How to figure out what's next after a layoff
This is for you if you were just laid off. It was a line in a budget, not a read on your worth. The clock is running, and there's a blank where the plan used to be.
The reflex is to reach for the nearest title, and it makes sense: it feels like moving. But it is how people land right back in the kind of role they just left. The layoff set the timing. Your result sets the aim.
So build your shortlist from your result, not the nearest title. Open your Career Discovery report and give it an hour: four steps, three read your result, one is just you and a pen.
- Open The Five Types of Work, near the back. Write your primary type and your natural complement. That pair is the shape that gives you energy, whatever the title on the door.
- On the left of a page, write the titles you are chasing: the job you lost and its nearest neighbors. This is the hole the layoff left. Your report does not hold this column, only you do.
- Open Aligned Work Areas, a little further on: nine job-area cards. Circle the two or three closest to your two types, not the ones nearest your old title. Write those on the right.
- Open Discovering Your Strengths, back toward the front. Note the one or two you would carry into any right-hand direction. They did not leave with the badge.
Now read across. The left column chases the hole. The right aims at your shape: two or three directions from your result. That is your shortlist. Mark the one that feels most alive.
Before you open a job board this week, read one real posting in that direction. Name the search term that fits your type, not your old title. It is a probe, not an application.
