Laid-off lingo

“I’ve been laid off at least 10,000 times,” Madison-based blogger and Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success author Penelope Trunk says matter-of-factly. Okay, she’s exaggerating, but the 42-year-old went through the infamous dot-com busts and has seen plenty of pink slips in her day—including one from a company she founded. With unemployment skyrocketing, Trunk gave us some etiquette tips on what to say to laid-off friends.

Don’t ask, “How’s the job hunt going?”
It’s probably the No. 1 question an unemployed person hears, and probably one of the most frustrating. “I struggle to come up with an answer that’s both true and not boring,” says Blake Townsley, a former associate at a Chicago branch of Silicon Valley Bank who was laid off in January. “Because saying ‘It’s going really well! I’ve got my key search words on Monster.com and LinkedIn.com on autofill, and so it only takes me 20 minutes a day to search for jobs for which I’m under- and overqualified’ just confuses my grandmother, and following up with ‘So I spend much of my afternoons napping and playing Mario Kart’ just pisses off my dad.” Instead of asking how the hunt is going, just wait for your pals to volunteer information when they have news.

Don’t send obvious job leads
The only thing worse than asking about the job hunt is suggesting visiting Monster.com or Craigslist as if the sites launched yesterday. Guess what? Everyone knows about those websites, so it’s highly unlikely they haven’t already checked them out.

Do offer up your professional contacts
“A job hunt is really about networking,” Trunk says. One of the best ways to help a suddenly unemployed friend is to connect them with someone who might have a job opportunity or at least some good advice. And while your friend probably already has connections on LinkedIn, you just might know of an additional colleague he or she hasn’t met yet. Trunk says not to wait until your friend asks for help. “That’s like what parents do,” she says. “They won’t give you money until you ask and then you have to grovel. Just offer up a contact; it’s a better way to say ‘I care’ than sending flowers.”

Don’t focus on their “situation”
Help take a pal’s mind off the subject and talk about something besides work. “If you found out your boyfriend has herpes, your friends wouldn’t only ask if his penis has fallen off yet,” Trunk says. “Why when someone’s laid off does everyone feel like they need to focus on that negative aspect?” Instead—and this is a no-brainer, but easy to forget—just talk about normal, everyday stuff. If they want to talk about the details of what they’re going through, they’ll bring it up. Asking too many questions about how they’re coping can make them feel like a hopeless victim.

Do choose your comforting words wisely
When Marilyn Lee was recently let go from Playboy, where she was a Web content coordinator, a former coworker thought she was being comforting when she said it seemed as if the company was “just picking random names out of a hat” when it came to the layoffs. “That really bothered me because it made me feel like a number,” Lee says. A better approach: Simply say how much you’ve enjoyed working with the person. “As soon as you get laid off, you start feeling like your utility is gone,” Trunk says. “The biggest gift you can give someone is reminding them that their value doesn’t change whether or not they have a job.” Small statements such as “I really miss working with you” boost a friend’s morale.

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