as though I was keen to take notes. I could take the video home. My daughters were amazed to see Daddy talking on the telly.
It was gratifying when the questions we had prepared for dutifully came up. The personnel department even gave me a self-assessment psychometric test identical to one I had done at outplacement. Perhaps this was all incidental - the important point was that their needs and mine overlapped beautifully - but the end-result was a timely job offer. Budgets were even tighter back in the office, and the following week I was finally given my notice..
How much did Outplacement contribute to the success? Just a little bit? Significantly? It’s difficult to say - somewhere in between, probably. Remember that their head-hunters found me, that there was a good match of profiles, and that I had never been afraid of interviews. And yet, the push from my side certainly speeded up the process, which was useful - they were just about to advertise, and my application could have been buried in the avalanche. Speaking to the key decision maker directly on the phone, rather than writing, was probably important. Did all the polishing up help? For this particular position, not much - but I can imagine that in more borderline cases it could easily tip the balance.
I said at the beginning that I found Outplacement rewarding and valuable, and I hope that I have shown why. Is it worth being made redundant for? No, but if you’re prepared to make the best of every eventuality, to give the coaches a chance, I think you’ll find, as I did, that it goes a long way towards easing the pain.
