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6 hacks for job hunting after a layoff

Expert advice to start and conquer your job search in a changing job market

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Layoffs create empty desks at many companies
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With the much-publicized layoffs of around 250,000 tech workers over the past couple of months, it’s a…weird time out there in the job market. And yet, the January jobs report indicated the lowest level of unemployment since before the moon landing in 1969. As of today, it continues to hover around the historically low 3.5% mark. But if tech overhired during the pandemic, well, who didn’t?

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What should you expect, generally, for the remainder of this year? And how can you process a job loss, stand out in the job market, and land somewhere you can grow with? These tricky questions were the theme of a recent virtual gathering I hosted at Remote Daily. Here are six things we learned from our guests.

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1. Assess what’s next

1. Assess what’s next



Allow time to reflect on where you've been to decide where to go
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Commentary from a laid off Twitter employee: “I’m mourning the loss of an amazing company and its culture. I’m mourning the loss of my dream job. I’m mourning the loss of some amazing colleagues who are super talented and absolutely did not deserve the treatment that they received.”

When Malaika Nicholas was laid off alongside many colleagues from Twitter at the end of 2022, she went through all the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. Her voice still gets shaky when talking about it. “I need to work through these feelings in order to be stronger on the other side.” Weeks after Nicholas’s job had ended, she found the strength to sit down and conduct a self-assessment about what could be next: What role do I want now, and what I am willing to compromise? A company that is far less diverse? A less flexible work from home policy? Less benefits?

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2. You’re part of a re-shifting, not a recession

2. You’re part of a re-shifting, not a recession


It's a reshifting, not a recession
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“A lot of companies hired like crazy over the past couple of years to meet the demand they were seeing during Covid, and the lifestyle we were all living,“ said Rachel Sederberg, a senior economist and research manager on the applied research team at Lightcast. “Now, we’ve changed our behavior again. We’re not cutting our own hair any more,” she said. “We’re buying less goods and more services again. And the companies are adjusting again, just like three years ago. It’s a re-shifting of the economy and a response by certain companies. It’s a correction, in a very broad sense.“

So while your job loss might be very tough to accept on an emotional level, on an intellectual level, it’s important to understand that as of now, we’re not in a recession and the job market is waiting for you.

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3. Shop slow, buy fast

3. Shop slow, buy fast

Managing the managers to secure your spot
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Aaron Terrazas, chief economist at Glassdoor, added his perspective from working with over a 100 million job search and review data points: “We can’t look at all layoffs in the same light. It’s quite possible that some of what we see is overhiring.” But, he stated, there is also a cyclical part, and a structural part. “When you see layoffs in areas like customer service and sales, that’s probably cyclical. When you start to see layoffs in engineering and longer-term investments, that’s probably structural.”

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On top of that, Terrazas added, the so-called “maker-manager ratio” got out of balance. “The war for talent over the past years meant that companies were promoting people quickly. There are a lot more managers today than there were pre-pandemic. But the price of innovation, of bets on long-term growth, has gone up. Companies are doing less of it, and they need less people.”

To all job searchers, he recommended they look at this time as an opportunity for exploration and reinvention. “Do lots of research. And once you have done enough research, make a decision quickly,” Terrazas said. “That’s generally good advice for job searching, for home searching, for car searching: Shop slow, buy fast.”

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4. Flag for openness

4. Flag for openness

Flad your LinkedIn profile to open
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Malaika Nicholas eventually updated her Linkedin and made sure to be found. “I paid attention to three categories of keywords on my Linkedin profile: keywords from my current role, keywords for my future role or company that I was looking for, and skills and certificates that I have earned.”

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While Nicholas was hesitant about flagging her profile picture with the “open to work” functionality that Linkedin offers, our guest speaker Serena Bartolucci, a recruiter turned director of communications at Clarity Recruiting, a boutique agency, highly recommends it. When recruiters are using tools like ‘Linkedin Recruiter’, Bartolucci explained, this is part of the search criteria they often select in order to sort folks that are open vs. passive candidates. “Best part, there is no longer a stigma to indicating you are open to work. My feed is filled with folks announcing they’re embarking on job-searches.”

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5. Be responsive and straightforward with recruiters

5. Be responsive and straightforward with recruiters

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Bartoluccio encourages every job searcher to engage with recruiters, despite the bad stereotypes. “What’s often unknown is that first of all, it’s free to work with an agency like ours, and secondly, many recruiting teams have been completely eliminated at bigger companies and some medium-sized companies due to the fact that there are hiring freezes going on”, she said. “So, recruiters who are active and reach out are generally working on real positions and not simply pipelining candidates.”

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Bartolucci also stressed the importance of having recruiters in your network. “We get new jobs every day, but we often don’t have the time to publish them on our website, she said” While it may be a strange feeling in the beginning to trust strangers who reach out via Linkedin with little facts, it’s worth engaging. “When we reach out and don’t necessarily say the name of the company, don’t take it the wrong way. We are just trying to protect the identity of our client.”

LinkedIn tracks if you ignore an Inmail and then indicate the message was unwanted because you don’t know the person. Instead, Bartolucci recommends to respond by asking for more information, e.g.

“Thanks for reaching out. I’m actually targeting … and … and will only consider jobs above … salary. If this is something you might have on your desk, I’m available to speak at the following times … Please email me to confirm at …”

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6. Strengthen your weak ties

6. Strengthen your weak ties


Strengthen your network—but don't go too deep
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Quoting the 1973 paper Strength of Weak Ties by sociologist Mark Granovetter, Bartolucci concluded that contrary to what is commonly believed to be true—that strong ties will get you the best opportunities—it posited that weaker ties can actually be the key to success in your job search.

MIT and LinkedIn recently put the study to test at LinkedIn. Writing in the journal Science, MIT Professor Sinan Aral, a co-author of the research, explained how they carried out two experiments: One involving more than 4 million LinkedIn members in 2015 and one involving more than 16 million members in 2019. In both, the team tweaked the algorithms behind a tool called “People You May Know” to ensure members were randomly recommended connections, either with people who had few mutual contacts in common, known as weak ties, or with people who they had many contacts in common, known as strong ties.

Once a member had accepted a recommendation, the research team tracked how many messages were sent between the two. They also tracked whether members applied for or got hired into new roles.

The researchers found that the probability of a LinkedIn member joining the same company as their new contact was higher when the number of contacts they shared was higher. However, once this number exceeded 10 mutual contacts, the probability fell. “The best ties for job mobility aren’t the weakest ties, they are moderately weak,” said Aral in The Guardian.

To sum the theory up: The people you know best may have social networks that closely resemble your own and may not add much new job-seeking value for you. Your more casual connections may have social networks that overlap less with yours and can provide information you would not otherwise be able to access.

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Happy hunting

Happy hunting

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Malaika Nicholas eventually proved the theory true for her own job search. She tapped into her strong ties, like the alumni network from her school. She also expanded on her weak ties, connecting with online communities such as ColorComms, browsing through industry-specific job boards like Wellfound, and upping her LinkedIn game. Eventually, a recruiter—a weak tie—reached out and pointed her towards a role at the marketing agency SuperAwesome, with an opening similar to her previous role. She got the job.

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Felix Zeltner is a journalist and entrepreneur. In 2020, he founded Remote Daily. What started as a daily interactive talk show on Zoom is now a thriving company, helping organizations all over the world to build community in the hybrid era.

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