Opinion: The hard lessons I learned the first time I was laid off

Editor’s Note: Phoebe Gavin is a career coach, speaker and trainer specializing in career strategy, negotiation and empathetic leadership. The views expressed in this article are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

CNN
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If 2023 has taught us anything so far, it’s that job security is a fiction. The year has been littered with layoffs at companies we’d expect to be good, stable places to work — and it’s leaving many people wondering if they should be worried about layoffs coming for them too.

The truth is, there is no such thing as a layoff-proof job. Companies will always act in their own best interests, even if it costs their employees dearly. If the job — or the individual holding it — is no longer perceived to help the company grow, the position will be eliminated. We have little control over when or how that happens.

So what are you to do? Focus on career security over job security. You can’t stop your company from laying you off, but you can build a career that survives and thrives anyway by investing in your professional resilience.

I learned this lesson the hard way after my first layoff years ago. I come from a low-income background. I’m a first-generation college graduate and first-generation white-collar professional. My parents were loving and dedicated, but they couldn’t teach me what they didn’t know. So when my company laid me off in 2015, I was completely unprepared.

I had no financial or professional backup plan. I pieced together a few one-off gigs to bring in a little money, but I had to partially live off my credit card for most of my unemployment period. Four months and $15,000 later, I finally got lucky and a friend of a friend introduced me to my next boss. With that first paycheck, I made myself a promise: never again.

When my job was eliminated this past January, I had eight years of cumulative preparation to draw on. I had a side hustle to bring in some income, savings that allowed me to live for six months without incurring debt, a network of people who wanted to help me and skills people wanted to hire me for. I’d kept my promise to myself never to be unprepared again.

I’ve made a point of consistently investing in my professional resilience ever since. So when I was laid off from my…