About 2 years ago, I found myself voluntarily unemployed. Prior to that, I began a job that left me frustrated and not meeting my expectations. I walked away, which is unusual for me as I’m usually stubborn about these things. I felt like I’d failed, and unsure of what I wanted to do next. The downturn had started so there were not a lot of opportunities out there. In the first few months, it was xmas and summer and so I decided to take some R&R time. Great plan, I was optimistic that employment wasn’t going to be a problem in the new year. Then I decided that I wasn’t going to make the same mistake and would not jump at the first job offer. Over the next 6 months, I received four job offers but none of them fit my expectations and I didn’t accept any of them. Eighteen months down the track and I couldn’t be happier. I’m now self-employed with a viable business, ‘EnPeritus Pty Ltd’ (check it out at www.enperitus.com – I’m so proud).
In the last few months I’ve spoken to many people who have been made redundant, who have had to make members of their team redundant or who are worried about being made redundant. If you are one of those people then I completely understand how you might be feeling. There are tough times ahead according to the newspapers, the talk on the street and redundancies are occurring throughout the mining industry. What do you do? Based on my own experiences and learnings, I suggest:
- Expand your education and qualifications. What have you been wanting to learn about for a while now? If it is more knowledge of Approvals, we have an online course packed with information (http://enperitus.com/learning-centre/) – okay, I have to promote that in my own blog. I’m a great believer of life-long education and am currently doing an MBA but thinking of getting serious about learning Italian.
- Be flexible – A job in another field or industry may not be the direction you anticipated going but this will broaden your knowledge and experiences. Financially, this is a wise move to ensure a consistent income. You may consider this as a short term prospect.
- Please do not ‘worry’ about it. Everything works out in the long run. So if you have three houses and a big mortgage, you may have to sell one or two. They are just minor setbacks in the grand scheme of things.
- Get busy! You may not have a job but there’s exercise, spring cleaning, visiting your grandmother and doing odd jobs around the house, networking and lots of it (even with people you haven’t seen in a long time – they will be happy to see you).
I’m willing to help out as best I can – happy to meet up with anyone looking for a position (if I hear of job opportunities then will let you know). I am also considering providing a webpage for prospective environmental professionals to highlight their CVs. I would happily promote the webpage to my network. Let me know if you are interested in that idea. I’m not a recruitment agent but I do believe in the talent of our environmental community and believe in voluntarily helping out in any way possible.
The start of 2015 is a time to be optimistic about the opportunities available to you. It’s up to you to be flexible and grasp this time to be awesome and take advantage of the situation you find yourself in.