Professionals actively looking for work or exploring new opportunities are increasingly turning to outplacement, a service that can help them make a career change.
Outplacement is the name for a set of techniques for relocating professionals when mergers, acquisitions and restructuring result in staff losing their jobs. The aim, therefore, is to make it easy for them to get back into work and ensure the process of change does not affect their professional reputation in the job market, nor their personal life or self-esteem.
There are outplacement agencies that specialise in this sort of transition. They try to redirect professionals who are out of work by redefining their professional challenges and helping them to adopt a positive outlook on their future by means of a series of techniques and tools.
The aim of a company that hires an outplacement service is to reduce emotional conflicts and help their former employee continue their career while minimising the negative effects of them leaving the company. Nowadays outplacement services can be hired directly by professionals who are either unemployed or looking for a career change.
Outplacement normally includes various stages. First, a professional assessment to identify a person’s strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, etc. In this stage, the professional concerned learns to deal with the process of looking for work successfully, make the most of their contact networks, prepare for selection interviews and receive support when managing and organising their time.
Basically it is all about helping a person to develop strategies for achieving new professional goals and aims. The idea is to face a potentially traumatic situation with a positive outlook and turn it into an opportunity.
Losing your job, redundancy or reaching the end of a stage in your professional career can become an impulse to face new challenges and improve your professional performance.
Juan Antonio Fernández
Head of Talent- ACCIONA Human Resources