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I recently worked at a company that had three rounds of layoffs during my 12 months there. I was caught in round three, but then there was yet another round shortly after I left. Four cuts in roughly a year. And you know what surprised me most? How many people were caught off guard the second time. And the third.
How did we become so conditioned to treat each layoff as an isolated event—when the pattern is staring us right in the face?
It's January. Which means we're in peak layoff season.
If you were hit this month, or narrowly missed it, there's a question worth sitting with—not in a doom-spiral way, but in a clear-eyed way: What if this happens again in 12 months? Or sooner?
Here's the uncomfortable pattern most people don't talk about: corporate layoffs follow a predictable rhythm. January and February bring budget resets, headcount targets, and "right-sizing." July and August bring missed growth projections, revised forecasts, and second cuts.
Two layoff seasons. Every single year.
Most professionals treat the first one as bad luck. They treat the second one as "I can't believe this is happening again." But that surprise—that lack of preparation—is the real risk. Not the layoff itself.
The Dependency You Need to Name
The fragility isn't losing your job. The fragility is having your entire professional identity, income, and options tied to a single employer's decision-making. When your role disappears and your options disappear with it, you've built a career on someone else's foundation.
Why Optionality Matters More Than Performance
Here's what I've come to understand: being excellent at your job doesn't protect you from layoffs. I've watched high performers get cut because their entire division was eliminated. I've seen average performers keep their jobs because they happened to sit in the "right" cost center.
Layoffs aren't a personal failure—they're a leadership failure. But being unprepared twice? That's usually a signal that you're relying on performance when you should be building leverage.
The Five Questions That Build Real Security
Instead of asking "How fast can I get back to where I was?"—ask yourself:
- If this happens again, am I better positioned than I was last time?
This is the fundamental question. If you're rebuilding from the same starting point each time, you're not building—you're repeating. - Do people outside my company know what I'm good at?
Your reputation inside your company evaporates the day you leave. Your reputation in your industry is portable. - Would a recruiter recognize my value without my resume?
If your LinkedIn profile reads like a job description, you're invisible. If it demonstrates how you think and what you've built, you're findable. - Am I relying on performance or leverage?
Performance is doing great work and hoping someone notices. Leverage is having options that make your next move a choice, not a scramble. - If my role disappears, do my options disappear with it?
The goal isn't to never get laid off. The goal is for a layoff to be an inconvenience, not a crisis.
A few years ago, I faced my first layoff with nothing but a polished resume and a network I'd neglected for years. The scramble was humiliating... cold applications, awkward LinkedIn messages to people I hadn't talked to in a decade, waiting for responses that rarely came.
The second time a company I worked for went through cuts, I was in a different position. Not because I was more valuable to the company, but because I'd spent the intervening years building something outside of it. I'd started writing. I'd reconnected with my network before I needed something from them. I'd built a professional identity that didn't depend on my employer's logo.
When the cuts came, I had conversations instead of applications. Options instead of desperation. That's the difference between reacting to layoffs and being professionally independent.
This Week:
- Update your LinkedIn headline to reflect your expertise, not your current title.
Your title tells people where you work. Your expertise tells them what you're capable of. Compare "Senior Product Manager at Acme Corp" to "Product leader who turns ambiguous problems into revenue-generating features." The first disappears when you leave Acme. The second travels with you. Think about what you actually do—the problems you solve, the outcomes you drive—and lead with that. Even something like "Operations leader | Building systems that scale" or "Finance professional helping SaaS companies find margin" positions you as someone with transferable value, not just a role at a company.
PRO TIP: use the free 'Job Market Analyzer GPT' (link below) - Reach out to three people in your network—not to ask for anything, just to reconnect.
This is the part most people skip until they're desperate, and by then it feels transactional. Pick three people: maybe a former colleague you respected, someone you met at a conference, or an old manager who believed in you. Send a genuine message. "Hey, I was thinking about that project we worked on together and wanted to see how you're doing." "I saw your post about [topic] and it resonated—how's that going?" "It's been too long. Would love to catch up sometime." No ask. No agenda. Just relationship maintenance. The network that saves you is the one you built before you needed it. - Start a running document of your wins, projects, and measurable impact.
Open a Google Doc right now and title it "Career Wins." Every week, add one thing: a project you completed, a problem you solved, a result you drove. Include numbers when you can. "Reduced processing time by 30%" is better than "improved efficiency." "Led cross-functional team of 8 to launch product feature that drove $2M in new revenue" is better than "worked on product launch." You will forget 80% of your accomplishments within six months. This document is your insurance policy, for your next resume, your next negotiation, your next opportunity.
This Month:
- Identify one way to make your expertise visible outside your company.
This doesn't have to be dramatic. Write a LinkedIn post sharing one thing you learned from a recent project (keep it employer-safe... focus on the transferable insight, not proprietary details). Volunteer to speak at an industry meetup or local professional group. Offer to be a guest on a podcast in your field – most niche podcasts are hungry for practitioners with real experience. Contribute a guest post to an industry newsletter. The bar is lower than you think, and the first one is always the hardest. The goal is simple: start building a professional identity that exists outside your company's walls. - Have one conversation with a recruiter in your field, even if you're not looking.
This isn't about interviewing. It's about building a relationship and gathering intelligence. Find a recruiter who specializes in your function or industry (LinkedIn makes this easy—search for "[your field] recruiter" and look for people who are active and well-connected). Reach out with something like: "I'm not actively looking, but I like to stay connected to the market. Would love to chat sometime about what you're seeing in [industry/function]." Most good recruiters will take this call, they're always building their network too. You'll learn what skills are in demand, what compensation looks like, and you'll have a relationship in place for when you actually need it.
Reflection Question: If you got laid off tomorrow, would it knock the wind out of you, or would it be an inconvenience you could handle?
I've been hearing from readers who've used the layoff recovery framework to land new roles within weeks instead of months. The common thread? They'd built visibility before they needed it. One reader told me she had three conversations lined up before her severance check even arrived—because hiring managers already knew her work from her industry writing.
That's not luck. That's optionality.
When you're ready to build professional independence:
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Layoffs: The First 7 Days — The immediate action guide for professionals who just got laid off, because panic won't help, but a plan will. Download HERE
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From Invisible to In-Demand — Learn the 4-action system that got me 3-5 recruiter contacts per week, starting with ZERO connections and a brand new LinkedIn profile. Download HERE
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Job Market Analyzer GPT — A custom GPT that helps you align your resume and LinkedIn profile with what companies are actually hiring for right now. Access HERE
- The At-Risk Professional Self-Assessment — A short (2 minute) assessment designed to help you identify whether your professional life is structurally resilient, or overly dependent on a single system, and "At Risk." Eight simple yes/no questions. Access HERE
The goal isn't paranoia. It's optionality. It's the difference between asking "Will this happen again?" and asking "If it does, will it still knock the wind out of me?"
That's professional independence.
Nathan Pearce
Creator of The Professional Independence Academy
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