How To Stay Employed During COVID-19 Global Unemployment Phase?

A person in a black suit shaking hands with a lady in white with an office background, referring to staying employed during the current crisis of the corona pandemic.

Among the chaos of the corona crisis, staying employed is growing to be the next big threat to fellow earthlings. 195 million employees expected to be unemployed, still counting!

Here’s the thing:

If you are one on the verge of losing your job, there’s still a lot you could do to stay employed. If you are among the unfortunate ones to have lost it, you certainly are not alone. Easier said than done but be a pessimist, and you’d see that the world is still not out of options for you. It’s just a matter of looking in the right direction!

No strings attached!

By the end of this few minutes read, you’d already have shortlisted your way to staying employed in the current wave of global layoffs during coronavirus pandemic. But, before that – do not forget to learn your respective employment rights.

So, let’s get down to it!

Stay employed: Keep your current jobs

In case your position is not a must in the current situation, and the employers do not want to keep many useless expenses, you are highly likely to witness this undesirable layoff. 

However, that does not mean you do any less than your best, even in the current scenario. 

Why? Is there a chance that you do not lose your current job? Probably, yes! 

Here’re a few things you can keep doing to prove how your organization needs you even when the business is down:

1 – Propose new avenues and tangible solutions

Here’s an interesting phenomenon: 

While a small microbe has taken the world by storm, some of its cousins have left us a lesson.

When some microbes face stressful conditions, such as no food to live on, they do not die. 

Instead, they enter a dormancy phase where they are not practically alive but not dead either. During this phase, the organism does not reproduce or carries out other regular functions. It is rather a state of low metabolic activity. 

Interestingly, some animals and plants also replicate the process. 

Let’s try applying the process to our organizations and use them for our favors.

While things have changed now, you are still at work! Make use of this golden opportunity and deliver what is valuable for the organization.

Along with ensuring maximum productivity in the current role, come up with alternative plans for the company that do not result in any losses on the company’s part, while ensuring minimum layoffs.

When the company does not lose in terms of finances and the expenditures are being met, it doesn’t mind keeping you or others. It would be the time like the slow metabolism of the microbes where they are not fully functional but save themselves of death.

2 – Volunteer

Whether or not it is your job, volunteering for it is a good idea when it doesn’t affect your own tasks, and you can get it done. Not only does it give them relief from having to think about who to ask for help but also gives them a reason to keep you as a valuable asset of the company they can count on in any situation.

3 – Groom yourself professionally

Unless you keep learning and upgrading your own standards, your organization can never be out of options. 

Right at this time, when the businesses are shutting down, and the global layoff tide is going stronger than ever, you can be the company’s best option when you are an all-rounder or a man with versatile skills.

So, to stay on the list of must-haves, you need to keep brushing up your old skills, simultaneously acquiring new ones. 

4 – Brand yourself within the organization

Not only do you need to learn new skills, adapt, and be the need of your office, you also need to be vocal about it. 

If you do not acknowledge your value, no one else would! 

Understand how important you are for your organization and make others think the same! 

Whenever you have acquired new skills, share its importance in the company’s future. When you make a certain effort in the company’s best interest, make sure they know of what you did and the impact on the current or future status of the company. 

The idea is to make an effort sincerely but ensure it doesn’t stay hidden from every eye that needs to see and acknowledge it. In the current scenario, however, increase the speed and intensity of your efforts as well as the attempts to be seen well!

5 – Stay in good books

There are two unwanted, looked down upon scenarios.

  • You do your job perfectly well and still not be seen as a good option in the organization. You are mostly not on good terms with colleagues and top management.
  • Alternatively, you almost always look busy doing nothing and still manage to be in their good books.

But there is a third option too, probably difficult but the right one:

  • Do the best in the company’s favor and then be in the good books of the organization. 

But how? Be polite, vibrant, seen, and heard! 

Voice your concerns when something goes against the company. Show your appreciation for the actions taken in favor of the company and employees. Make sure to keep coming up with great ideas that win applause. Make sure to be adaptive when the management can not go the way you want things done. And make sure to show everyone how you are happily adapting to fit into the company’s culture and working in it’s best interest.

However, say you do it all, probably more, but the wave of layoffs still carries you along!

What next?

That’s the most important question you should prepare to answer.  

At first, you might have to rely on some financial assistance (not necessarily though if you have options of your own).

The next sane action you’d take would be looking for new opportunities to continue supporting yourself and the family.

But what kind of opportunities?” you ask.

You haven’t looked for a job in the last 4, 7, 10, 20 years, and you are clueless about your options.

That’s why we decided to help to stay employed.

Stay employed: Find new opportunities

Let’s see what we have got!

1 – Keep calm and understand the situation to its core

The best thing you can do to yourself is staying calm. That’s when you can expect to educate and inform yourself well enough to take the right steps next.

Now that you are calm understand what the pandemic has done in the world. See the destruction and see where it is heading. Does that mean you might not have a job in another year? Or is it not that bad? 

Either way, make a plan of action.

Look for the most vulnerable industries during the coronavirus crisis. Cross them out. You don’t want to be laid off once again. Look for the hot sectors during this period of uncertainty. You might stand a chance there. 

Now, evaluate and optimize your options based on the current situation.

2 – Research the companies that are still hiring

The next best thing to do is look for the companies that are still neither laying off nor stopping new hiring. Oh, well! There’s your chance!

Not that your work is over, but Rebeca Piccardo at the muse has lent a helping hand researching 75 companies that are currently hiring. 75 is a good number to start with. Start with all the positivity.

On your way to digging up your own list, do check out another list of 12 other companies still hiring.

3 – Research the companies in your niche not currently hiring

Even if the company you always wanted to be a part of isn’t hiring, it might – soon! Who knows, they are so impressed with your resume that they go out of their way to create a special position for you? Even if they don’t, one of them might recommend you to another friend needing the services you can provide.

Take all your chances. 

Do not hesitate to send your resume to all the companies that are relevant to you. You never know the nature’s way of blessing you. Sometimes, the reason you have to go the hard way is that the peak only has rewards that way.

4 – Keep nurturing your networking skills 

Several colored plastic cones connected with the drawn lines on the paper - referring to the staying connected and networking as a means to stay employed.

“You have been fired” doesn’t mean some personal grudges in action – almost never! 

So, don’t cut off ties with your company. After all, that forms the greatest part of your network. Who knows a change in your company’s plan may have something else in stock for you. What if your manager or another office colleague refers you to someone else?

In the hopes of the best, improve your networking skills, and spread your network as far as you can. Each vote, each reference, each piece of advice, each recommendation counts right now.

LinkedIn is your best friend right now, with thousands of companies on the lookout for their next best employ around the globe. However, you can leverage the power of other networking sites and groups too.

5 – Keep grooming your professional skills

With no job at hand and no outdoor activities, now is just the right time to speed up your personal and professional grooming. Keep yourself updated and give your future employers all the right reasons to employ you.

Explore your interest. Search online for all the free grooming resources if paid ones are out of reach right now. If marketing is where you want to excel, our list of online marketing courses would be a good starting point.

Pro tip for staying employed:

The best skill you can boast right now is your spectacularly flawless remote working skill. Work on that! 

Use the tips from these seasoned pro-workers to improve your productivity. Learn to maintain a work-life balance working from home. That’s probably what you’d be doing soon.

6 – Update your resume

While you did not hunt for a job in a long time, you probably did not update your resume too. Now is the right time to do it. Update any and everything from job progress to professional courses to any achievements. 

Apparently, remote working is the next successfully implemented working model, even when the coronavirus is out of our lives! So, do not forget to highlight all your remote working experiences in any variety of roles. If you were allowed to work remotely, that’s because you were still productive. Not to forget the creativity and the adaptability it points to.

7 – Apply on remote working sites 

There are many job portals and websites that offer remote working options. Bookmark them and visit them many times a day to look for the career options you are most interested in. 

Kelly Anne Smith at Forbes has compiled a great list of online resources to find remote jobs on. You can find many others too online.

8 – Be a Freelancer

A person working on a laptop in a relaxed environment, with a cup of coffee and a plant pot placed over time.

Many of us are already aware of the difference between remote working and freelancing. However, if you do not, here’s a simple explanation:

Remote work is just any regular job you might as well do from an office, but you’re doing it from home.

As for freelancing, you do not have a regular job but projects. The person to assign you the project is not your boss, unlike a regular job, but your client.

Check out our list of freelance sites (or find others online) and make your pick. Pick your best skill, for example, copy-writing, digital marketing, logo creation, website designing, or any other. Set up your profile, create gigs, or apply for the jobs. 

And there comes cash in your bank account!

9 – Find yourself whatever option you get on job portals

You don’t necessarily have to pay a recruitment agency to find you a job. Especially when you have access to high-speed internet, a smartphone device, if not a laptop, and have electricity running through the wires that reach your home, the world already is on your fingertips.

So, find all legit job banks, websites, portals, or anything that can help you with your job hunt. Find the job that suits you and hit apply!

Remember! Landing a dream job should no more be your top priority. Anything that can help you stay employed, pay your bills and other essentials should do for now.

It could range from small work from home projects, part-time jobs, to a temporary or permanent – relatively low paying – job.

Here’s a list of small job options by the Career & Student Employment Services, University of Michigan. Western Union has also compiled a brief list of online job-hunt portals. Here’s another comprehensive list of other job hunt sites.

Just make sure to go for a reliable source. If the policies of a portal ask you not to pay anyone for a job, DO NOT, no matter how irresistible the offer sounds.

10 – launch a small business

What happened to your tiny little business idea that you always wanted to start? With all the time in the world in your hand, can’t you launch it now? Or, come up with another stellar idea that would likely survive the harshness of the time as well. 

Preferably, keep it more online than physical. That’s the need of the hour. You’d find our Digital marketing must-dos guide helping you through the survival phase once you are up and running.

That’s also one of the ways you can be helpful to others during the corona crisis.

Wrap up

Time’s ticking. You can’t control it!

However, you can somewhat control how you stay employed!

Learn to keep your current job. When you can’t, you always have other options.

Be an optimist!

Stay employed, healthy and safe 🙂

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