I've Been Laid Off, Now What?

If you have lived in Houston for any length of time, then you are all too familiar with the cyclical nature of the Oil and Gas Industry. This current cycle started over 4 years ago and peaked last summer. During this last "boom cycle", we saw the price of oil start off at about $34/bbl and peak at around $140/bbl. Last summer, when the price of oil went through the stratosphere, so did employment demand. Engineering professionals at all levels were extremely hard to find and as a result, salaries skyrocketed as companies scrambled to staff their projects with a limited pool of engineering professionals.

And what goes up must come down. Now we are starting to see the beginnings of layoffs, downsizings and hiring freezes. If you are one of the unfortunate victims of the tanking economy, you may be thinking, "Now what"?

The news isn't all that bad. There are still sectors in the industry that are hiring. The bad news is that it's not as easy as it used to be to get a job offer as quickly and as easily as it used to be. Whereas last year, you may have had the luxury of choosing from several offers, now, it may take two or three months just to land an offer. Over the next series of posts, we will be discussing ways and strategies of networking and searching for new career opportunities to help you land on your feet quicker. I invite your comments and thoughts as you read over these articles and hopefully share your experiences and ideas for others to learn from.

I've Been Laid Off...Now What??

Generally, the first place you should start is with your resume. This is sometimes the most difficult task for people who suddenly find themselves looking for work. A lot of people worry needlessly about the format. A well-done professional resume should only highlight your work accomplishments and history and not chronicle them. I can tell you from experience that those resumes longer than two pages in length generally do not get read.

Lets talk about how a good resume should be formatted:

Font size: Do not make it so small that it is hard to read. If you have problems keeping your resume down to two pages, you probably need to trim it down a bit. If you still can't get it down to two pages, three is acceptable but no more than three.

Contact information: If you don't have an email address, get one! You can get a Google or Yahoo! address for free. Make sure you include both home and cell phone numbers on your resume along with an updated email address.

Objective verses Summary: As someone who has read thousands and thousands of resumes, I tend to prefer a Summary statement as opposed to an Objective statement. A well written summary will highlight your career accomplishments. It should include your most recent job title, the amount of years that you have been working in your industry and of course the industry or industries that you have solid experience in. You may also a sentence or two of your biggest career accomplishment.

Example: "Consistantly increased profit margin for my group by an average of 15% per year over a five year period."

The next step in creating a resume is to target specifically what type of position you are trying find. If you have been working for any length of time, you may be qualified for more that one type of position. It is perfectly okay to create seperate resumes for each type of job that you are targeting. You may have a Project Engineering resume, a Design Engineering resume and a Business Development resume depending on which type of position that you are applying for.

Did you know most resumes don't even get read?


It's true! Unless you are applying to a small company, the majority of resumes don't even get read. If they do, the person initially screening the resume may only give your resume a quick, 30 second read. Keep this in mind as you craft your resume:


"How can I get the greatest impact with only a quick scan?"


The key here is that the resume screener is looking at (in no particular order) your job title, where you have worked, education level and job tenure. At this point, if you pass this "pre-screening" phase, your resume may get set aside for further review. Eventually, your resume is going into a large resume database only to be seen again if your resume matches certain keywords.

Which brings me to my most important point. If you were looking for you, what keywords would you use to search a database? I cannot stress this point enough because having these keywords in your resume and having them often will get your resume found and sent to the top of the stack for a human to read. This may sound like an obvious point but I have seen (especially among engineers) resumes that would painstakenly go into great detail about a project they worked on but not mention at all if it was a compressor station, pumping station, refinery, pipeline, onshore or offshore project. So unless you are in the industry and know that Thunderhorse is in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and not in the middle of Nigeria, the reader may have no idea what you are talking about. Take less time explaining the project and more time making sure certain keywords are included. The more important the keyword, the more often it should be repeated.

Most resume tracking databases today will rank resumes after a search based on the number of times a certain word is found in the resume. The theory goes like this; the more often a word is found in a resume, the more experience that person will have. So, if you are a "pipeline engineer", I would list "pipeline engineer" and its related terms as often as possible. Also, some words may have different industry spellings ("downhole" versus "down hole"; "ProEngineer" versus Pro/E versus Pro-E; "Professional Engineer" versus PE). Try to include all variations.


Remember, the primary purpose of your resume is to get noticed. You need to do everything you can to get your resume to the top of the stack as often as possible.

In my next post, I will discuss about how to get your resume to the right people. If you have any questions or comments on this blog for others to read.