I will admit, I am not sure how to handle any future job interviews. It has been so long since I have been to one. Decades. I am thinking things have changed since than, and not by a little.
That is why the idea of being laid of is so scary to me, even if I am far from happy at Oracle.
Am I the only one who feels this way?
I am in a similar boat in one way, been here for way too long. But I welcome a layoff as I want to take a break and think through before applyig for another job. I'm ready for it, but it's not happening, and I don't have a good working relationship with my manager or HR so I can't even ask them to lay me off.
Your mileage will vary by geographic location. If you're in Silicon Valley there are tons of jobs that they can't fill, but things are not as rosy in other places. In those places expect to have to take non trivial take home coding tests (which can eat up a whole weekend) before they will bring you in for an interview.
The job market is crazy out here. Not sure what you've been doing but the likelihood is that you will be overwhelmed with interview requests via LinkedIn. Be yourself. I was let go after a few decades at Sun and Oracle and landed a job paying 10k more than what Oracle was paying me.
As the previous commenters said, start now and do not postpone this for any excuse. There are some agencies online that help you improve your resume. A colleague used it and has mixed feelings on the outcome but he said that it helped him get on with it (cost was around 100$). He also said that the best of that service was that they benchmarked his CV on automatic CVs parsers and did changes so that it passes the filters.
Do not forget your LinkedIN profile. If both resume and LinkedIN are outdated start from the latter.
Get some practice on interviewing as well. Friends and colleagues are your best bet for this. Once you feel more confident, apply to a couple of jobs that you don't care much about so you get some practice speaking about yourself and your achievements and the overall hiring process.
Find some good interview books related to your skills/ role (from Amazon) (don't go for generic interview books but those specially designed for your role)
Get some good CV templates for people with same level and experience level ( you will find them in the above mentioned interview books...and also peep into some LinkedIn profiles to get some useful points that may not easily occur to you). Don't waste time on the final version. You will never get satisfied. Improving your CV is a continuous process, where you keep coming back and update/delete / customize your content.
Start applying in those companies that you will not join just for practice. REMEMBER ONE THING..Please don't get demotivated if first few interviewed are failure..You have been out of market for long, so you need practice...practice and practice to adapt...but this you have to do without taking the defeats to your heart.Just analyze what went wrong , prepare and attack again.
Read some good books /articles on body language (if possible record your mock interviews) and salary negotiations (specially since you would getting less than half of market , having worked in this labor camp for long)
Its human instinct to fear change....But not all changes are bad.
be positive all the time....
START NOW...If you don't take decisions on your life in time, then life may enforce decisions on you that you may not like.
You can do it. Have faith in yourself. You could probably go for interviews in companies you wouldn't mind getting rejected. Interview experiences help a lot in gaining confidence. All the best.
I understand as well. RIF'ed after 10 years and scared spitless. After getting a lot of practice, I hired someone (based on a former colleague's recommendation) to upgrade my resume and teach me those interviewing skills that had gone rusty.
You can do it and good luck.
You can do it! Knowing new people, getting new things, it's valuable life experience.
Hey, there are many more in the same boat. Don’t worry. It’s natural.
I would just say if this is the case, you actually need to start preparing for interviews sooner rather than later. Maybe even do a few interviews at companies you don’t want to join anyways, as a sort of practice. That will help you get over the fear.