Steps to Take After Losing your Job

Being let go at a job can be tough on anyone, especially someone with a family to support. Most jobs are not stable no matter how secure they seem. Your employer can lay off employees for various reasons at any time.

Some families rely on two incomes to meet all their needs and save diligently for unexpected expenses. If you did lose your job, you have to act fast and find out ways to start earning money again. Here are a few crucial steps you should take if you happen to lose your job.

Develop a Bare Bones Budget

Immediately after you realize that your income could stop completely, you need to devleop a bare bones budget to determine how much you need to get by each month. Your bare bones budget will not be like your regular budget. It is more like a survival budget that allows your to cover all your basic necessary expenses and nothing more.

Once you determine how much you need to get by each month and which expenses you can cut for the moment, you’ll be ready to start seeking out additional sources of income.

Apply for Unemployment

If you got laid off and didn’t leave your job voluntarily by quitting, you may have a good chance of getting unemployment funds from the government. This could be an option for you while you are searching around for something new.

You’ll need to apply right away because the wait after you fill out the application may be a few weeks. After that period, you will get a call and the unemployment office will decide if you will receive the benefits or not. If you are eligible keep in mind that you may only receive a fraction of your old salary, but it’s something that will help you out a little bit until you start bringing in more income.

Get Resume and Cover Letter Help

In order to land a new job you’ll need to update and perfect your resume and cover letter.

Most employers will not even consider you if your resume doesn’t match the experience they are looking for or meet their criteria. The smallest spelling or punctuation mistake can cause you to have your resume placed in the ‘no’ pile in a hurry. Some libraries offer workshops on how to write resumes and some universities offer recent graduates or alumni free assistance with writing and updating their resumes and cover letters so those are good places to start.

Search for New Jobs Online

There are multiple websites designed to help job seekers find employment. Some are made just for certain careers so if you want a narrow search or prefer to look a broad range of opportunities, job boards are a great place to start searching for leads.

Job boards do a nice job saving the applications you submit so you can better keep track of your activity. After awhile some sites even offer some suggestions due to your search history and what kind of jobs you have been looking for. Even just uploading your resume to a job board can increase your chances of getting a call from a potential employer. If you no longer have a job, you should be searching for opportunities on job boards almost daily and sending out as many quality applications as you can throughout the day.

Ask Around and Develop a Back-up Plan

You may want to rely on your network to see if they know anyone who’s hiring. There are tons of positions that are not even advertised online so it pays to have a strong network. While you’re waiting to hear back from your contact, see if anyone has any temporary work you can do or if you can use money from your emergency fund to help you get by.

You can always establish a side hustle to make ends meet during the intermediate period whether it’s babysitting for friends and neighbors, selling items from your home, or cleaning houses. Just stay positive, utilize your resources, and don’t stop pushing forward until you establish a new job and increase your income again.

Have you ever been laid off? What steps did you take to find a new job after being unemployed whether it was short-term or long-term?