Bad news, You Just Got One Years Severance

Bad news, You Just Got One Years SeveranceBad news, You Just Got One Years SeveranceApproach your job search like a full-time job leid an extended vacation.Sometimes bad news comes in the prettiest packages. One of the commonest I see in the careers business is the generous severance payout. What seems like a gift from the highest graces too often turns out to be bad tidings in disguise.The severance vacation - that fools gold of time off that turns a few well-deserved weeks into several empty seasons - has led too many professionals, executives, and high-performers to mistakenly act against their own best interests.How can it be that something as seemingly non-controversial as a full years money for nothing can end up hurting you?First off, the severance vacation can lead you into a false sense of security. Ive got enough cash put away so that I dont have to worry for a while or Im in good shape so I dont need to look right away are how we hear it from our clients here at Ladders . This phony freedom from fear lulls you into believing that the future is far away. Instead of your sixth sense flashing warning signals and blaring the alarm siren, your pleasant-enough living situation inhibits you from securing your future cash flows and career prospects.That serene sense of calm is harmful.When urgency is low, and the bank account is flush, it seems theres always a good reason to spend another day contemplating instead of cold-calling. And more time spent on the sidelines leads to ever-worse habits and rustiness. You forget the more obscure industry buzzwords. All that sun leaves you a little slow on the uptake when it comes to the tough interviews. You get softer, you get happier, you get lazier.Thats because the alternative - the job search - welcomes avoidance. The job search involves rejection, rejection involves pain, and pain is something most of us want to experience at the gym and not carry through our waking day.The pain of the job search is the resu lt of how unusual the job search is relative to the rest of our lives. A job search occurs perhaps twice a decade and involves meeting a lot of strangers so that they can assess you. That the assessment is in regards to your professional ability to meet their specific, narrow, corporate need, does nothing to alleviate your feeling of being a-foot-and-a-half short of puberty and leise in braces at the junior high dance. Its embarrassing.Its true, the job search is the most unusual, unnatural, unenjoyable part of our lives that is, nonetheless, unavoidable. (And avoid it, we try If Dr. Seuss were still about, he could write a book about the job search entitled Oh, the excuses youll make)So how to handle the bad news that you got a years severance?First, a lay-off notice is actually an acceptance letter for your new job - and that job is at Your Job Search, LLC with you as the President and Chief Search Officer.Youll need to negotiate a start date. Give yourself an enjoyable, but mana geable, severance vacation one week if youre antsy, two weeks if youre bold, three weeks if you want to follow a flight of fancy.Having a tight schedule for your severance vacation will make those days of leisure sweeter for their scarcity, and allow you to tough it out in a better class of airline, hotel, or amusement park. You need to take the break you deserve and recharge your batteries.Because once you come back, your new job is full-time. Youll need to approach it with a seriousness of purpose and dedication to success befitting a professional. And your new job has just one goal getting yourself into a new seat at a new company getting paid in dollars, not promises or favors.So dont let good fortune ruin your luck. When the breaks go your way, bank your plenty rather than fritter it away, and make a timely transition into your new job-finding job.Its the best way to ensure that youll be collecting a years pay, and not a year of empty wandering.