Surviving redundancy

2009-04-03T14:28:00.005+01:00

So I was surfing around the net earlier today and I came across a blog post on SEOmoz about redundancy that actually made some interesting reading form an SEM point of view.

There were three major parts to 'surviving redundancy' and each of those parts looks like it could be very useful if you were actually being made redundant.

Negotiating Your Redundancy
If you are being made redundant, do ask your employer if they would be interested in reducing your working hours instead. Particularly for in-house SEMs, you may be able to persuade them to continue employing you for three days a week (for instance) - leaving you with time to pursue other work but still having a regular income.

Check your original employment contract and any waivers that you are asked to sign when leaving. Look out for 'non-competitive' clauses that might say you can't work in the same industry for six months after leaving the company, and ask that these are canceled as part of your leaving agreement.

At this stage, you may also try to negotiate a bigger redundancy payment. If the company is closing down, there is unlikely to be much spare cash for this, so try informally asking for any resources the finished company will not need - for instance, laptops or domain names.

As something of an aside, the negotiation tactic book Getting to Yes is a very short, very worthwhile book to read before any negotiation.

Finding New Work

If the situation has arisen, then it's likely that other business in your industry may be suffering too, making finding your next position harder. Fortunately, we Internet-types are a hardy, flexible bunch, and we can use this to our advantage.

If you worked in-house, you may consider finding an agency to apply to. In downturns such as this, agencies and freelancers are attractive to companies who may need to adjust their budgets quite often. Indeed many agencies are thriving and actively hiring at the moment - for instance, Distilled is recruiting a Business Development Apprentice right now.

Be aware that you might need to brush up on some different skills and take a slightly different position to what you're used to. For example: your last three years as an SEO still put you in a good position to manage PPC campaigns, even if you've never logged into AdWords in your life.

To begin your search, you could visit the targeted job boards at SEOmoz Marketplace, Blogstorm's Jobs Board or SEOGadget's SEO jobs page.
If you think there's any potential that your job security isn't 100%, it's perfectly acceptable to keep a list of names and numbers to call in an emergency.

"Hi Dave, it's Rob Ousbey. We met at that conference last month. Acme has just gone out of business, so I wanted to see if there'd be any value in us meeting up for a drink to talk about opportunities you might have, now that I'm available? I can be at you office in 15 minutes."

It might sound negative to consider it, and brash to actually do it, but I know people who this has worked very well for.

Going It Alone

If you've ever considered being your own boss (and honestly, who hasn't?), then having no job and a redundancy payment to get you through the first few rocky months can be a great opportunity. A lot has been written about starting out as a freelancer and plenty more will be written, but here are my top suggestions for finding your first freelance gigs:

talk to other departments in your former company
get in touch with all your professional contacts, telling them about the kind of services you offer
if your company went out of business, contact your old clients and offer them continuity by taking on the work you previously did for them
if the company is still going, then talk to the clients/suppliers/partners you had good personal relationships with, but don't offer the same services your former company does
make sure everyone you come into contact with knows what you do (even if it is as simple as 'internet stuff' for instance) - you can quickly have an army of people selling you on your behalf.

The Freelance Switch blog is a great place to start for tips and a good community, and I've seen a lot of people talking up the Rockstar Freelancer book.

Beyond freelancing, you may feel that the skills you have put you in a good position to start up your own ventures instead. Internet Marketers I've met would typically have a set of skills to dive straight into projects such as:

launching a blog or site focused on some particular niche that interests them
getting involved in the wonderful world of affiliate marketing
domaining.

If you have the cushion of some redundancy cash behind you, you can even use the opportunity to change direction and see how it works out. Enjoy wood working in your shed? Make some spice racks and see if you can flog them. Love taking photos? See if you can sell some of them, or get commissions from newspapers.

Again, you can think about this now and even begin implementation of some of it. If you have a blog that you only post to once a month, then you could spend the first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life writing posts and promoting it. By the end of Week 1, you could be in a much stronger position than if you'd started that venture from scratch in the same week.

Again, there's a low chance that this will happen to you. I hope it doesn't, and I really do feel for the people who've found themselves out of work in the last few months; I know that there has been some restructuring in our industry recently.

Main contents courtasy of RobOusbey SEOmoz.

News for today

2009-04-01T23:02:00.006+01:00

April 1st... April Fools... but there was no fooling around today at all, not with the G20 summit going on and clashes between police and protestors and the leaders of some of the most influencial powers in the modern world.

Nomatter what preperations were taken at a security level, nothing was going to stop the actions and reactions of some of the world leaders today as negotiations took a sour turn and French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to walk out of the summit if tighter and stricter regulations on the current finacial crisis weren't meeting his standards and that the new financial regulation was a "non-negotiable goal".

Life in and around the financial sector was disturbed today as police and protesters have clashed and 26 people have been arrested. 5,000 protesters - anti-capitalists, anarchists, and climate change activists battled with the police in the Financial sector today, even getting onto the roof of the Bank of England, aswell as braking windows at nearby branches of RBS and HSBC.

The main objections apparently arose bewteen the UK, US, French and German negotiations where the French and German leaders want the financial system to be subject to far stricter rules and the US and the UK emphasised the need for the government to spend more to help to boost the world economy. However it has been said that early signs of a consensus is emerging and a deal will be reached.

However it isn't only the G20 who have been looking towards better financial gains with the charity organisation Oxfam calling upon the G20 to commit to a $580bn rescue package for Africa.

Deffinately interesting stuff and something to be keeping an eye on if your living around that area of London.

The life of a SEO

Surviving redundancy

Finding New Work

Going It Alone

News for today