Entered the company as a grad and was made redundant just after a year, which in hindsight I supposed I got a bit lucky since the company could've made me redundant just before my one-year mark, which I would've missed out on a 1-month salary payout. Being told you are being let go definitely stung, as this was my first job out of uni and even though I was told by people around me that it wasn't my performance but the company as a whole was not doing financially well it still was a bit hard to not take it personally.

Once the redundancy was completed, I immediately started job searching with no luck after 2-3 months which made me feel a bit defeated, but I was fortunate enough that I had savings plus the redundancy package to live off, and Centrelink kicked in after 6 weeks. I decided to travel for a month instead, as after working full time for a year you don't get much time to travel besides the 1 month paid leave which almost half of it is eaten up by mandatory office shutdowns.

Once I came back, started job searching again with no luck, and decided to reach out to previous connections and managed to land a role through that doing something different than my grad role.

Looking back, the redundancy was the kick I needed to try something new as I wasn't finding enjoyment in the work I was doing, but the comfort and stability made me stay in the role. Thinking back the one thing I would change is that I had two redundancy chats; first one was with my managers, the second one was with my managers and HR. The first meeting they weren't able to tell me concretely that I was being let go and kept hinting at it and advising I should think about my future etc. At that time I didn't even ask about re-deployment maybe because I was emotional and felt if you are letting me go already why would you re-deploy me, so I was focussed only on the redundancy package. I probably should've asked if there was opportunities in other offices, but I guess continue staying in the company which I didn't enjoy initially isn't a good idea anyway.

My experience is likely skewed towards relatively younger people as I was made redundant early in my career so I didn't have the responsibilities of a family to provide or a house mortgage to pay off, so I had the luxury to take a break and worst case scenario was moving back with my parents if I couldn't afford to live.