Laid-off while recruiting - When to Disclose?
Monkeys,
I have entered the recruitment process with a PE firm while being employed with the bank. I progressed through the interview rounds, passed the case study and am yet to begin the final round interviews with seniors. However, I just learnt that I will be made redundant by the bank as part of bigger layoffs.
When in the recruitment process should I bring it up? Mention it straight away, or wait until I finish the process and receive an offer / prior to the background check?
I would not like to harm my odds of getting an offer by lying, but also I am aware of stigma that layoffs have in the industry. Current situation leaves me in a grey area and I am unlikely to finish the process before my last day of employment.
Any advice, especially from someone who has been in the same situation, would be appreciated.
I would just disclose it now, set up a quick call with your contact there and tell them over the phone. They will find out eventually and honesty / being an adult about it is the best way to deal with it. If you only bring it up when you have an offer in hand, it will definitely raise questions about when this happened / if you were concealing it for a while. You are far from the only person in this situation and the layoffs can be basically random, so I wouldn't knock you for this. Best of luck man
Yeah nah retarded move, it's harder to pull an offer than not to give one, therefore disclosing the layoff only after getting the offer is the best option.
If someone asks him what he’s working on, what will he say?
revoking an offer is as easy as sending an email that says “your offer is revoked.”
You can literally pull an offer in 30 seconds and my firm has pulled several for various sketchy behaviors. Not telling people you're laid off is a pretty good reason to pull it. They don't necessarily care about a mass layoff but not disclosing it is definitely shady
He has to tell them so there's just zero reason not to be upfront and upstanding about it. It'd be different if he had already signed an offer and his notice period was well in the clear, but if you're not going to finish the process in time it's best to be honest.
Get the offer and then disclose your situation
Getting laid off while recruiting is the flavor of the month — I’m working with multiple people in this very situation and have talked people through it over the past few months. In EVERY single case people disclosed the fact to their potential employer and in EVERY single case the information was well received and the person went on to receive the offer. Positioning is important and you definitely want to control the narrative rather than risk the firm recruiting you finds out on their own. A few high level suggestions:
1 - You need to find a way to convince them that the termination is not performance related. Right now that is pretty easy given the sheer magnitude of layoffs occurring both at banks and at PE firms. Any evidence that you can present that you are a high performer will be key here.
2 - If you’ve been sitting on this information for awhile, you need to give a reason for why you’re telling them now instead of weeks ago when you found out or when you began interviewing. A good tactic here, particularly for folks who are more senior, is to indicate that you were still working through the details of the transition and therefore the outcome was uncertain.
3 - They might already know or suspect it. Often times it doesn’t come as a surprise. People who have experience recruiting can often see through weak explanations for why someone wants to leave their really good job for a potentially equivalent or even worse opportunity. They also see through weak reasons for termination such as “they found out I was recruiting and fired me.”
In terms of timing, I generally don’t recommend sitting on the information, even if you don’t have the offer yet. People will feel you purposely lied or misled them during the interview process if you wait until you have the offer to disclose your termination. Goodluck!
PE firms are laying off too? Wow...
Who?
CompBanker I am going through a similar process right now, but intend on staying on the sell-side. How would you recommend going about this, while interviewing and networking? Will people be receptive to it? I feel like there is a stigma
Was laid off (confirmed it wasn't performance related).
Thank you so much
Hard to say without going in-depth on your background. In general, the stronger your profile the more willing people are to overlook the fact that you were laid off. Also, it helps if you have other things you can point to that demonstrate you don’t have performance issues (direct promotions at other jobs, top bonus buckets, etc.). People will be less receptive if you were just an analyst who didn’t make it past their first review or something like that.
How about being held back? I was not promoted to the Associate level as part of the industry slowdown. I'm based in a country where it's notoriously difficult to lay people off for reasons outside of blatant misconduct, but I'm concerned people will see it as performance-related rather than part of the current economic cycle.
So how did this all go for you?
If you are getting counselled out, with working runway - do you typically disclose?
No, as long as your runway is like several months rather than weeks. Firms usually do this so you find a new job without being in the tough spot of disclosing a layoff.
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