4. Pack a Career Go Bag

The cruellest thing about a layoff isn't the decision. It's the speed.

In some markets, one click and your access is gone. Email, files, contacts, the lot, often cut before the meeting that tells you has even finished. In some companies, you don't get to go back to your desk. You don't get to gather your things. The company has a button. You have lead time, and only if you use it.

I had a month or more to do this as I left my role, and I still had a lot to do - especially at a company where benefits are set up using your company email address.

So my advice is to pack a go bag in advance. The way you'd keep a bag by the door if you lived somewhere that floods.

If you want reassurance, almost none of this is doom prep. It's just career hygiene you should be doing anyway.

Even if the email never comes, you come out ahead.

Get your stuff out.

This is the urgent bit, and it needs a clear line drawn through it, because getting it wrong can cost you the reference, the settlement, and occasionally a lawsuit.

Take what is yours. Your network, which means the personal contact details of the people who matter, not just their dying work addresses. Your own records: payslips, your contract, equity and options paperwork, your benefits summary, the redundancy or severance policy buried in the handbook. The evidence of what you did: performance reviews, written praise, the numbers and outcomes you delivered, saved somewhere personal. And any personal files that drifted onto the work laptop or into the work drive over the years.

Leave what isn't yours. Customer lists, the CRM, source code, confidential decks, anything proprietary or covered by a confidentiality or non-solicit clause. The rule is simple and it protects you: keep the receipts for your work, not the work itself. If you need to remember a project, write yourself notes. Don't walk out with the files.

Lock in the people

References and recommendations are far easier to get while you're still a known, liked quantity. Ask now. After the cut, everyone's awkward and slow, and the manager who would have raved about you is suddenly not able to comment on personnel matters.

Get the LinkedIn recommendation. Get the personal email and number for the people you'd actually want in your corner. And tell two or three trusted people quietly. Not a broadcast. Just enough that you're not carrying it alone.

Sort anything tied to your employment status

Some things get harder, or impossible, the moment you're out. Deal with them while you still have the payslip and the title.

If you're on a work visa, this is the loudest alarm in the building. Your right to stay is often tied to your job, and the clock starts the day you're let go. Know your grace period before, not after. If you're mid-mortgage application, or planning to borrow, or anything that depends on an employment letter or a clean income picture, get it done now. And think hard before taking on any big new financial commitment while it's in the air.

Know your number and your entitlement

Two numbers kill most of the panic before it starts.

First, your runway. How many months could you cover with no income, starting tomorrow. You worked this out at the end of post two. Keep it current.

Second, your entitlement. Read your contract for your notice period, any pay in lieu of notice, and any restrictive covenants. Understand what your statutory and contractual redundancy or severance actually is, so that when an offer lands you can tell a good one from a poor one in real time, not three weeks later when it's too late to push back.

And if you hold equity or options, find out now what happens on the way out. Vesting. And the post-termination exercise window, which can be brutally short. A ninety-day window can force a fast, expensive cash-and-tax decision you weren't ready for. Knowing the rules in advance is the difference between a calm choice and a panicked one.

Refresh your assets while the memory's fresh

Update your CV and your LinkedIn now, quietly. Don't slap an open-to-work banner on while you're still employed, but get everything current.

And start a brag document. The projects, the numbers, the wins, the things people thanked you for. You will forget these astonishingly fast once you're gone, and you'll need every one of them for the CV and the interviews. Write them down while they're still vivid.

Pre-decide how you'll behave in the room

Decide now, while you're calm, how you'll act when you're not.

You will not sign anything on the spot. I need time to review this is a complete sentence, and a reasonable one. And you'll go in holding the reframe from post two: this is a business decision about a role, not a verdict on you. Pre-loading that line is what stops the meeting knocking you flat.

One thing to do this week

Pick one item from this post. Just one. Export your contacts, or ask one person for a reference, or write down ten wins.

You may never need the bag. But packing it makes you more portable, better connected, and clearer about your own worth. That's the trick of a good go bag. Packing it is its own insurance.

Try this prompt:

Help me pack a career "go bag" while I still have access to everything. Ask me a few quick questions about my role and situation, then give me a prioritised checklist: what to back up that's genuinely mine, who to reconnect with now, what to ask for before I lose access, and any employment-linked admin (visa, mortgage, references) to sort early. Remind me to keep only my own work, never company property.