Best not <\/em>to be the last employee hired before the layoffs begin.<\/p>\n If you are unemployed, stay informed about potential employers so you can avoid pursuing employment with an employer who may stop hiring or may provide only short-term employment. You don’t want to be job hunting again very soon (right?).<\/p>\n If you are employed and your employer seems to be having a tough time, start thinking about moving on to another employer. Read Job-Hunt’s free Layoff Self-Defense<\/a> ebook for suggestions about how to prepare to move on easily and smoothly.<\/p>\n Below, find more than 50 search queries in 5 categories of information that can be strong indicators of pending layoffs. Test them until you finds the queries that work the best for you.<\/p>\n Your mileage may vary. Companies with excellent management or very good luck can recover from setbacks, but not every company has excellent management or great luck.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Millions of businesses appear while others disappear or “down-size.” Constantly…<\/em><\/p>\n Fortunately, being well-informed is easier today than ever, thanks to Google.<\/p>\n Discover the bad news, or speculation, about your current employer — or a potential employer. <\/em>Having your antenna up (with Google) should help you avoid moving into an employer or a group\/division that is failing. You may also leave a bad situation (the employer as a whole or a vulnerable part of it) before all employees are branded as undesirable by other employers.<\/p>\n Most Google searches are automatically “Everything” searches which includes websites, images, video, shopping, and other options. To learn the latest about your employer (or potential employer), the “News” searches may be more helpful for this research. So, news.google.com<\/a> is a great starting point!<\/p>\n Read the Google Search Ground Rules<\/a> to understand what Google can and cannot do for you. Also check out Google-izing Your Job Search<\/a> article for advanced search tips to better leverage Google.<\/p>\n Try these Google searches. Some will work better for you than others, and some may not be appropriate for your situation. Refine your search based on the search results you get.<\/p>\n Copy the search queries below for your searches. Then:<\/p>\n So [insert company name] restructuring <\/em>becomes “JP Morgan Chase” restructuring — if <\/em>that is the employer you are researching.<\/p>\n This simple query will flag any <\/em>bad news about a company –<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “bad news”<\/p>\n Searching for specific kinds of bad news can be the most effective way to uncover problems that may be developing.<\/p>\n Try these searches to find information about part of a company shutting down, which usually means that some jobs will be lost (and probably not filled in other parts of the company as employees are transferred):<\/p>\n [insert company name here] restructuring<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “reduction in force”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “down-sizing” OR downsizing<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “right-sizing” OR rightsizing<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “head count reduction” OR “headcount reduction”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “layoff pending”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “layoff planned”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “reduction in head count” OR “reduction in headcount”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “moving production”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “halting production”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “ending production”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “stopping production”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “plant closing”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “office closing”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “branch closing”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “division closing”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “shutting down”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “consolidating operations”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “ending production”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] closing<\/p>\n Try these searches to find information about sales or revenue going down, which may lead to layoffs to reduce expenses –<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “sales drop”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “reduction in sales”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “earnings drop”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “reduced profits”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “profits drop”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “revenue dropping”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “negative revenue” forecast<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “negative outlook”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “negative sales forecast”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “negative revenue forecast”<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Try these searches to find information about products or services being discontinued because the people responsible for producing those products or providing those services may no longer be needed –<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “production discontinued”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “production ending”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “ending production”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “will cease production” [insert product name here]<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “production ends” [insert product name here]<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “line closing” [insert product name here]<\/p>\n [insert company name here] discontinued [insert product name here]<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “no longer available” [insert product name here]<\/p>\n When a business is purchased by another business, the company doing the purchasing may eliminate jobs in the acquired company that are already being handled by their current employees. For example, two complete financial staffs may not be needed, so some employees of the acquired company may be laid off. Occasionally, employees in the acquiring company lose their jobs.<\/p>\n Try these searches for news about the employer being sold –<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “on the market”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “looking to be acquired”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “hoping to be acquired”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “purchase pending”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “pending purchase”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “pending sale”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “sale pending”<\/p>\n When senior executives leave unexpectedly, it may be a sign of turmoil in senior management, and that turmoil may signal the beginning of a decline. Or it may just be the change of one individual\u2019s career. Pay attention if more than one executive seems to leave unexpectedly.<\/p>\n Try these searches to find news about executives leaving your target employers. Use the names of the members of top management. If you are employed, do this search on your current employer using the names of your manager and the other managers up the management structure to the head of the organization –<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “[insert executive name here]” resigned<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “[insert executive name here]” “resigned unexpectedly”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “[insert executive name here]” departed<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “[insert executive name here]” “departure announced”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “departure announced”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] resigned<\/p>\n [insert company name here] “resigned unexpectedly”<\/p>\n [insert company name here] fired “[insert executive name here]”<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Once you have refined the searches and figured out which work the best for you, set up Google Alerts for the searches that seem the most productive for you.<\/p>\n Google will email the results to you. Read the Setting Up Google Alerts<\/a> article for details on how to use Google Alerts.<\/p>\n Being uninformed today is a dangerous habit. Often a strong or smart employer can overcome bad luck or a change in the economy and survive successfully for many more years. Both Google and Microsoft have had layoffs in the past few years, for example.<\/p>\n Sometimes bad luck or a bad strategy becomes a death spiral, so paying attention is the smartest strategy.<\/p>\n Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce<\/a> has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a recent Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Susan is a two-time layoff \u201cgraduate\u201d who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. Since 1998, Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt.org. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg<\/a> and on Facebook<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a>. Use these 50 Google searches to help you avoid taking a job with a bad employer or to discover if the employer is having layoffs or if layoffs may be pending soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":18529,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"old-site-template.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,2,23,35,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-online-job-search-guide","category-advanced-job-search","category-job-interviews","category-job-search","category-layoffs"],"last_modified_at":"","edited_by":"Josh Grossman","acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4610"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20253,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610\/revisions\/20253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Use Google Search for Career Self-Defense<\/h2>\n
How to Use These Queries<\/h2>\n
\n
General Bad News<\/h2>\n
5 Kinds of Bad News<\/h2>\n
1. Restructuring or closure of a plant or office<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
2. Drop in sales or revenue<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
3. Product or service discontinued<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
4. Company being sold<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
5. Executive or senior manager leaving<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
Save These Queries to Use Again<\/h2>\n
Bottom Line<\/h3>\n
More About Using Google for Your Job Search:<\/h3>\n
\n
Using Your Google Research in Job Interviews:<\/h3>\n
\n
\n![\"Susan](\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Joyce_081203_12-6.jpg\")
About the author…<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nMore about this author<\/a>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"