Rules from a Recession and Questions That Should Be Asked

• - Don’t use company emails for anything except company business. If you leave your job no one can reach you. Create your own non-company based email address with Gmail, MSN, AOL or other. Also watch out for comcast or other commercial email accounts in the event you terminate their service or move to another. Gmail, MSN etc. will still be there.
• - Do not use company equipment for anything except company work. No non-company internet use at all! This can be tracked and you don't want to give them any excuses to declare that you are not working 100% for the company.
• - If you are not busy sell yourself within the company, take on extra tasks and increase your skillset while on the job. Yes it is difficult but you will lose access to assets once you are laid off.
• - Learn all of the software you possibly can. When you are laid off many companies are looking for skills they do not have so they can lower their learning curve with less formal training. You will lose access to all of your software the minute you are let go. Software is extremely expensive and including maintenance costs can cost $4,000 for basic AutoCAD, $7,500 for Civil 3D, $9,500 for Bentley PowerGEOPAK, $9,000 for Carlson Takeoff, $18,000 for Cyclone, etc. Even Microsoft Office runs around $600. So the costs are not in the laptop you can buy, rather it is in the enormous cost of the software for our industry where you get stymied.
• - Do you own a house or rent? If you get laid off can you relocate easily to a region that has a better chance of employment or are you locked into your location due to a mortgage or a house you can not readily sell? If you rent you can easily relocate because you have no strings to hold you.
• - Are you taking advantage of tuition reimbursement offered by your company?
• - How is your credit record? Fix it now while you are employed because it is impossible to fix when you have no incoming paycheck.
• - What is your car payment, can you sell it and buy a used car with no payments?
• - Unemployment pays about $400/week, have you tested your finances with this amount of income? What is the deficit that remains? How will you augment it?
• - Inspect your insurance, can you afford COBRA if you are laid off? If not what is your plan?
• - Look ahead at the work the company has now, what work is coming in but hasn’t hit yet.
• - How long can the current workload sustain the existing staff and management?
• - Look at the marketing occurring, what is the statistical hit rate the company historically has, does the math add up?
• - How many short lists is the company on?
• - How many bids went out, how many short lists resulted?
• - How many licensed staff members are left, are you redundant or critical?
• - How many staff members are left with similar skills as yours, are you redundant or critical?
• - Do you have a company car AND a personal car or just a company car. If you are let go, what will you do for transportation?
• - Is your resume up to date? Many are not and a delay occurs after layoff in trying to assemble one.
• - Has your company kept its technology up to date or is all of the money going into salaries?
• - Has your company acquired new technology or is it status quo?
• - At the end of the year does surplus money go to bonuses for management or does it get re-invested into the company?
• - Is the company holding onto its core competencies or have they expanded into new service offerings?
• - Is the company policy to lay off more experienced and higher salaried staff in order to bring in lower salaried staff? What is the stated policy for staff re-alignment?
• - What is your working personality? Are you the one that stays out of the way and doesn’t bring attention to yourself or are you the one running around declaring how busy you are and how the company would have to replace you with 3 people?
• - Basically do your job, do it well, show up on time, be pleasant to work with, volunteer to help with tasks and chores and continually acquire credentials. Following that the rest is up to fate, luck and inter-personal relationships.

Please post a response to add your tips to the industry.