Laid off? 5 things to fix before your first application

If you've just been made redundant, the urge is to start applying straight away. Before you do, spend an hour on five fixes. None of them is about your experience. They're the small, avoidable mistakes that quietly end applications before anyone reads what you've done.

1. Change your contact details everywhere

Your work email and work mobile will stop working, often within days. If either is still on your resume, your cover letter template or your LinkedIn contact info, a recruiter's reply can land in an inbox you can no longer open. Use a personal email and phone number, and check every version of your resume, not just the latest one.

2. Give your last role an end date, and make it match

Update the end date on your resume and on LinkedIn at the same time, in the same format. A resume that says you left in October while LinkedIn still says “Present” is exactly the kind of mismatch that gets noticed when the two are read side by side. You don't need to write “made redundant” on your resume. If it comes up in an interview, say it plainly: a redundancy is a decision about a role, not a verdict on your work.

3. Write down your evidence while you still remember it

Once your access goes, so does easy recall of the numbers. Spend twenty minutes listing what you achieved in the role: results you can measure, the size of what you were responsible for, and the problems you fixed. Stick to your own achievements and figures you could explain in an interview. Don't take company documents or confidential data with you.

Proof travels further than adjectives. “Cut onboarding time from six weeks to three” says more than “highly experienced in onboarding”.

4. Decide what level you're applying for

After a redundancy it's tempting to apply for everything from a step down to a step up. The trouble is that each application then describes a slightly different person. Pick one or two levels you're genuinely aiming for, and make your headline, summary and examples point there. If you're turned down, you'll know it's about fit, not mixed signals.

5. Make sure it still sounds like you

People from the same layoff often polish their resumes with the same AI tools in the same week, and the results start to read alike. Use AI to check your work if it helps, but keep your own words, your own examples and your own way of describing what you did.

Before you send your first application

• Personal email and phone on every document
• End date updated on your resume and LinkedIn, in the same format
• Job titles and employer names match across both
• At least one measurable result for each recent role
• Headline and summary aimed at the level you're applying for
• LinkedIn's Open to Work setting chosen on purpose: visible to recruiters only, or to everyone

Where DeckStack can help

A free DeckStack Check reads your resume, plus your cover letter and LinkedIn profile if you add them, and shows your three highest-impact findings: things like dates that disagree, contact details that won't work, or claims with nothing behind them. If you want to fix everything it finds, a DeckStack Pass unlocks the full report, an action plan and the tools to rebuild your applications in your own words.