Redundancy - how is it viewed by prospective employers?

Milky_Mocha

I was just wondering how a prospective employer would view an application if the applicant was made redundant from previous employment.

I am still in employment and have been headhunted by a respectable company. I have also heard rumours that there will be redundancies in my current company. I'm thinking that if I'm made redundant and then I join this new company it will be in my favour because of the redundancy payout and moving into a new job straight away. However do employers view redundant workers as those who weren't 'good enough'? If offered voluntary redundancy that would be better wouldn't it?

Spendi

I certainly hope thats not the case !

I have been made redundant on at least 6 occasions - none of which may i add was a 'golden handshake', all of them due to the company going under or relocating to other parts of the country.

I, luckily have never had a problem finding another job, the only bad thing i would see is that if someone had a few redundancies in a very short space of time, say 3 in 12 months, i would ensure that i did my very best to obtain proper references, as they may be a) lying or b) golden handshakes !

shameless-about-money

Nowadays redundancy is so commonplace I cannot see how any prospective employer can be difficult about your having been subject to a redundancy.

Hope all goes well for you.

Astaroth

It is likely something that will be brought up at interview if it is prior to your new job offer - if it is after then you dont need to bother about it until you apply for the job after the new one.

If it is a case that you get offered the new job, accept, then take redundancy then your employer after that is easy, it was a simple economics decision. If you are made redundant first and therefore it impacts this application then you will be asked about if it was voluntary or not, if the department was going or just a reduction in size etc. Redundancy can be seen negatively if it is involuntary but they only made one or two people redundant from a large team.

seven-day-weekend

AFAIK it is illegal to make people redundant just because they are 'not good enough'. Their job has to genuinely be redundant.

Of course, people can be sacked for not being good enough, but that's not the same as redundancy, is it?

DebtSniper

People get made redundant because their employer feels that they cannot afford to pay for someone to do that role. It is the role that is made redundant, not the specific person. Redundancy is generally not a reflection on the individual.

Best of luck with whatever you decide.

raq

I got made redudant last year after 11 years and once my children are a little bit older I would definately go back working for them as I did enjoy my job. I could have stayed but it couldn't have come at a good time as i was expecting another baby.

I think it looks good on a c.v. that you have been with a company for this length of time and there are many reasons why you didn't want to stay on.

good luck for the future

CFC

seven-day-weekend wrote:

AFAIK it is illegal to make people redundant just because they are 'not good enough'. Their job has to genuinely be redundant.

Of course, people can be sacked for not being good enough, but that's not the same as redundancy, is it?

LOL - no redundancy is a recognised technique, or an opportunity, for getting rid of dead wood. Employers have all kinds of tricks up their sleeves I'm afraid. Where there's a will there's a creative way round the rules.

On an employer's view of redundancy - usually an employer will have an open mind about why a person was made redundant and not jump to either conclusion off the CV - if they have any experience interviewing at all it soon becomes pretty guessable if somebody was specially managed out the door because they were absolutely dire, or it was time to lose the least good employees, or whether it was just an unlucky break for a good employee.

If they have no experience interviewing or are rather inexperienced managers who haven't been round the block they will assume it was bad luck for the individual. What is true is that it doesn't hold any stigma anymore, unlike the way it was 20 years ago.