Surviving a Layoff: A Week-by-Week Guide to Getting Your Life Back Together (Paperback)

~ Lita Epstein (Author)
Key Phrases: Old Rule, United States, Social Security (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Being laid off is a traumatic event. Downsized workers must face decisions about reorganizing their lives and their finances, while grappling with the emotional grief of losing a job. This book is a practical guide to dealing with the tough questions a layoff poses. Using a week-to-week timeline, the book offers advice on such topics as: coping with grief and anger after a downsizing; reorganizing life after a layoff; how to launch a job search; balancing the job search with family and personal time; explaining a layoff to family and friends; and more. This book will show downsized workers how to reorganize schedules, set financial and organizational priorities, and go for their next job with confidence and enthusiasm.

About the Author

Peter Archer is Associate Business Editor at Adams Media. He has been laid off three times and learned how to cope after undergoing the painful experience of a long bout of unemployment.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Adams Media (January 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1605500968
• ISBN-13: 978-1605500966
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #207,881 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A comprehensive guide to restoring your life after a layoff, February 19, 2009

By	Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract.com" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In Country Western music, sad songs about losing your job have a special niche, something a little more wistful than David Allan Coe's hearty "Take This Job and Shove It." Merle Haggard's "If We Can Make It Through December" is about a worker who gets laid off from his factory job at the end of the year. In "These Days I Barely Get By," George Jones moans that his boss plans to lay everyone off come winter. No question about it, getting laid off is even tougher to handle than losing your dog or your pick-up truck, two other sad themes in country tunes. But getting laid off also can signal a time for renewal, starting over and moving ahead in an exciting new direction. getAbstract finds that retirement expert Lita Epstein does a very solid job of showing you how to cope with life after a layoff. She explains how to make the best of a bad situation by taking practical, weekly steps. Her book will help you achieve a heads-up state of preparedness and - if you do have to pick up your guitar (or laptop) and hit that lonesome unemployment road - she tells you what song to sing next to get back in the saddle.

4.0 out of 5 stars Some good, useful advice about how to get your life back together, September 19, 2009

By	Christy Pinheiro EA ABA "Christy Pinheiro" (www.ChristyPinheiro.com, http://selfpublishingreview.blogspot.com) - See all my reviews

This book is about how to survive a layoff/getting fired. The best story in the book is a true story about an employee who actually sees her termination letter on her boss' computer, and she spends the entire day collecting contacts and project snippets so that she is escorted out the building by a security guard, she has a disk of all the handy information she needs to get another job. Her boss fired her because he wanted to hire a buddy instead.

It can happen at any time, (unless you're self-employed), so the author is basically saying: BE PREPARED.

The least useful chapter, in my opinion, was the "Life after Layoff", where the author starts to analyze personality types and examine the "cycles" of depression, etc, that people suffer after getting fired. I thought this section could have been summarized in 3 pages and was needlessly long.

I also thought that the last chapter, "Do You Really Want To Go Back to The Rat Race" should have been expanded a great deal-- it was about the decision whether or not to become self-employed. Economic downturns are traditionally times when people have the gumption to strike out on their own, so I felt that this chapter could have been twice as long with many more resources.

Despite the drawbacks, I still think it is a useful book to anyone who has been terminated or fired and wants guidance on what to do next.



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