How Being Made Redundant Put Me Back On Track
Back in May, I had just celebrated 2 years at a budgeting app to help young people do more with their money. As much as I loved my job, I could feel myself starting to feel burnt out. So when I had booked myself a few days off to do absolutely nothing, you can imagine how excited I was. The first day started off normally enough, I was having a lazy morning in bed but as FOMO had started to set in, I decided to message some colleagues. Apparently, the atmosphere in the office was weird so we joked that the company had run out of money so we were all losing our jobs. 30 minutes later I got a call, that was exactly what had happened. The next hour was a bit of a blur, I had a quick phone call from our COO saying that it was all over but I wasn’t to panic because they had gotten me a job somewhere else. I have to admit I was barely listening, all I could think was that I had to get to the office. By the time I got there, everyone was either in tears or packing their desks up. The weirdest thing was this situation was something we had spoken about for the previous 2 years but none of us could have imagined it would happen.
Finance is the last sector I thought I would be working in, writing was always the end goal for me. As soon as I left university, I didn't have much experience so I got an internship creating content for a healthy food restaurant. It started off great, I was learning new things, I got to create and launch campaigns and new processes but it didn't end well, two words; no pay. So I ended up in a customer service job at a cool fin-tech startup, with barely any industry experience and a bruised ego so you can guess what happened next, I got comfortable. My job was relatively easy, the people were my age and so became my friends and everything was so chill. Another great thing was the flexibility, everyone seemed so determined to get me into the role I wanted. The structure was very flat so moving to different teams to try out what you were interested in was really common so of course, I made a beeline for Marketing. For 2 months I got to create content almost every day, help with shoots for the app and actually use my degree for a change.
As much as I wanted to join the Marketing team, there was no budget for another team member and if I'm being honest, I didn't push that. I didn't anticipate it but I got tired of trying and became complacent. I stopped blogging, I figured since I was writing at work, I didn't need to do it in my spare time and everything became really stagnant. I was doing the same thing every day and without even realising, I had put myself into a rut with no intention of climbing out of it myself. So when I became redundant, I knew there were some steps I needed to take, to make sure the same thing couldn't happen again any time soon.
If writing full time was my end goal, I was doing nothing to reach it. I had gotten too used to making goals without planning a way of working towards them.
Being made redundant in your 20s is a strange situation to be in. I’d had the privilege to think of it as one of those things that would never happen to me like getting a burst appendix or breaking down in the middle of nowhere. Half of my colleagues were already offered a job somewhere else before the week was even over but I still couldn't stop thinking about what I had been doing the past 18 months. Friends were getting their dream jobs and colleagues moving into the roles they wanted but I had stayed stagnant. If writing full time was my end goal, I was doing nothing to reach it. I had gotten too used to making goals without planning a way of working towards them. Bullet Journals may just be a fad right now but they've done wonders for my organisation skills. I use it to keep myself accountable for my habits; the content I wanted to create, events I need to go to. Doing all of this helped me to rediscover my passion for writing. Getting into the habit of doing things because I felt I had to instead of wanting to definitely contributed to me getting into that rut. It even includes affirmations to remind myself to stay proactive and ready to take on anything.
So with this new conviction, my first instinct was to try and dive headfirst into a new role but that would only lead me back to my original problem, my inexperience. I decided to use my time out to buff up my skills, I freelanced for some blogs, did a short course and now I'm actually doing another course to learn HTML. Whether you're in a role you're not 100% happy in, you're between jobs or you just happen to have some spare time, try using it to learn a new something new. Not only can it increase your learning speed, the more varied your skills are, the easier it becomes to adapt to change. There’s also the added benefit that it can even lead you to jobs that you never thought you could do!
The final step was to reach out to others. One thing I had been too afraid to do regularly during my role was to build new professional connections. The thought of having to network and deal with recruiters made me extremely anxious and I couldn't help but feel ashamed that I couldn't get a role on my own but it's not like that at all. Recruiters have connections that I couldn't even dream of getting, I've spoken to two recently who were extremely helpful and even though I wasn't actively looking, they were able to give such valuable advice for when I was. Creating a network is difficult, especially if you're quiet or on the shy side but it is something that needs to be done and will only benefit you! The most important thing I've come to realise about networking is not to put people on a pedestal. Even though there are a million ways they could teach me about life and careers, networking is a mutually beneficial process.
The tragedy of life is not found in failure but complacency, you can’t grow or change if you’re making the same decisions, doing the same things every day. It all comes down to comfort zones, I'm about halfway to where I want to be right now but looking back, I know I've come a long way. I was so scared of failing that I let pride hold me back for a long time, not wanting to ask for help and not allowing others to give me advice. So if you've also been through one of the worst things that could have happened career-wise, the best advice I can give is to give yourself a few days to reflect on what happened but then pick at least one thing a day that takes you out of your comfort zone.