30,000 Layoffs Reported at One Company Last Week: What should you do if your company is next?

According to a report posted on LinkedIn last week, Oracle downsized up to 30,000 employees last week in a 6 a.m. email with no advance notice. This is almost 19% of its workforce at a company that, according to the LinkedIn post, reported a “95 percent jump in net income last quarter.”

Elsewhere, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 350,000 workers have left government jobs since October 2025. This is a workforce reduction of more than 11%.

These reports seem alarming despite a slight reduction in the national unemployment rate in March. The rate has reportedly dropped from 4.4% to 4.3%.

Are you prepared if your employer conducts a massive reduction-in-force? It is wise to have a strategy for finding a new job as a result of instability in the private sector and the public sector. Here are a few ideas for getting started:

1. Remember that hope is not a plan,
2. A plan is a dream with a deadline,
3. Treat your job search as a job, and
4. Be prepared to change your plan.

Those of us who have worked in large businesses–organizations that do a lot of planning–may find these statements obvious. But things are different when you are doing a full-time job search or career marketing campaign. You will not have a team holding you accountable for schedules, meetings, and deadlines. Instead, your new project will succeed based on your initiative alone.

Hope is not a plan.

When we work for an organization that downsizes, most of us hope the changes won’t affect us, or that the company will facilitate an internal transfer. It is possible that our job will not be affected, or we will be transferred, but neither could happen. Put simply, hope is not a plan. The best course of action is to have your exit strategy ready.

Start by thinking: “What can I do this week to make things happen?” For example:

• Are there networking events I can attend?
• What friends and acquaintances in my field can I contact for a chat?

You’ll think of other to do now to turn hopes into plans. The important thing is to act instead of hoping for change.

Hope is good. A plan is better.

A public service announcement on TV about a year ago featured an entrepreneur who described a plan as a “dream with a deadline.” You have to set a deadline, she said, to make a dream happen.

Donna Shannon, in her weekly “Down & Dirty Job Search” LinkedIn newsletter last year described job search as a job. In fact, we believe it is more than a job. Job search is an entrepreneurial and sales endeavor, as discussed in a previous post. You are working for yourself and must get it done without support from an organization.

Approaching job search with an entrepreneurial mindset may be especially challenging for those of us who do not work in sales or marketing functions. Often, our role does not require us to market or sell services. Some of us did not even have to manage our own work schedule and our budget. Work came to us and others told us when we had to do the work.

There are strategies in coaching and project management that will help you turn hopes and dreams of another job into a plan. For instance, write your plan down, break it into steps, and assign dates to complete the steps, just as you would for a project at work. Use your favorite calendar CRM system or project management tool to guide you if a free or low-cost personal or “lite” version is available.

Then tell people close to you about your plan. Whether you ask them to hold you accountable or not, you will be more likely to act on your job search plan if you have told other people what you are doing.

Unemployed jobseekers may also have to take part in publicly-funded employment programs or prove that they are job-seeking when they collect unemployment benefits. While this seems like an imposition, these programs help with job search accountability. State unemployment insurance rules in New York, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere may require jobseekers to present proof of job search periodically. The number of required job search contacts is, in my view, minimal—three contacts a week in many cases, but the requirement reduces the chance you will do nothing. Use these bureaucratic requirements to help jumpstart your efforts when you are out of work.

Your plan should change if it is not workable.

Another issue we have noticed at job clubs and networking groups is that a few participants stuck to an inflexible plan that was not working. A member of my non-profit networking group, for example, wanted to be a controller for a symphony orchestra. He stuck to this plan long after it was clear that there were too few jobs of this kind available. It’s right to change plans when you find job market conditions that make the plan infeasible.

Set your goal, break it into steps, and set target dates. Be prepared to change your strategy as needed. A way to think about this is “stuff happens.” (And some substitute a stronger word for “stuff.”)  

When “stuff happens” change your plan. This time you won’t need approval from your department head.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

An executive coach I spoke with several years ago assured me that if I could dream it, I can do it. This is not always literally true, in my opinion, because technological and financial constraints limit what is possible. Explore the dream anyway and find out what is possible. Sports coaches say “you miss 100% of the shots you do not take.”

Don’t wait for political or economic conditions to change. Develop a job search or career communication plan. Implement it. Then be prepared to change it as conditions change. Career change is up to you.