by Sarah Glenn
The meeting invite had no agenda. Twenty minutes later you were closing your laptop, holding a folder of paperwork and wondering what to do after being laid off. It is a strange kind of quiet. Everyone else is still at work, and you are standing in your kitchen with a long list of things that feel urgent.
Quick answer: Pause for 48 hours before you commit to anything. Then work in order: read your paperwork, file for unemployment in the right state, sort out health coverage, tell a few trusted people, write the story of your exit, and start a small daily search routine. Order matters more than speed.
In this article
- Take 48 hours before you decide anything
- What to do after being laid off: the first week in order
- Check your money, benefits and health coverage
- Tell people, and tell them well
- Write the story of your exit before the first interview
- Start the search with a small, steady routine
- Look after the part of you that just took a hit
- When a workshop or a group helps
- Questions we hear after a layoff
Take 48 hours before you decide anything
The first instinct after a layoff is to move. Update the resume tonight, message every recruiter you have ever met, apply to forty jobs by Friday. We understand the urge. Movement feels like control, and control is exactly what just got taken from you.
Sarah Glenn spent nearly a decade in recruiting at a top-three global recruiting firm and interviewed more than 10,000 candidates. What she saw again and again was the panic-apply pattern: a lot of applications sent to roles that did not fit, a tired person on the other end, and very few replies. Speed felt productive. It rarely was.
So give yourself a short pause. Forty-eight hours is enough. Sleep. Eat something. Tell one person who will not turn it into a crisis. You are not wasting time. You are choosing not to make your biggest career decisions while your body is still in shock.
Use the pause for one job only: find every document you were handed and put it in one place. Do not sign anything yet if you are not sure what it says. Read it slowly, and when you are ready, read it again.
What to do after being laid off: the first week in order
A layoff comes with a dozen urgent-sounding tasks, and they are not equally urgent. Here is the order we suggest, and the reason for each step.
- Day 1 to 2: pause, collect your paperwork, and write down what you know (last day, final pay date, benefits end date, anything about severance).
- Day 2 to 3: file for unemployment if you are eligible, and look into health coverage. Both have deadlines that are easy to miss and hard to fix later.
- Day 3 to 4: save what you are allowed to save: your own work samples, a list of your accomplishments, contact details for colleagues. Only take what your employer allows. Do not copy confidential files.
- Day 4 to 5: tell a small circle of people what happened and what you are looking for.
- Day 5 to 7: write your exit story, rough draft only, and set the routine for the following week.
That is the short version of what to do after being laid off. Notice what is not on the list: mass applications. They come later, once you know what you are aiming at. A week of calm setup usually saves a month of scattered effort.
Check your money, benefits and health coverage
This part is dull, and it is the part that protects you. We are coaches, not lawyers or financial advisers, so we will point you to official sources and leave the personal decisions to you and the right professionals.
Start with unemployment insurance. USAGov explains that there is no federal unemployment program. Each state runs its own, and in most cases you file in the state where you worked, not necessarily where you live now. If you worked remotely or across state lines, USAGov says to contact your home state unemployment office for help filing in a different state. Eligibility rules vary, and many states look at how much and how consistently you earned over the last 12 to 24 months.
Then look at health coverage. HealthCare.gov lists two main routes when you are unemployed. One is the Marketplace, where savings are based on your household size and estimated income for the year, not on your employment status. The other is COBRA continuation coverage, if your former employer offers it. With COBRA, HealthCare.gov notes that you pay 100% of the premiums, including the part your employer used to cover, plus a small administrative fee. Price both before you choose.
Write down three dates: the day your pay stops, the day your health coverage ends, and any deadline in your severance paperwork. Put them in a calendar with reminders. If a severance agreement asks for a signature, read it carefully and consider having an employment lawyer look at it. That is a legal question, and we will not answer it for you.
One more practical point. Unemployment scams are common, and USAGov warns that scammers file claims using other people’s names and personal information. Use only your state’s official website, and keep your personal details to yourself.
Tell people, and tell them well
Most jobs are found through people, and most people want to help but do not know how. Your job is to make helping easy.
Start with four or five people who know your work: a former manager, a colleague you trust, someone in your industry, a friend who is good in a crisis. Send a short note. Say what happened in one calm sentence, say what you are looking for, and ask for one specific thing. A specific ask sounds like this: “I am looking at operations roles in healthcare. Do you know anyone I could talk to for 15 minutes?”
Avoid the vague version: “Let me know if you hear of anything.” It is kind, and it gives the other person nothing to do. Recruiters see this all the time, and the candidates who get introductions are nearly always the ones who made the request small and clear.
Update your LinkedIn profile quietly, in the same week. Fix the headline and the summary so they point forward, to the work you want next, not backward to the job you lost. You do not have to announce the layoff publicly. A short line saying you are open to new roles is plenty.
Write the story of your exit before the first interview
Every interviewer will ask about it. How you answer shapes how they see you, so it is worth preparing before the first call, not during it.
A good answer is short, calm and forward-looking. It has three parts: what happened (the company cut a team, a department closed, the role was eliminated), one sentence about what you are proud of from that job, and a turn toward what you want next. It does not blame anyone, and it does not apologize.
Say it out loud. Say it to a friend or record it on your phone. The first few times you will hear the edge in your voice. By the fifth time the edge is gone, and that is the version you want in the interview. Our post on why getting it out helps goes into why saying hard things aloud takes away some of their weight.
Keep a list of accomplishments from your last role, with numbers where you honestly have them: projects shipped, people led, time or money saved. Use only facts you can stand behind. Interviewers can tell when a number was stretched, and recruiters check.
Start the search with a small, steady routine
Once the first week is done, what to do after being laid off becomes a daily habit instead of a scramble. Replace the panic with a routine you can keep up. A search is long, and it runs on energy as much as skill.
A routine could look like this: two focused hours in the morning, three or four well-matched applications, two conversations with people in your network each week, and an end time you keep. Protect your afternoons and weekends. People who treat the search as a full-time job with no edges tend to burn out by week three.
Quality beats volume. Completely clients typically apply to 25 to 35 positions to secure an interview and need three to four interview processes to reach an offer, compared with about 100 applications for three to five responses for a typical job seeker. That comparison is our own figure about our clients, not an independent study, and it is not a promise. The point it makes is worth keeping: a smaller number of well-chosen applications, each matched to the role, tends to work better than a large number sent in a rush.
Before you apply to anything, answer one question: what kind of role are you aiming at? If the honest answer is “I am not sure”, that is useful information. It means the next step is clarity, not volume. Our Complete Career Clarity workshop exists for that exact situation.
Look after the part of you that just took a hit
A layoff is not only a logistics problem. It can feel like a verdict on you, even when the cause was a budget line you had no say in. Anger, embarrassment, relief, fear and numbness often show up in the same afternoon. None of this means you are handling it wrong.
Give the feelings a place to go. Sarah has written about this directly in Feel the Bad, which looks at why pushing hard emotions away tends to backfire. Talk to someone, walk, write it down, and keep one small routine that has nothing to do with work.
If the weight starts to feel like more than a bad stretch, such as trouble sleeping for weeks, loss of interest in everything, or thoughts of harming yourself, talk to a doctor or a mental health professional. In the US you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at any hour. A coach is not a substitute for that kind of care.
When a workshop or a group helps
Knowing what to do after being laid off is one thing, and doing it alone is another. Some people want to work through all of this alone, and that is a fine choice. Others find that a short, structured session with a person who has sat on the hiring side makes the next few weeks much lighter.
If you were laid off recently and want a calm place to start, our Laid Off to Lift Off workshop is a live 75-minute session with Sarah on a $20 to $40 sliding scale. It walks through three steps: ground yourself, rebuild your plan and launch your search. You leave with one clear action to take next. It suits people who still have some runway. If you need income tomorrow, it will not solve that, and we would rather say so up front.
If you already know you want structure and accountability for the whole search, look at the Group Career Coaching program. It is a small live cohort in two phases, career clarity first and then job search strategy. People apply, then meet Sarah for a free 15-minute consultation, and Sarah decides whether it is the right fit. You can book that consultation here if you want to talk it through first.
Questions we hear after a layoff
Should I apply to jobs right away after a layoff?
Not in the first few days. Use the first 48 hours to pause and gather your paperwork, then set up unemployment, health coverage and your story. Start applying once you know what you are aiming at. Applications sent in panic usually go to roles that do not fit.
Do I file for unemployment in the state where I live?
Usually you file in the state where you worked, according to USAGov. If you worked remotely or in another state, contact your home state unemployment office for help. Check your own state’s official website for the exact rules, because each state sets its own.
How can I keep health coverage after losing my job?
HealthCare.gov lists the Marketplace and COBRA continuation coverage, if your employer offers it. With COBRA you pay the full premium plus a small administrative fee. Compare the monthly cost of both before you decide, and note the enrollment deadlines in your paperwork.
Is it okay to take a break before searching?
Yes, a short one. When people ask us what to do after being laid off, rest comes first. A few days of rest are wise. A long gap with no plan tends to make the restart harder. A good middle path is a calm first week, then a light routine you can keep up for the whole search.
How do I answer “why did you leave your last job?”
Keep it short and factual: what happened, one thing you are proud of from the role, and what you want next. Do not blame anyone. Practice it out loud until it sounds like you, not like a script.
Written by the Completely Coaching team for Sarah Glenn. Sarah is a career coach and former recruiter, and founder of Completely Coaching in Washington, DC.
