From the barrel of a gun!

KNOWING what to do when one gets that unfortunately common commodity the pink slip is an art in itself! Today we have the politically correct terms like right sizing, downsizing, and retrenched. It all means, in greater or lesser degree, the action of being fired! Actually, it is becoming increasingly common to be `made redundant' by a management that at one time went on a mad and generous hiring spree.

I remember a time four years ago when HR honchos paced the floor outside convocation halls waiting for IT graduates to emerge. When they did appear each graduate was snapped up in a trice and shanghaied into a waiting car straight to the airport. Next stop, Newark! The salaries were astronomical and industry at home, even conventional industry began to hire and pay handsomely.

Then came the millennium bust and the bottom fell out of the market. Life became tough and employees kept looking over their shoulder wondering when, not if, the axe was going to fall. People were retrenched by the horde and it is today a very difficult task to find a mid-level manager who hasn't been umm..strategi-cally outplaced!

The traditional Indian professional is not used to being discarded like a used and tattered glove. It is not socially accepted and is something that is only whispered about behind the backs of sufferers. These unfortunate people have come to me, hat in hand, to ask for advice on how to cope with the ignominy, for that is what society has made it, and I find it difficult to utter the home truths that rise to my lips. But what they are worth here they are!

Cleanse

The first reaction of the fired is anger. No one likes to be cheated, and that's the feeling most people have when they are handed the pink slip. Of course there are some who are actually happy at being released from the tension of wondering about the axe falling! But it is essential that those with the anger must not let it affect their judgement or behaviour.

Being glum and morose is all very well in private, but it does more than knobble your chances in getting a new job, it will ensure that you don't get it! So what do you do with all that fury pent up in your system? Externalise it in words to a friend or a relative. I don't mean you yell at whoever comes in your way, but if necessary, moan about it to well-wishers, even to other sufferers. They will tell you their pains and you tell them yours.

Rant if you must, by all means rave, but once its out, let it stay out! In the US of course there would be a support group, back home we have family and friends! They'll rally around you especially when you are the major breadwinner! When you go into that interview, look forward and smile, not backwards at the anger you had!

The bull by the horns

When you sit down at an interview are you worried what to say if they were to ask you what happened in your last job? If you, for instance were to confess all as you walked in it would leave them nonplussed and interview panels have to be plussed all the time! If you do say something like this your entire interview will be adversely coloured by this unpleasant fact and the panel will never be able to make a proper judgement about you. So what do you do? Suppress the information?

Certainly not. Start first with the big plusses. Remember I said they like to be plussed? The plusses are your special skills, those you can transfer from your own experience to the benefit of their bottom lines.

Show them that you have

S.RAMANUJACHARYA

professor1@sify.com