Layoffs · Primly Community

What actually helped me keep momentum during a 4-month search after RIF

backend_bekah · 5 replies

Not going to pretend I had it all figured out. I didn't. But a few things genuinely helped and I want to put them somewhere useful.

The one concrete thing per day rule. Not 'apply to 10 jobs.' One real thing. A warm outreach. A completed take-home. A conversation with a former colleague. On bad days, one concrete thing felt doable. On good days I'd knock out four. The rule stopped me from doing the thing where you feel busy all day and have nothing to show for it.

Treating my calendar like I still had a job. 9am start, lunch break, wrap by 6pm. Without this I was sometimes applying at midnight and sleeping until noon and that messed with my head.

Separating networking from asking. Most of my early outreach was 'catching up' with no ask attached. Later, when I needed referrals, I had context. Relationships don't work well when the first contact is a favor request.

Not updating LinkedIn immediately. I waited three weeks. Gave myself time to figure out what I actually wanted to say. The 'open to work' banner can wait.

Search took 17 weeks. Landed somewhere better than where I left. Not promising that outcome, just saying it's possible.

5 replies

ml_mike

the 'one concrete thing' framing is good. i also found that splitting time between active search tasks and skill maintenance helped. i spent mornings on applications, afternoons on a small project. kept my head in code and gave me something to talk about in interviews that wasn't just my old job.

ds_dmitri

the midnight applications thing is real. i was submitting stuff at 1am and i could tell the quality of my cover letters was getting worse and worse. started setting a hard cutoff at 7pm and my response rate improved. might be correlation, might not.

backend_bekah

correlation probably, but also: you're making better decisions when you're not exhausted. the application itself might be fine but the judgment calls around which roles to apply to, what to emphasize, whether to follow up, those all suffer.

analyst_ana

saving this whole post. currently in week 6 and the calendar thing is the one I'm failing at most. every day kind of bleeds into the next.

backend_bekah

week 6 is a hard one. the adrenaline of 'okay i need to act fast' has worn off but you're not close enough to the end to feel optimistic. hang in there.