My outplacement experience

My employment contract ended at the start of January and I was offered outplacement services.  My former employer was legally obliged to offer and pay for it. However I was allowed to refuse it and take the money to pay for some training or so, they said.

I didn't hesitate and took the outplacement services though: it would include training offers (depending on the agency they assign) and if I ever would still be out of job at the end of my long notice period, the VDAB (agency that follows-up on unemployed and has to guide them to a new job as much as possible) could interpret my refusal as not putting effort in finding a job. And that in worst case could jeopardize unemployment payments. So just to prevent any future suspension of unemployment payments, it's better to not refuse outplacement if offered to you.

But I would recommend taking it simply for the reason that it is really helpfull. For me it was quite a positive experience. I'm convinced their coaching has helped me a great deal in finding myself a new job. 

So what services do we talk about? 
I was entitled for a full year to work with/use 

• a personal job coach (60h / year)
• participate in numerous outsourcing workshops related to the job search process 
• participate in a weekly group session with a group of other peers in the same phase/level of job search, providing support to each other
• use an unlimited Udemy business training account
• life-long access the outplacement platform that is full of knowledge, templates, info and advice on the job search. 

I met up with my job coach more or less bi-weekly, most of the time physically but sometimes digitally. 
I worked on 

• digesting emotionally my job loss, 
• reflecting on my past career and what defined the highs and lows so to bring clarity in what I was looking for.  
• writing out my accomplishments into a concise format with strong words and clear results and practising in the storytelling of them in a short concise way. I all mapped them against competencies in a matrix so that I could later on map them and use them for the compencies searched for in vacancies. 
  I consider this work the most usefull of what I've done and I've spent a lot of time on it. But it has truly boosted my confidence and self-image (again)
• defining more clearly what I was looking for
• defining my brand and added-value for an employer
• rewriting my CV (with the feedback of a professional CV writer of the outplacement service) with the input of all above to make it shorter, clearer and more focussed on what I bring (rather than listing history)
• developing my network on LinkedIn
• increasing my visibility on LinkedIn (with at least weekly posts and interactions)
• participating in network events and reaching out in my network
• Analyse vacancies (with AI) against my competencies (matches and gaps), my wishes , ...
• Prepare job interviews with extensive oral role play (with AI, based on the competencies and realizations and wishes that AI was aware off). 
• Calculate and define my financial requirements for offer negotiations
• Prepare and practise for assessment centers. 

For all this I could get advise and feedback from my job coach, but I participated in digital workshops on emotional resilience, body language in interviews, CV writing, LinkedIn networking, LinkedIn algorithm,  STAR writing of your competencies, storytelling, defining your brand, preparing for interviews, preparing for assessment centers, networking, .... Some where theoretic, other's were in very small sessions practise sessions to get immediate feedback (eg bodylanguage, pitching your CV, ...).  

Once I had my preparations and was very active in applying for jobs, I joined a weekly peer group.  There was no agenda but a good coach guiding us and we just shared in which stage or events we were in our job search, the items we struggled with and discussed.  We got to know who was where, linked on LinkedIn so we could keep in touch. It felt good to have a weekly group of familiar faces, to feel less alone in the process as having a weekly meeting at work. Their successes but also failures and frustrations are so recognisable and that's good.  (also the workshops mentioned before had some returning familiar faces and gave a sense of company in the job search which mostly happens alone at home). 

After reading all of the above, you hopefully understand that searching a job can be a full-time job. It really occupied me most of the time and I found myself behind my desk most days during working hours while the kids went to school and Jan was working.  It kept me a rhythm. When I felt stuck, my coach just assigned me some new tasks or workshops and I got new inspiration of actions and kept going again. 
I had weeks of Udemy trainings ligned up to study and add some new competencies but I've really not been able to make as much use of it as I had hoped.  And now my access is revoked, which is a pity.  But hey, there were only 8 hours in a working day (and being home unemployed, of course I did allow myself to take some days more slowly and also take opportunities for some more social contact, more involvement at school or to visit my mom on workdays etc...so no I did not job hunt full time. Probably 80% of my time is more accurate).  

The outplacement has a logic order of events and work as I lined it up a bit above, but the reality is that it is much more flinging back and forth as an opportunity might jump up already early and you scramble to already prepare for that while not all of your job elements are already well defined, then you go back and complete more but also with the lessons learned of the first application experiences.  Even now that I have a job and am back at work, I still have the feeling I could fine-tune things more. 


What are my key learnings : 

• Job hunting takes time & patience:  my job coach told me in the first conversation straight away: 100 applications for 1 job. In the end I have not nearly applied 100 times to get my job, but it does take many turn-downs to find the right one.   It takes patience.
  For management jobs, you must count 6-12 months apparently. 
• 60% of job hunters in outplacement find a job through their network.  Applying on published vacancies is a much harder process and for companies the last resort. They will first try to fill in positions via referrals and contacts, recruiters etc...A published vacancy is hte last step and when yu apply you compete with many other people. 
  My new job falls in this category: I filled a non-published position in the company of an acquaintance. 
  So networking and contacting people throughout your friend groups, former colleagues etc is a very valid pastime! 
• I gained a lot of confidence to switch from a more reactive approach (react to a vacancy and wait for response) to proactively approach people. I learned to phone companies & recruiters, send messages on LinkedIn to people and follow-up on statuses and contacts.  I learned that phoning doesn't hurt as much as I tended to think. 
• It's perfectly ok to trust the process and say no to positions that do not match your aspirations or financial requirements.  Continuing those processes is only a loss of time.  It took courage to sometimes stop an application myself but that's also something I learned.  I did it 7 times.
• There are so many crappy recruiters out there that cannot read your CV at all.  
• Many companies host your application....it just is sent into the void.  Fortunately it's not the majority. 
• Trust that all your experiences, even the bad ones, have taught you valuable competencies. 
• Practise out loud. Talk, have real conversations ...don't prepare your process in your head. It makes such a difference to talk, record yourself, practise your storytelling for peers and friends (and AI) and get feedback.  I really evolved from rambling unstructured and too lengthy to bringing a clear story with confidence. 
• Look forward during your job hunt, not the past.  (especially in your conversations).
• I am bad in multi-tasking.  When I was in the funnel for an application I tended to spend most of my time in preparation of that one job, lacking time to fill my pipeline for other options. That resulted in a few hard "start-over" moments. 
• The "official" open to work post that LinkedIn suggests when changing your status is really pushed through the algorithm and gets a great level of visibility.  It generated multiple valid opportunities for me.