Career Pivoting After Getting Laid Off at 42 (and 3 things I’d do differently if it happened again)

Because if part of you thinks this only happens to other people, I want to show you a statistic that says otherwise.

Eighty-two percent of executives say they've personally lived through an organizational redesign, a reorg, at their current company, and seventy percent say it happened in the last two years.

So hear that again.

Eighty-two percent, not of companies, of executives, of corporate professionals at the company they're working in right now.

And, you know, for me, [chuckles] I was just one data point in that number.

So if you haven't experienced one already, you're closer to being in one than you think.

You see, that's not a rare event.

That's the default condition of a modern career, and it's not slowing down.

In just the five months of this year, US employers reported eight point six million layoffs and companies you assume are safe, profitable, blue chip companies, they cut tens of thousands of corporate roles, citing restructuring and, of course, increasingly AI.

Being good at your job was never the variable that protected me or you.

But being known beyond the job, that is.

Here's another number worth thinking about.

The average person now stays at a company under four years, the shortest stretch in over two decades.

Your employer already treats the relationship as a temporary one.

They know that people are moving and shifting.

And so that org chart that you have in your company, that's drawn in pencil, [chuckles] not ink.

Your title is borrowed.

It's not forever.

So the real question isn't whether your role will change, it's whether anyone outside your building, your team, knows what you're capable of when it does change.

So why is this important? Why is growing influence, building brand important? I have three reasons for you.

First, reach.

Twenty years ago, your reputation was capped by geography.

If you were known in your office, maybe your industry, or if you're lucky, your city.

But today, one really well-placed idea can reach someone in Singapore, a founder in Toronto, a hiring manager in Austin, Texas, before you got to lunchtime.

The miracle of the internet, the miracle of us being able to reach anyone on the planet, most people anyway, that has access to Wi-Fi, is real, and I've experienced that firsthand.