No, Youre Not Allowed To Be Embarrassed About Your Layoff

No, Youre Not Allowed To Be Embarrassed About Your Layoff 16 Flares 16 Flares Jacob Share is the job search expert who created  JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs.  Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor. Stop shooting yourself in the foot. Quick definitions The word layoff gets thrown about very easily, especially when times are tough and the unemployment rate is high, but getting laid off and getting fired arent the same thing. Getting fired when a person is let go from a company, often due to their poor performance, without any hope of being rehired Example: if he hadnt resigned first, David Sokol probably would have been fired by Berkshire Hathaway for violating their ethical code of conduct by buying shares in a company that he knew Berkshire would purchase. Getting laid off when a person is let go from a company, usually due to their companys poor performance, with the possibility of being rehired if the companys performance improves Example: my entire team of web developers and I were laid off from my last job in early 2006, as my employer hoped to save money by outsourcing our work. (True story, and this ultimately led to the birth of JobMob, but thats a story for another time). When I was laid off, it took me a little while to feel comfortable talking about it, and that was after knowing the layoff was coming for over 6 months (!). However, once I got used to the idea that  the layoff wasnt my fault and I couldnt have prevented it, it became a lot easier to answer every job interviewers 2nd question of why did you leave your last company? (the 1st question being how are you doing today? of course). What about post-hiring layoff embarrassment? Heres what I mean. I regularly encourage job seekers to blog as a great way to build their personal brand by showing off their expertise, meeting and networking with new professional contacts, learning new skills and improving old ones, etc., and hopefully even attracting the attention of their eventual employer. I try to do my part as a blogger by inviting and allowing job seekers to come  guest post on JobMob. A few days ago, I was contacted by one such job seeker who had successfully blogged his way to a job, and now that he was working, he wanted me to remove any mention of him from his layoff-connected guest post on JobMob. Of course I respected his wishes and anonymized the article, but I also told him: I dont think this is a good move. Theres no reason to be embarrassed by having been laid off. And, by covering up your job search achievements and guest posts of this quality are such achievements, proof of continued productivity, expertise and more youre essentially creating more of a  resume gap. This guy had done a good job on his job search and now he wanted to sweep this success under the rug, because he still hadnt overcome the embarrassment of why he was on the job search in the first place. Why is this a bad idea? Aside from the reasons I gave him in my reply, theres one more thats a secret of good employers. Good employers are always a little worried that their good employees will leave them, and to prevent that from happening, the employers go the extra mile to keep those employees happy. If the proof of your successful job searching abilities are available for all to see, your employer will know that youll be less hesitant to leave than your colleagues, and as a result, your employer will go that extra mile to keep you.