The message comes in on a Thursday morning, earlier than your usual call. Can we talk today instead? When you join, your mentee looks tired and oddly calm. Their whole team was told at nine o'clock. Their laptop stops working on Friday. They have a letter, a number of weeks of pay and no idea what to do first.
Your instinct will be to move straight to the job search. CVs, contacts, the roles you have seen advertised. Hold that for now. In the first conversation, most people need to say it out loud more than they need a plan, and a plan offered too early can sound like you have not heard them.
So let them tell it. Ask how they found out, how the people around them took it, how they are sleeping. Say plainly that a redundancy is a decision about a role and a budget, not a verdict on them. They will half believe it today, and more next month.
Then help with the few things that cannot wait. Read the letter together, slowly. Check the dates, the notice, what happens to any bonus or holiday they have not taken, and whether they are being asked to sign anything. If there is an agreement, they should not sign it in a hurry, and in many places they are entitled to independent advice before they do. Ask their colleagues for personal contact details before the accounts close, because the people you worked with are the most useful network you have.
After that, the search. Offer what you can actually give. An hour to rework their CV. Two or three introductions you are genuinely happy to make. A practice interview once they feel ready. Do not promise a job you cannot deliver.
Watch the pace. Some people apply for forty roles in the first week and burn out by the third. Others cannot face it for a month. Help them find a rhythm they can keep, with a few applications a week and a day off that is really off.
And keep showing up. People tend to rally round in the first fortnight and then go quiet. The mentee who is still looking in week ten needs your call more than the one in week one.
– Asael Shinder
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