The Most Ignored Task on your Job Search To-do List
Have you been laid-off or fired from your last job? Are you looking for work and not having much success? Standard advice to job seekers includes updating the resume, attending networking events, calling your contacts, etc. What is seldom mentioned is the need to work on forgiving your last employer or manager who laid you off. Without fully processing your anger and resentment toward your last job, company or boss, you will have a hard time convincing a new employer to hire you.
What happens if you are lucky enough to get an interview and you are still full of bitterness toward your last manager? Even if you don’t say something overtly derogatory about your last job, your resentment will be felt on an unconscious level by the interviewer. What interviewer, in a very tight job market, wants to hire someone who is full of negative emotions? In a recession, employers have the pick of the field in hiring, and will almost always choose a candidate who exudes confidence, forgiveness of past employers and a broad perspective of market conditions and human frailty.
During a period of unemployment, your time would be well spent in working through your feelings about how and why you were terminated. Writing down your deepest thoughts and feelings is a good way to extract them from the inside closet of your mind and apply them to paper. In that way, your analytical brain can process them, see patterns, gain perspective and forgive the past. Forgiving yourself will be part of this process for those who feel some responsibility for losing their job.
For how-to advice on forgiving, please refer to my book, A Forgiveness Journal: Letting Go of the Past, found at www.aforgivenessjournal.com
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