Confidence Game

Immediately after I was laid off, I did what you do in those circumstances: sent emails to everyone I could think of, telling them I'd lost my job and suggesting, in as proper and decorous a manner as possible, that they'd better drop everything and help me find another one or God knows what would become of me and it would all be on their heads. Something to that effect, anyway.

When I began this process, I could almost hear my confidence leaving my body. It sounds a lot like whining. Who could I call upon? Who did I know? Did I even have any good industry contacts? I was convinced that most of the people I knew in the business had just been laid off with me.

Which was nonsense. I knew more people than I realized--so do you. After a layoff, it is a useful and necessary exercise to go through your Outlook contacts, your files, the business cards you've accumulated, your mental Rolodex and determine just how big a network you have. You will almost certainly be surprised, as I was, and you'll feel a lot better.

This slight bump in self-esteem will help you deal with the next confidence sapper that will rear up and bite you: Has it been too long since I've been in touch? Will they resent me for trying to contact them after so much time--especially with my motives so transparent? Will they just hit delete when they see my name in their inbox?

Well, maybe they will, and maybe you'd deserve it--but give them the benefit of the doubt. In my experience, people will come through for you with expressions of sympathy, offers of help, practical suggestions and even specific leads. People you haven't spoken to in years.

Which leads to one final challenge to your confidence: I don't deserve friends like these. Still working on that one.

To Quote Lazlo Bane, I'm No Superman

One of the inescapable ironies of my situation is that shortly before I was laid off, I publicized a book called Bulletproof Your Job. It offers a number of strategies for avoiding a pink slip by making yourself a visible and valued employee, not only to your boss but to your boss's boss. It's a smart approach, but it comes with no guarantees. I'm pretty confident I was visible to and valued by my boss and my boss's boss, right up to the moment all three of us were booted out the door. Unfortunately, there's always another layer of boss. This űberboss is often the one who will determine your fate, and when they decide to shut down the entire division you work for, you can wear Kevlar and be from Krypton and still take the hit. These days, no one is bulletproof. Some layoff scenarios are just too apocalyptic to survive, even for the visible and valued.

Lay Off

It occurs to me that all of the interesting things that are going to happen to me following my layoff may have already happened. Which would make this a singularly unfortunate time to start blogging about it. However, let's forge ahead and hope for the best.

I was laid off on February 10th, so I'll have to play a little catch-up here. The morning after I was let go, I wrote an essay about the experience and submitted it to the "Soapbox" column of Publishers Weekly, the book industry's trade magazine. I wanted to stay visible, and thought this would be a good way to put my name and status in front of the industry. I had written several humor pieces for PW over the last few years, so fortunately this was an avenue that was available to me.

Publishers Weekly accepted my essay, which was called "Lay Off," and it ran in the February 23rd issue. The response has been very satisfying. I think my favorite comment came from a college professor in Oklahoma, who said, “You don’t know me from Adam, but reading your ‘Soapbox’ piece in PW just now I felt as if I had just heard some bad news from my best friend." Nice.

Enter the Book Flack

I am, in fact, a book flack at large. I'm not at large by choice, though, and if I weren't at large I probably wouldn't be blogging.

I spent a lot of years publicizing books and authors. If I were to name some of them--and I may--you would almost certainly recognize a few. Most recently I was a senior director of publicity at a large publishing company, the name of which you would also know (OK, it was HarperCollins). After working there for more than five years, I was laid off in February when they folded Collins, the division that employed me.

I thought hard about how to respond to this layoff. I came up with the notion that I could apply my publicity skills to my situation, and essentially publicize myself into my next position. Instead of telling people what I've done, I'd just show them what I can do, and see if perhaps some opportunities might find me instead of the other way around.

This approach has yielded some interesting results, which I'll describe in future posts. I'll probably also digress into commentary, random musings, and occasional name dropping, much of it book-related. So be warned.