Were you laid off from high-tech? Here is what you should do now

After nerve-wracking days of waiting, the day the layoff actually happens is characterized mainly by detachment. Packing the laptop, returning the badge, saying goodbye to the team, and the final exit from the office. And then comes the silence. The calendar, which was full of meetings and tasks, empties all at once and leaves an echoing question: what do I do now?

In recent months, this question has occupied thousands of employees in the Israeli high-tech industry. The automatic reaction is to open LinkedIn, post an "open to opportunities" update, and storm the resumes. However, these actions, when done out of impulse and without planning, create an exhausting race: dozens of applications, few answers, and a frustrating feeling of treading water.

Veteran development manager Mor Schlesinger found herself in a similar situation eight years ago. She found herself, alongside the employees she had recruited herself, outside an organization that had run into difficulties. In a Facebook post that reached over 2,000 likes, she explains her main conclusion: it is not right to go through the job search alone.

Establish an employment "war room"

When the company closed, Schlesinger and her team set up a kind of employment "war room": they went over each other's resumes, practiced interviews, shared connections, and presented themselves to companies as a group of professionals who already know how to work together. These methods eventually led her to find a job at Google.

In the first few days, it is easy to feel that every hour in which an application was not sent is a wasted hour. However, mass distribution of the same document is not necessarily effective, and sometimes even harms your chances. Before starting, it is worth mapping the market: which roles are really relevant to your experience, where is there a professional gap, and what has changed in the field since the last time you looked for a job. An employee who has been in the same organization for five or seven years may discover that titles have changed or that threshold requirements have expanded.

Mapping should also include a decision on the boundaries of the sector: are you willing to take a step down, move from a corporation to a startup, or return to a professional role? The sooner these decisions are made, the less likely you are to be drawn into an unfocused search.

Resumes and networking

Resumes should be adapted to the specific problems the company is trying to solve. AI tools can improve phrasing, but they don't know your specific story. "A colleague can immediately see that the resume misses the most important thing you did, because for you it already seems obvious," says Schlesinger. Therefore, before sending the document, it is worth showing it to a person who worked with you closely.

Instead of treating former colleagues as rivals, it is better to cooperate. In Schlesinger's "war room," every referral that didn't fit one person was passed on to another. A simpler version of the model is to set up a small group of three to five job seekers for weekly meetings. This creates commitment and helps prevent the job search from dissolving into aimless LinkedIn scrolling.

Effective networking starts with a focused request. Instead of a general message, it is better to say: "Looking for a product management role in a B2B company, with an emphasis on data-based products."

Psychology and structure

One of the most difficult problems is the disappearance of the daily framework. It is worth building a regular schedule that dedicates defined time to searching for jobs, personal inquiries, and learning. Limiting the time spent on LinkedIn often makes the activity more effective.

Schlesinger, who is currently writing the book "What's Your Story?", emphasizes the importance of narrative. There is a difference between "I was fired" (an event) and "I am fired" (an identity). The way out is through actions that restore a sense of control: "We cannot always control the layoff round, but we can absolutely control how we cross the street at noon."