Five must-do's if you are being let go

While you still have access to your work email account:

1. If you are using your work email address for your LinkedIn account, modify your account settings to add a personal email address. Then make your personal address primary.

If you do not you will need to re-create a new account from scratch - LinkedIn does NOT have functionality to give you access to an inactive email or merge two accounts. I know of one person who had to ask almost 100 people to connect to him again, and ask all 25 people who had written him recommendations to re-write them for his new account.

To prevent this issue unless you own your company ALWAYS use a personal rather than work email address for your LinkedIn account.

Not in LinkedIn? Join!

2. Gather up the contact information from your work email for co-workers and other people you want to stay in touch with and copy it, email it to yourself or drop it onto a personal zip drive.

3. Complying with any company restrictions, send a very polite email from your work email account to people you’d like to stay connected with who only have your work email and phone number. Consider vendors, clients, and business partners as well as co-workers.

Pleasantly tell them that you are leaving the company but that you’d like to stay in touch with them. Let them know that they can now reach you at your personal email address and cell number. Ask if they will connect to you in LinkedIn, and politely ask if they would keep an ear to the ground for opportunities for you.

4. Go through your work email and find (if you haven't already put them in their own Victory File) thank you emails, kudos, congrats, and all other nice things anyone has said about you. Make copies, email to your personal email, or drop onto your personal zip drive.

5. Gather up any samples of your work that you are authorized to take with you.

The next two steps don't require your email, but also should be done as soon as possible.

6. Make sure you have a copy of your latest job description, and take an hour or two to write down all the specifics you can remember about your most recent position(s): what you were accountable for, your deliverables, projects you worked on and specific accomplishments. The longer you wait the fuzzier the specifics will be. Write down numbers – they are “eye candy” in your resume and help prove your value to potential next employers.

7. Objectively, realistically and thoroughly assess your financial situation.

NOTE: If you have been proactively managing your career, all along you have been asking interesting people you come into contact with to connect with you in Linkedin, and you have been updating your Victory File with kudos, representative samples of your work and notes on the specifics of projects and accomplishments as you complete them. If you have been filling this folder all along, just grab it and go.

If you have not been keeping a Victory File, create it now. Doing so is a good reminder to adopt these steps as weekly habits for the life of your career.