When I was laid off, people kept telling me that there was nothing to worry about and take some time for myself. For the first few weeks, I tried to heed the advice and took it easy while at the same time leisurely looking for a job. I treated the first month as the sabbatical that I didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy and managed to make it through my inbox, my todo list, and ran out of things to do around the house.
After about a month, I started to get antsy as I’d never been away from a job for that long in my 20+ year career. I applied for a few jobs, but didn’t hear back on most of them. This had me quite nervous even though I knew I didn’t have to get a job for awhile. Would I be able to find a job? Would I have to take the first job offered to me even if it wasn’t the job i wanted? Would I have the motivation to start working again?
This period of unemployment also had me thinking about what happens for older workers; all of their experience comes at a higher price tag and many companies aren’t willing to pay for it. I don’t consider myself an older worker (however, the federal laws about employment consider older workers over 40, I believe), but when I started talking to people and explained that I have 20 years in mobile app development, I started to date myself.
My job search, luckily, only took about 6 weeks from the time I was laid off (actually it was a total of about 10 weeks as I started even before I was told I was being laid off). I saw a job posting for a mobile architect and decided to apply even though the job description was vague. After talking with the recruiter, I felt like the job was perfect for me based on my experience. My interviews went well and the rest is history!