In the ‘current economic climate’ there is a chance that any company may have to ‘restructure’ or even cease trading altogether. These events are no fun for any employees involved, but I’d like to share some advice that will help you prepare for and cope with the worst situation if it arises.
Negotiating Your Redundancy
If you are being made redundant, do ask your employer if they would be interested in reducing your working hours instead. Particularly for in-house SEMs, you may be able to persuade them to continue employing you for three days a week (for instance) – leaving you with time to pursue other work but still having a regular income.
Check your original employment contract and any waivers that you are asked to sign when leaving. Look out for ‘non-competitive’ clauses that might say you can’t work in the same industry for six months after leaving the company, and ask that these are canceled as part of your leaving agreement.
At this stage, you may also try to negotiate a bigger redundancy payment. If the company is closing down, there is unlikely to be much spare cash for this, so try informally asking for any resources the finished company will not need – for instance, laptops or domain names.
As something of an aside, the negotiation tactic book Getting to Yes is a very short, very worthwhile book to read before any negotiation.
Finding New Work
If the situation has arisen, then it’s likely that other business in your industry may be suffering too, making finding your next position harder. Fortunately, we Internet-types are a hardy, flexible bunch, and we can use this to our advantage.
If you worked in-house, you may consider finding an agency to apply to. In downturns such as this, agencies and freelancers are attractive to companies who may need to adjust their budgets quite often. Indeed many agencies are thriving and actively hiring at the moment – for instance, Distilled is recruiting a Business Development Apprentice right now.
Be aware that you might need to brush up on some different skills and take a slightly different position to what you’re used to. For example: your last three years as an SEO still put you in a good position to manage PPC campaigns, even if you’ve never logged into AdWords in your life.
To begin your search, you could visit the targeted job boards at SEOmoz Marketplace, Blogstorm’s Jobs Board or SEOGadget’s SEO jobs page.
If you think there’s any potential that your job security isn’t 100%, it’s perfectly acceptable to keep a list of names and numbers to call in an emergency.
“Hi Dave, it’s Rob Ousbey. We met at that conference last month. Acme has just gone out of business, so I wanted to see if there’d be any value in us meeting up for a drink to talk about opportunities you might have, now that I’m available? I can be at you office in 15 minutes.”
It might sound negative to consider it, and brash to actually do it, but I know people who this has worked very well for.
Going It Alone
If you’ve ever considered being your own boss (and honestly, who hasn’t?), then having no job and a redundancy payment to get you through the first few rocky months can be a great opportunity. A lot has been written about starting out as a freelancer and plenty more will be written, but here are my top suggestions for finding your first freelance gigs:
- talk to other departments in your former company
- get in touch with all your professional contacts, telling them about the kind of services you offer
- if your company went out of business, contact your old clients and offer them continuity by taking on the work you previously did for them
- if the company is still going, then talk to the clients/suppliers/partners you had good personal relationships with, but don’t offer the same services your former company does
- make sure everyone you come into contact with knows what you do (even if it is as simple as ‘internet stuff’ for instance) – you can quickly have an army of people selling you on your behalf.
The Freelance Switch blog is a great place to start for tips and a good community, and I’ve seen a lot of people talking up the Rockstar Freelancer book.
Beyond freelancing, you may feel that the skills you have put you in a good position to start up your own ventures instead. Internet Marketers I’ve met would typically have a set of skills to dive straight into projects such as:
- launching a blog or site focused on some particular niche that interests them
- getting involved in the wonderful world of affiliate marketing
- domaining.
If you have the cushion of some redundancy cash behind you, you can even use the opportunity to change direction and see how it works out. Enjoy wood working in your shed? Make some spice racks and see if you can flog them. Love taking photos? See if you can sell some of them, or get commissions from newspapers.
Again, you can think about this now and even begin implementation of some of it. If you have a blog that you only post to once a month, then you could spend the first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life writing posts and promoting it. By the end of Week 1, you could be in a much stronger position than if you’d started that venture from scratch in the same week.
Again, there’s a low chance that this will happen to you. I hope it doesn’t, and I really do feel for the people who’ve found themselves out of work in the last few months; I know that there has been some restructuring in our industry recently.
Good luck with your work, and if you do find yourself in this situation then let me say an extra bold GOOD LUCK! Enjoy your new challenges, and remember that SEOmoz is still here to support you.
