So, I was given notice of redundacy at the start of the year. I’ve now been out of work for two weeks and am trawling the t’interweb for my next job.

I’ve had an interview already and should hear any day now whether I’ve been succesful and I’ve got another interview coming up.

My question is though, how much of a stigma is there these days attached to being made redundant?. I was talking to a recruitment agency this morning about this potential interview and his reaction to being told I’d been made redundant was ‘oh’.. I felt like he was about to start shouting ‘unclean’!! and put the phone down on me 😕

So, from the collective experience of STW.. am I unclean, a sufferer of the pox and destined to becoming an extra in shameless, or do employers really not consider that a problem these days?

I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ve been made redundant 3 times in the last and have never had an adverse reaction to it from any agency or employer. If that is the attitude of the agency I’d have nothing to do with them.

my ex finance director made the following comment, He was shocked that some people went to so much trouble to hide redundancy, it is a fact of modern life, very rarely does it reflect on the person being made redundant particularly at a time like now.

Probably bugger all – if you were sh1t you would have been canned, not made redundant.

Cheers all 🙂

I’d just clear it up with a one-liner ‘tough times, not enough sales they had to make a number of redundancies’ and move on. Sometimes it’s about finding the right agency, as well as the right job. Same boat here, good luck.

Bedds – where are you based and what do you do?

Try and work it to your advantage…. compare yourself to those folks in a job with a notice period, and you who could start there and then!

Been made redundant twice in the past, never found it a problem, keep plugging away!

WCA..

I’m based in Gloucestershire.. H&S by training 🙂

Can’t help then, sorry

I’m not saying it is right, but, and I know I will get flamed for this despite me saying that this is absolutely not my opinion, there are some companies who still attach a stigma to it.

Wrongly, their train of thought will be that, unless the company you left went into liquidation or they scrapped an entire division, comapnies use redundancy as an excuse to get rid of the people who are not as good at their job as others in the team. If you got the boot then you are not the best man/woman in the job, the ones still in work are.

As I said, I don’t agree with the sentiment but you may well encounter this in your job searching.

My last company made me redundant and I got this job pretty quickly because they had no issues (30-40% of each department got dumped after a merger). My most recent hire here is another person coming off redundancy. He got Xmas and New Year off work and started with us in Jan but again, had a decent reason why he’d been laid off.

So yeah, although I’ve not experienced any stigma, having a reason why YOU were laid off in particular can’t hurt.

Sadly true that some potential employers don’t like it, but these seem to be a minority these days.
Remeber it’s the position that’s been made redundant, not you. Good idea to mention at interview if there were sizable cuts, or if the role was relocated (etc).
References from them that also state why you left will be a very useful tool to havc available.

If you were in a sector with known troubles then be positive and as someone said have a decent one liner (not too flippant) then move on. I was made redundent in 1992 in what was the low point of a very bad recession and most people were very supportive / sympathetic. Losing it in late 2006 would not have got you much sympathy. You def must not not feel bad about yourself or it will come out in interviews – its hard but you must stay positive. More riding time, the next job may be better in lots of different ways, whatevr – just stay cheerful.

I have been made redundant once in 2003 and then left my old job at the end of Oct 2010 through a compromise agreement because my job had mostly moved down south and I did not want to relocate to Halifax.

Both times around I have not felt any prejudice towards me because of the situations I had found myself in.

My old manager always maintained it is easier to find a job when you are in a job and I guess this is mostly true, but I was becoming very depressed in my old job and going out to interview in that state of mind would not have been productive and I needed that wee kick to give me the boost I needed and I was offered a job 7 weeks after leaving.

Good luck with your continued job search 🙂

Bedds – what qualifications do you have; iosh, nebosh?

If so, did you get a redundancy package to help you find your feet, do you specialise in any field?

Have you considered setting up a consultancy, offering independant H&S Assessments/site visits, Risk assessing/management, training of any kind?

Probably require more effort in the current climate than it would have a few years ago, but if you manage to make a go of working for yourself, you’ll never look back.