Keep Your Head Up: Learn Your Company’s Warning Signs of Layoffs
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Donnie Brasco is a 1997 mob movie starring Al Pacino as mobster, Lefty, and Johnnie Depp as an FBI undercover agent. Early in the movie, there is a scene where Lefty is called downtown for a meeting. Depp picks up on Pacino’s anxiety and asks him about it. Pacino tells him that when you are going to be whacked (murdered), the mob will have your closest friend call you and set up a meeting with you because you will lower your guard for this person. This is what has happened and Pacino is scared. As it turns out, the mob has a gift for him—a caged lion—because they know he likes animals.
Later in the movie, after Depp has been revealed to the mob boss as an informant, and Lefty vouched for him in making the introduction, Pacino is sitting at home watching tv late at night when he gets a call to meet someone. He explains to his wife that he has gotten a call and has to go out, leaves, and comes back in to leave behind his watch, cash, jewelry, and personal effects in a drawer in the living room that he leaves open so that they can be easily found. He knows he is about to be killed.
Every firm gives warning signs.
It may start with a hiring freeze.
Maybe your firm merges or is acquired by another firm. “Everyone is safe,” you’re told. From experience, that will change.
Maybe you’re reading about or seeing your company and its business in the media for all the wrong reasons.
Maybe quarterly earnings miss their target or senior leadership is leaving for “to explore other opportunities.”
Maybe your company is bringing in consultants instead of hiring staff because they are easier to get rid of.
Maybe you are asked a lot of questions about what it is you do.
Sometimes, it is the closed door meetings in the conference room with people you’ve never seen before.
Sometimes it is the emergency Zoom meeting where many people are told to attend for which there is no agenda or information sent in advance about what will be discussed.
Don’t listen to the speech your manager gives you about how you’re doing a great job and there is nothing to worry about.
There is a lot to worry about. They are 10 levels down from where decisions are being made. They are using wishful thinking and hoping that when the bombs land, they land nowhere near them.
During the 2008 financial crisis, the search firm I was associated with was paralyzed with fear. Clients stopped interviewing. Sales dried up. We were in trouble. I walked into a meeting with the owner and senior manager and offered simple advice. “This is going to be a bad one,” I told them. “We have two floors in the building. We can consolidate on one floor and look at capital conservation. We can shut down now and call it a day. Either way is fine but if you aren’t prepared to ride this out for at least a year, just shut it down.”
They consolidated floors and rode it out. They lasted 10 more years before they were acquired. I was gone by then.
Keep your head up, not down.
Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2022
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 2400 episodes. He also hosts Job Search TV on YouTube, and Amazon, as well as on BingeNetworks.tv for Apple TV and 90+ smart sets.
I do a livestream on LinkedIn, YouTube (on the JobSearchTV.com account) and on Facebook (on the Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter page) Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 PM Eastern. You can send your questions about job search, hiring better, management, leadership or to get advice about a workplace issue to me through LinkedIn’s messaging .You can also message me through chat during the approximately 30 minute show.
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