Positive Attitude: My Personal Experience

Having a positive attitude has helped me survive at work.

Before I became a recruiter I worked for a telecommunications company that regularly restructured.

This is a nice way of saying that they regularly laid people off.

I survived 4 major restructuring and in the last one, I was the only member of my group of 8 people who didn't lose their job.

The job losses at this company were so frequent and big (70+ people were usually let go every time a restructuring occurred) that it wasn't a matter of if it would happen again but when.

How did I manage to remain employed while other people - who were usually more experienced and had been with the company longer than I had - were let go?

My attitude.

I had built up a good name in the company and my manager (and their manager) basically told me to my face that the people who were being let go were not people that they really saw as being long-term employees. The staff who were being let go were considered to have poor attitudes and were not considered to be worth keeping on board.

Do you ever wonder why a company promotes some people and leaves other staff behind?

The staff who don't get promoted and who tend to get laid off first often exhibit the same characteristics that many of my colleagues who got laid off exhibited.

They are not exceptional in any way and don't justify remaining employed.

If a company has to get rid of 100 staff, who do you think they will get rid of first? The exceptional people or the ones who "no one really knows what they do?"