I LOST MY JOB 3 WEEKS AFTER MATERNITY LEAVE // What Happened & How I'm Doing...

yes you read that title correctly I lost my job I was actually laid off a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to process my thoughts and emotions before sharing this and decided that I wanted to share it just because I've been seeing a lot of people on social media who have also lost their jobs friends in my personal life that have lost their job so maybe this might be helpful to you if you've gone through something similar or you're going through this right now because I think I'm in a pretty positive mental space and I want to explain what happened what I'm doing now and how I'm doing so first off let me start by explaining I am an attorney I work for a company or worked for a company I guess in their legal department I work remote from home I have always worked for a company I've never worked in a law firm the company that I was at was a pretty small startup it had a very fast culture to it and they had gone through several I want to put in quotes like Mass layoffs throughout my year and a half with them so I knew that the org structure wasn't necessarily stable by any means and that's a little bit of a risk when you go to a startup is just that they're constantly changing things they're figuring out how the company Works they're trying to get to be maybe Revenue positive there's a lot of factors that are involved as they figure out headcount and what they really need and what they don't need another thing you should probably know if you are new to my channel Channel or haven't been keeping up I was on maternity leave and just got back from maternity leave before this happened I was probably working for like I don't know three or maybe a little bit more three or so weeks before this happened and I just felt like I knew something was off when I was on maternity leave I did receive a very nice baby gift from work while I was on leave which was very very nice of them I had a great maternity leave package I was able to take 14 weeks it was fully paid so I am beyond appreciative that I was able to do that and this didn't happen while I was on leave or anything of course there's probably some issues with firing somebody when they're on maternity leave so that was probably a factor and then another piece that's important to know is the day I was going on maternity leave and meeting with my manager and saying bye see you in a few months she actually told me that she was leaving the company for another opportunity so when I came back she was going to be onone there was just change happening in general as I was going on maternity leave I offered and said I'd be more than happy to jump in on the interview process if you're hiring somebody new which they did end up doing I was never taken up on that while I was on leave so that felt just like a little bit weird to me but my manager that I had that close relationship with who would have been the one to reach out to me wasn't there so it was only somebody a level above them she's very busy and we didn't have as close of a personal relationship so I felt like maybe that was the reason that they didn't reach out to me but again I just had this off feeling my entire leave I came back and there just wasn't a lot of work to do I had work to do and was obviously working but it just didn't feel overly busy and I didn't feel as needed as I felt before and I think the thing about going on maternity leave is you're either going to be greatly missed or you also kind of run the risk of the company realizing like hey I think we can figure this out without this person this role maybe isn't necessary and so I also want to be clear they made it clear to me and as I explain this you'll understand it wasn't just a me thing it wasn't like I was fired for performance reasons or anything like that the company had another round of a quote unquote Mass layoff where they laid off a pretty significant percentage of the company and what they did was and a lot of companies will do this and this is how they've done it in the past they send out kind of this like emergency all hands full companywide meeting invite and I had previously scheduled PTO for two days I was with my family and was taking PTO when that invite came through it came in late at night and the meeting was for like first thing in the morning I think they don't want to give people a lot of warning or make them really nervous so I did not attend that meeting because I was on PTO and apparently that meeting was explaining to the entire company how they were going through some restructuring and they were talking about Financial Health of the company and all of that and so I got a text from The General Counsel of the company that's the highest legal position that a company typically has and she said you know I know you're on PTO I hate to bother you but I wanted to let you know this meeting happened and unfortunately your position has been impacted and the first feeling that I had was kind of just like at peace with it I don't want to say I expected this by any means but I also kind of expected it as I explained before I just wasn't that busy I felt like I wasn't needed so it makes sense that the company felt like they didn't need me in that role and to be honest with you I felt kind of weird that I felt so okay with the situation since I was with my family my whole family and like my grandparents like oh my gosh are you okay I'm so worried about Sophie and everyone seemed more stressed than I felt so you may have seen that I previously partnered up with better help which is an online platform where you can receive Mental Health Services an online therapy and had been using them already when this happened and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to schedule another session with my therapist online that I've been working with they are so quick to respond you can send them messages on the platform and you can either have like a face to face over the computer meeting you can have a phone call or you can chat chat with them so I chatted with her I let her know what was happening and the fact that I wanted to talk through it and I want to thank better help for sponsoring this video again I am clearly using their services and think it is so incredible and didn't realize how much I was going to need it I previously thought I was going to use it kind of as this transition back to work and dealing with all of the emotions that come with leaving your baby behind when you go back to work and I am now using it for a different purpose and it just goes to show that so many things can happen in your life and it's great to have this readily accessible at your fingertips because I know going to see a therapist in person it's not as easy to schedule you might have to drive there so I've just been really impressed with all of the services so I think that helped me work through my emotions and work through the fact that it's okay to feel okay with this happening when I got the text from my like new boss's boss she then let me know that I was going to be having a meeting with HR they did kind of a exit interview wrapup they honestly gave me a great severance package and a lot of other really nice benefits that I have been trying to take advantage of and I don't want to go into too many details about the financials of it and all of the benefits that they're offering but they do assist with things like Cobra because of the state that I live in I get paid out for unused PTO and they also had a nice benefit where they have a company that you can work with for I believe it's three months that's career coaching and they help you work through all of these things too so they're not therapists by any means but you can talk through your career goals with them they can review your resume which is just a really great benefit and I just felt like I left on the best terms that I could have left on my boss's boss the general councel you know offered to be a reference for me offered to send up my resume places she offered to even help me negotiate my next salary if I get an offer and want her help so in terms of leaving a company and losing my job I felt like it was the best case scenario if that's possible and again I didn't take it personally because I felt like I wasn't needed and I know that it wasn't just me being terminated that day there was a significant amount of other employees that were also being terminated so that was kind of the situation of how it happened my personality if you know me at all and you've been following me I am like High super productive and my first gut instinct is just to get out there and I didn't even let myself fully process what it happened I instantly was updating my resume I turned my LinkedIn profile to available for work or seeking positions or whatever it is where recruiters can see you I had my family look at my resume and I started applying like crazy I think I had like 40 applications sent out in the first few days I luckily had a recruiter reach out to me too I think from turning that part on my profile saying I was open to work the day after I lost my job and I think this company might be a really good fit for me they have quite a few rounds of interviews and I think I've already gone through five steps in their process and I have three more interviews set up with them tomorrow actually and I basically from the day I got terminated there was the rest of that day and then after that I got terminated on on a Thursday and then from that Friday moving forward basically this entire time I have had another interview to look forward to scheduled on the books except for the beginning of this week and I will tell you there's a huge difference with how you feel mentally and emotionally when you have an interview that you're looking forward to and you have a couple of different companies that you are looking at and are looking at you versus just like sitting there and waiting for the next step in the process and not knowing like okay am I in the middle of interviews with four companies or zero and I should really start to panic but like I said I have three more interviews tomorrow I have another one on Tuesday and then I have a couple other companies where they have said that they will reach out to schedule interviews so I'm feeling pretty positive about the fact that I will find a job I'm just hoping it's going to be the right job for me and I want to take another step back because I know I'm a full-time attorney and you might be sitting here thinking like okay you have this YouTube channel though what about doing that your kids are in daycare yes so I've also been thinking through all of that do I want to still be a full-time attorney is this a sign that maybe I want to be a stay-at-home mom and do YouTube part-time I've been thinking through all of that but in the meantime I'm still applying so I want to keep all of my options open I don't want to have this time where I'm thinking through things and then make the decision I want keep practicing law for a little bit longer and then all of a sudden I have had a month go by and I'm just starting to send out applications because this process is so long I can always say no to a company if I get an offer and I've worked through that point with the kids being in daycare if you have kids in daycare especially a daycare that's kind of competitive to get into which our kids are at one of those daycares if you pull them out you're not getting them back in and I have some friends that have gone through this as well and it's so incredibly difficult because daycare is very expensive I also would love to spend time with my kids when I'm at home and I'm not working and especially like my newborn I went through so many emotions sending him to daycare in the first place and now I'm not even working and could be watching him so that's probably been the most difficult part emotionally and I have decided and we've decided that we're financially fine with keeping them in daycare while I figured this out again I had a nice Severance and all of that stuff so it's still kind of as if I'm getting paid right now even though I know I'm not and to be honest with you I have been treating getting a job like it's my job I have been working so hard on these applications I've been having tons of interviews which I know I'm really lucky to have because a lot of people send out blind resumés and never hear back and that is the case for me as well and the best mental space I can be in when I'm sending out these applications is I have zero shame in sending out application for a job that says they want somebody who has n years experience and let's say I have seven I don't care the worst thing they can do is say no and they're not saying no to me they're saying no to a piece of paper I don't have any shame in that whatsoever which has helped me probably get so many interviews because I am just Mass applying to anything that I feel like is somewhat interesting to me and might be a good fit I've also been using this time to get personal affairs in order I've been working on sophisticated organization and my small business and YouTube channel and stuff like that I can share more on other things I'm doing if it ends up working out but I've tried to increase some other streams of Revenue and bring in some more money for our family that way while I'm not working and I think something kind of fun to do on this journey would be to share like a YouTube video day in the life of not working so you know what I'm doing and how I'm spending my days because somehow they are jam-packed without me working I am filling this time and and like I said getting stuff done around the house and like I said getting all of this stuff done so I kind of feel like our house is finally in order right now things feel good on a personal level and I do think things are promising on the job front so I will make sure to keep you all updated with how things are going if you have any specific questions about this process and what I'm going through leave them in the comments below I will do this day in a life video and show you how I'm spending my day and how I'm trying to be as hyper productive as possible even though I'm unemployed part of me was like I don't need to share this on YouTube it's kind of personal it's not really related to my channel but I share so much on Instagram stories and he with you that I felt like I didn't want to be just ingenuous that I was pretending like I was working and I'm really not so I wanted to open up for that reason and again like I said at the beginning just because I'm hoping this is potentially helpful for somebody out there that might be going through something similar that is it for today's video and Crazy Life Update stay tuned for more to see what direction I take my life in and where we go from here so thank you so much for joining me and until next time I will see you all later [Music]

Channel: Sophisticated Organization

Views: 6,290

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Id: GU9G4giohzI

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024