Furloughed? What next?

Transcript

Pete Newsome 0:13

Welcome, everyone and thank you for listening to Episode One of the higher calling podcast, your source for all things staffing, hiring and recruiting. My name is Pete Newsome. And I’m really excited to begin this podcast today. This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’ve talked about it and thought about it for years, and I was looking for the perfect time to begin the podcast. And I’ve realized over the last couple of weeks with all the tragedies surrounding us the impacts to small businesses to candidates to employers, that there probably is no perfect time, but this is the right time to begin. And specifically today, we’re going to talk about furloughs. But before I do, let me just further introduce myself and my company. I’m the president of four corner resources. We’re a staffing company based in Orlando. to Florida. So each and every day, we live the issues that affect candidates, employers who are trying to hire and anything and everything in between. So right now, what’s happening in the market is there’s a lot of confusion. There’s misinformation, and there’s, there’s fear and uncertainty and doubt. And this podcast is going to hopefully alleviate some of that and provide information that whoever is listening can use to their advantage. And today, we’re going to talk about furloughs. What it makes sense to draw a distinction between small and large businesses in terms of furloughs, perhaps always, but specifically now for one reason, and that is due to the passing of the cares act by Congress about a month and a half ago, which included the paycheck Protection Program or what’s commonly referred to as the PPP loan The purpose of the PPP is very clear. It’s intended to give small businesses the ability to maintain payroll for up to eight weeks during the COVID crisis. And the cares act defines small businesses as those with 500 or fewer employees. Now, there are some exceptions to that. But generally speaking that’s that’s what a small businesses in this situation. So if you don’t know whether your employer would be considered that, I definitely think you’re well within your rights to ask your manager or the business owner. If you’re close enough to that individual. I want you to determine that the next thing to ask is whether your organization has applied for the PPP funding, and if they have, that should potentially be a good sign for you. And if they’re not open and talking about it, I would be kidding. And there’s no reason that I can think of why a business wouldn’t want their employees who’ve been furloughed to know that that funding is potentially coming and certainly should want them to know if they’ve been successful in receiving the funding because that should be the point where the furlough ends that should be the time where they are calling to bring their employees back. 

So if you are work for a small business, ask whether your organization is applied for the funding. Ask what their intentions are when receiving the funding, and if they have received it asked for their commitment and a hard date on when they’re bringing you back. And if they’re not forthcoming with that, or the answers are vague in any way, take that as a very bad sign that is a cause for concern. And just like so many of the things we’re talking about on this podcast today, that is reason for you to take immediate action and begin looking elsewhere. Otherwise, my hope for you is that they are very clear in those answers and they can tell you specifics. But if they’re not doing that proactively, by all means, pick up the phone right now, or send a message to whoever your main point of contact is during this time of furlough and ask them for that clarification immediately. For large employees, or employees of large organizations, unfortunately, the PPP does not apply. layoffs happen for a wide variety of reasons. It could be due to market conditions, declining revenues, or even a change of direction in the organization. But what takes place in this scenario is the feeling of permanence. There’s not a message delivered that gives the employees hope and belief that the company will be able to undo what’s being done. They the staff has been let go the company is determined that they cannot retain employees at their current level. And the separation is is permanent in nature. 

So when employees are laid off, they typically jump right on the job market and figure out what their next role is going to be. In the case of furloughs, make no mistake, it’s a noble act by the organization, their intentions are pure. They’re still providing benefits to their employees and that cost real dollars to the organization. So, you know, the commitment to their employees is as strong as it can be under the circumstances. But what the individual who’s been furloughed needs to acknowledge and what I really want to share with anyone listening right now is Is that all you really know is that your employer has chosen not to retain you currently. Whether they’re able to retain you in the future, unless you’ve been given a very specific date on when you can, you can come back to work. It’s unknown and You should take your fate into your own hands. assume the worst, assume that the job’s not coming back and then decide how you should be acting and behaving under that situation. So, we will talk in future episodes in great detail about what exactly you should do when you’re on the job market. How you should orchestrate your job search, how to work with recruiters how to create and have the best possible resume, we’ll do all of that. But in the interest of time, I want to start with just four things that I would highly recommend that you do right away if you are committed to finding a new job. Number one, tell everyone you know, cast a very, very wide net as wide as you possibly can. In terms of sharing with your family, your friends, your neighbors, your business associates, that you are looking for a job that you are on the market, what will happen is you will suddenly start to hear about things that you otherwise wouldn’t have, you will have your your friends and associates working as agents on your behalf consciously or not. And that is how you’re going to hear about, about things. And if you do anything less than that, you’re just limiting your exposure, which is the opposite of what you should be doing when you’re on the market. So begin by getting the word out. 

The second thing I want you to do is, make sure you’re on LinkedIn. And if you’re already on LinkedIn, update your profile. LinkedIn is where recruiters live corporate recruiters, third party recruiters like our team at four corner resources, they are on LinkedIn all day every day. And that is probably the best place to to be found right now. And if you haven’t been a big LinkedIn user, that’s okay. You have an opportunity to change that right now and you should start immediately. And I highly recommend connecting with everyone that you possibly can. There’s a feature that allows you to sync and connect with your, your Outlook contacts. So do that take advantage of it, just like telling everyone that you know that you’re on the market cast a really wide net and how you connect with other folks on LinkedIn. And you can also use that as a situation to compliment. The third thing I’m going to recommend, which is build and update your resume. So many of you probably have not had a resume a current resume for many years, and that’s generally a good thing means you haven’t had to. So you may not feel very equipped to produce one. And that’s okay. I can assure you that most people are not good at writing resumes. So don’t don’t worry about that. But you have to start somewhere. Be very aggressive. thorough in what you put out there. So you can be found by as many recruiters as possible. So as you’re filling out your LinkedIn profile, think of it is also building your resume along the way. And if you want to go to other sources for a resume, there’s many, many options out there. indeed.com has a resume builder. If you jump on Google and just, you know, type in how to build a resume, you will find many, many templates to choose from. Find one that resonates with you. We will get into some tips on our next episode about building a resume some do’s and don’ts, but you’ve got to start somewhere. So don’t wait. Get that resume built ASAP.

So the last thing I want to recommend is getting on job boards and indeed.com has really become the 800 pound gorilla in this space. Along with LinkedIn, those are actually Absolutely the top two places that recruiters rely on to find candidates and to post jobs. So build your your profile on LinkedIn on indeed, get your resume posted there. And that is, you know, if you only do one side after LinkedIn, make sure it’s that one. But also, I would recommend Career Builder, and monster.com as well as your local job boards depending on your market. There are no shortage of of places to look, but make sure you start with those big ones that will cover many bases for you. So those are the four action items you should begin with immediately if you’ve found yourself furloughed, and you’re buying into my strong suggestion that you should begin looking for a job but briefly, number one, tell everyone you know number two, get on LinkedIn or if you’re already on update your profile. Number three, create a resume. By the way, I highly recommend doing it in chronological Order, but I promise we’ll talk more about that in detail in our next episode in the next couple of days. And then number four, get on some of the main job boards. Indeed for sure careerbuilder monster and any local job boards that you have, go ahead and make sure that you your profile is on there and that you can be found by recruiters. That’s it for today. Thank you very much for listening to this first episode of higher calling. I really hope you’ll come back and listen next week when we talk about how to build a great resume. And meantime, stay safe and healthy and I look forward to speaking to you soon

Transcribed by https://otter.ai