How To Talk About Your COVID Redundancy

With that in mind, you can see that the decisions you have made during our time away from the industry will tell a story. The title of that story is ‘How I respond to challenge or change’.

Business, and life for that matter, is change, and that makes how you responded to this latest career interruption very telling. Think about it. Plan for it. Reframe your thinking and language explaining this period, and most of all, know that you can be in control of the information a prospective employer receives. 

A couple of don’ts 

FEELINGS: How you feel about the recent upheavals is not particularly relevant in a job interview. Even if the question is phrased that way. The question might look like this: ‘How did redundancy or job loss impact you?’ or ‘What do you think about the way our employer/airline handled the COVID redundancies?’ In most cases candidates react to this type of question with their personal opinion or feelings. Anyone who has worked with me or my team in the last 20 years will know what I am about to say next – feelings and opinions are banned! That’s a Pinstripe SOP right there. 

They are banned because an employer will assess you based on what you did, not on how you felt about it. No doubt the challenges were many and varied and extreme for those within our industry. But like any emergency, what you ‘did’ under these circumstances tells us how you will react to a variety of circumstances in your new role. It’s about performance rather than feelings. 

Any of us can be under personal, financial, or emotional duress and feel overwhelmed by those things. As a hirer, I am more interested in the ‘action’ that you took than the cause of the challenge. 

I will admit to feeling that way myself as my 20-year business went from gungho global domination (in my mind) to a trickle in a matter of days. What I did next, however, was the greatest insight into how I respond to change/challenge that I could provide to any employer considering hiring me. Together with my team, we reinvented our aviation products and drove them into high schools and healthcare among other industries. Now, in April 2022 we are still here, and so are you. The trajectory changed for a time, but when facing your next aviation job opportunity and getting your career back on track, don’t muddy the waters by focusing on feelings. Even if asked about them. 

“WHEN YOU REFRAME CHALLENGES, YOU ARE NOT DENYING THEM. YOU ARE ABOUT TO TAKE BACK YOUR POWER FOR THE BENEFIT OF YOUR FUTURE” 

– Kirsty Anne Ferguson

DISCUSSING YOUR LAST EMPLOYER NEGATIVELY: It might seem like an obvious thing not to do. But the minute I ask a candidate about how an employer handled their outplacement, redundancy or termination process I am deluged with a litany of what they did wrong from a lack of communication to no transition funding or zero notice. Again, you are entitled to feel that way, but ask yourself: ‘is it benefiting my interview to divulge this?’ The answer is a resounding no. 

OK, I am done with the don’ts lecture. We are, according to every job site anywhere, in the middle of ‘The Great Job Boom’. This means opportunities galore and whether you decide to re-join aviation or continue on your new path, let’s focus on pulling together the type of information you need to be talking about in your next interview. That starts with all the growth and good stuff you accumulated while you managed this disruption.

I’d like you to use the following questions as an exercise. Take each one and create factual quantified lists below, then narrow them down to four. Why four? Well for you analytical types, without a number you will overthink it. 

• What new skills did I learn during this time? 
• What attributes did I learn about myself during this time? 
• What valuable transferable experience am I bringing back the aviation industry? 
• What did I achieve during my time in another industry? (Highlights or outcomes) 
• Why do I want to come back into the industry? 

Now you have both sides. What not to do and why, plus a whole set of factual/ evidential information to use in place of focusing on the difficulties. Employers everywhere want to know what they are getting. THE MOMENT YOU STRAY FROM FACTS TO FEELINGS OR FROM EVIDENCE TO OPINION, THEY WILL BE UNSURE.