Putting Together Your Exit Strategy
Change happens.
Your company is talking merger with another firm, which means your job may be in play. Your wonderful boss got promoted, only to be replaced with someone who flunked her anger management training... and she's got her eye on you. Or you've heard rumors that the exciting start-up you signed on with has burned through its cash at warp speed and now job cuts may be in the works.
It's not clear that any of these absolutely signal that your job may be in jeopardy, but the smart money is on those odds. What do you do? My advice: hope for the best, plan for the worst, and get your exit strategy in place.
What's an exit strategy? It's an action plan built around your "what next" questions: after this job, what kind of work would I like to be doing, for whom (and, possibly, where) would I like to be doing it, and what actions do I need to take over the next several weeks/month/quarters in order to be positioned to have those choices?
Benefits of an Exit Strategy
Going through an exit-strategy process provides a number of benefits when you're in the midst of a work environment where you have no idea about — and little or no influence over — the outcomes.
First, it allows you to detach emotionally and move you energy from obsessing about "what's going to happen/what if I lose my job" to "I'm in control of my future, and I need to invest my energy and attention into what my next job options will be."
Essentially, you simply assume that your current situation is most likely going to end, mourn its loss if you need/want to, and prepare yourself to move on. That way you're not waiting for someone to give you the bad news; you've already started moving beyond that inevitability into a better future. You have taken charge of your career and your choices, which places you in the power position. You've moved from a passive stance (waiting for someone else to decide what happens) to an active one (you're deciding what you want your next phase to look like).
Second, an exit strategy allows you to hit the ground running if a layoff happens. You've already mapped out what you need to do, who you need to contact, etc., so you don't need to waste time trying to figure all this out when you're in a funk from losing your job. All you need to do is follow the action plan you've already lined out when you're ready to engage.
Third, having an exit strategy in place before you need it means you have time to start doing the prep work now to be solidly positioned for your next opportunity. For example, if you've been reading about web producer positions in job postings but realize your XML skills are lacking, now is the time to start taking classes or reading books on XML so that by the time you're applying for those jobs, you already have the knowledge you need and (best case) you've found ways to practice and hone those skills.
The Questions to Ask Yourself
Creating an exit strategy starts with asking yourself some basic questions, specifically:
What type of work might you like to do next? This might be working in a specific industry, for a particular company, or doing a certain kind of work. And you may have several ideas in mind. But your starting point is to identify a preferred path that you'd like to have open to you if you leave your current situation.
What information do you need to know about that industry, company, or type of work in order to better understand 1) what opportunities might exist, and 2) how to find jobs in your area of interest (job lists, conferences, networking, other?).
What skills and/or knowledge might you need in order to be of value in the position you seek? One of the most effective ways to do this is by undertaking a SWOT analysis — an assessment of your professional strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in relation to a potential career opportunity. Your goal here is to identify where you need to "bulk up" in the areas where you may have knowledge or skill gaps. Then take it one step further and determine when and how you will gain that knowledge.
Consider your professional network — who will you want to notify, when the time comes, that you're going to be "on the market?" Start putting this list together now, as well as drafting a brief, upbeat letter that let's people know how much you've enjoyed your current job, but also how excited you are to explore new opportunities. Also, what relationships would it be helpful to have in place when you're ready to move on to your next career opportunity, and how might you go about establishing those? For example, will you join a professional organization and get active in the local chapter in order to meet more people in a specific industry or profession? Volunteer with a local nonprofit to contribute your skills in a non-LIS environment? What else?
What professional "administrivia" do you need to take care of before a change is likely to happen? This may include updating your resume (and possibly working with a coach to do so), making copies of any of your office files that contain information you'd like to have available to you in the future, and creating documentation for how you perform your job responsibilities to ensure as smooth a transition as possibly if there is staff turnover. (No matter the circumstances surrounding your leaving, it's always a smart idea to leave on a positive note if possible.)
Lastly, what do you need to do in your personal life to be ready for the disruption of change? It helps to get things like medical check-ups, car maintenance, and house repairs taken care of to the extent possible so that when a change arrives, there is still order in other aspects of your life.
Create Your Timeline
Once you've identified what actions you'll undertake and information you'll gather, it's time to decide when you will do these.
As someone who's gone through this drill way more times than any sane person should, I tend to put together my exit strategies in three-month chunks, with the most critical actions done most immediately in case it turns out I only had two months (or, in one case, two weeks) before things headed south.
So a way to approach this would be to look at, say, a three-month period, and line out on a week-by-week basis which of your actions you will do when. For example, you might decide that the most critical items are doing a SWOT analysis and updating your resume. The first month, then, you might spend your lunch hours and Sunday afternoons working on these action items. The second month might be dedicated to researching potential employers and positions as well as broadening your community of contacts. So your lunch hours might be spent cruising job sites and doing industry/company research, and you might also identify and join a professional organization related to your future job interests. You would continue working through your priority list, preparing yourself for your next career opportunity, until you felt confident that if a job change, a.k.a. a layoff, were to happen, you'd be ready to move forward toward your new opportunities.
Your Exit Strategy Puts You in Control
You may find that you want to put all these actions in a very different order (or undertake different actions). But the idea is to immediately begin to take an active role in what your future is going to look like. This will make you less anxious about outcomes you have very little influence over, and give you confidence because you're investing your time and energy in outcomes you can shape through your own efforts. That confidence is important to a potential employer, because you want him or her to see you not as an employee who's holding onto a job for dear life, but as a professional who understand he or she has value to contribute, and is more than happy to leave for a new opportunity if that's the decision.
It's important to keep in mind that you can do everything right, and still be out of a job. Companies make these sorts of decisions for all sorts of reasons that may have nothing to do with intelligent thinking. So the only thing you can do is put as little time and energy into being unhappy about that as possible, and instead invest all of your best efforts into creating the next phase of your professional life, should it be necessary to do so.