Imagine you've just been made redundant, or know it's coming. What now? There's loads to deal with, from the psychological to the financial to the more strategic "what is my next move". Here's a list of all the practical redundancy advice for strategists I've seen over the last year, based on conversations, Salmon Crew chats, and my swipe file. Pick and choose what works for you!
What to do if you think you'll be made redundant
Build your evidence now: case studies, results, and the work your strategy led to. Save them, plus personal copies of templates you rely on, before access goes (IP is a grey area, so it's your call). Keep a portfolio like creatives do.
Pull quotes from annual reviews.
Ask colleagues and clients for a few lines of feedback while they're still colleagues and clients. Use them as references in cover letters or on a personal website, and as an ego boost when you need one.
Make your contribution visible to whoever decides who stays. Quiet behind-the-scenes work gets forgotten in a cull.
Be the go-to person for something specific. When a team lead is told to cut heads, what saves people is a clear link between their face and a product they produce, not being an all-round value-adder. Clear positioning makes you a non-choice: "I can't lose X, they're my Y person."
Warm up your network now. Build a reputation and network that would still call you without your title or budget.
Prepare, don't predict. Careers are too unpredictable to plan, build readiness instead. Get fluent in AI tools before your role demands it. Spend time with people outside your function. Volunteer for work that stretches you. Pick up interests you've let slide. None of it guarantees an outcome, but it widens your options before a crunch.
Know your contract: notice period, IP clause, non-solicit and non-deal covenants.
Practise selling, not just doing. At senior level, being great at the work isn't enough.
Remember HR's job is to protect the company, not you.
How to negotiate your redundancy package
Push for a bigger payout. Packages and notice terms are negotiable. Don't ask, don't get.
Check the package against your contract, company policy and employment law before signing. In England and Wales (UK only), startmyclaim.ai helps you navigate an Employment Tribunal claim without a solicitor.
Read up on the consultation process and your rights. In the UK, NABS, the support charity for advertising and marketing, has strong redundancy resources.
Ask whether you can come back as a freelancer.
If a client wants to follow you, read your covenants first, then get the client to ask the agency head to release you for their account.
Untie rather than cut: leave with as much grace as you can manage.
Use a long notice period as runway, and to tell clients you're moving on. In the UK, three months is common at senior level; four weeks is more typical below that, and norms vary a lot by country.
The first few weeks after redundancy
Let it suck. Give yourself days to feel it, because skipping this makes it last longer.
Take as much time off as you can afford before diving in.
Hold off broadcasting on LinkedIn until you feel composed. (The counter-view: signal "open to work" to your whole network early. Pick what feels right.)
Lean on friends and family; do your favourite things with your favourite people.
Look after your mental health deliberately. In the UK, Mind has practical guidance on coping with redundancy.
Sign up for Jobseeker's Allowance immediately (UK; elsewhere, check your local unemployment benefit), cut bills, and model two or three runway scenarios so money stops draining energy in the background.
Budget for a long search: the median is now close to five months, senior roles take longer, and applicants per role have doubled since 2022.
Expect an identity wobble: empty calendar, no title, people waiting for you to announce a big new role.
After a short rest, build momentum. Give yourself something positive to look forward to: a course, volunteering or a little pro-bono work. Gaps on CVs are normal now; what you do with the reset is what makes you worth a coffee.
Working out your next career move
Answer the question you ask clients: what do you actually want?
Assess your strengths via tools like VIA Character Strengths, HIGH5 and Strengths Profile. Take time to work it out, but not so much that it delays your next move.
Dig for three things: evidence of expertise, the work that energises you, and where the market need is.
Describe yourself by the problems you solve, not your titles.
Pick your category entry point. What problem or situation do you want people to think of you for? Make yourself salient for that, the way brands aim to come to mind in a buying situation.
Develop interests rather than waiting to find your passion.
Treat a zigzag career as an asset. Only repeated sub-one-year stints read as a red flag.
Consider a portfolio career. Extra income streams buy optionality.
Decide whether you're job-hunting or going solo. Hedging both makes it hard to sell either with conviction.
How strategists can find a new job after redundancy
Stop relying on online applications. They're lottery tickets: hiring managers report 1,000 applicants in 24 hours for a single senior role.
Use listings as a signal, then find a human route in.
Apply within a day of a listing appearing, ideally through the company site, and message someone you know there the same day.
Do lots of coffees, including outside agency land. Go weird and wonderful.
Join a community like the Salmon Crew, and ask the people you know to connect you with their networks.
Treat every networking chat as intentional, even with close friends. Research where they work and what's going on there, prep interesting questions, and arrive with a point of view about them, not a pick-me vibe.
Reach out to senior people when their company posts news. That's where a lot of hires are coming from.
Email your CV straight to the hiring manager. HR filters miss good people.
Get warm intros to recruiters (cold emails get ignored), and track who has put you forward where.
Tidy your LinkedIn: fully visible settings, a value-proposition banner, a headline that names recognisable employers, a one-line career journey in About, and wins as bullets under each role.
Show the work in interviews: walk them through the deck, then the work and results.
Own a narrative with a through-line, use STAR (situation, task, action, result), and don't assume they've read your CV.
Treat interviews as two-way conversations. Go in knowing what you want to learn.
Be wary of any recruiter who rushes you or moves you onto WhatsApp. Those are classic job-scam signs.
Expect ghosting at every level, including C-suite. It's not a verdict on you.
Considering an in-house role after redundancy
Be patient. In-house moves much slower than agency life.
Expect to manage upwards. Your marketing lead often isn't a marketer, so you'll need to teach to get the right work sold in.
Expect more doing than strategy, and in a small business, to cover the whole marketing mix.
Expect to define what good marketing is. Many small businesses think sales is marketing.
Spot the gaps and fill them. Nobody may ask for the fundamentals, but once you deliver them, people see why they matter.
Get comfortable with functions you've never dealt with: finance, logistics, customer service, HR. Great for learning, sometimes a drag.
Aim realistically. In medium and large organisations, junior and mid-level roles are more likely.
Show the in-house skills agency life already gave you, with examples: tailoring messages to different stakeholders, running multiple projects, budgeting and managing third parties (client work counts).
Sell your range: strategy, copywriting, a bit of project management. In-house teams want people who can turn their hand to anything.
Don't let tool requirements put you off. Any project management or CRM experience transfers; watch a few YouTube videos on theirs so you can talk about it.
Going freelance as a strategist after redundancy
Don't rule it out. Perm roles are thinning, so being able to freelance at points in your career is becoming a must.
Take freelance work in the interim while you look for the next perm role.
Sharpen your proposition: what you do, for whom, and why you.
Productise it. Inconsistency is the biggest weak spot hiring managers see in strategists: the same 'product' arrives in a different shape every time. What is something you do well, with a consistent output, that looks like a lot of work but comes easily to you, and that you could charge $1k+ for? Find that, and you have your thing.
Don't fear that a defined product limits you. Not having one limits what you can earn. Blair Enns and David C Baker are good on this, as is their podcast 2Bobs.
Price by deliverable, not just by hours. Write a menu of productised services with prices: even before it wins work, the exercise sharpens what you sell.
Be buyable at different amounts and for different things. A project review, a workshop, a keynote, a small advisory package and a full project can all sit on the same menu.
Expect many buyers to still default to day rates. When they do, set a minimum commitment in a fixed window (two days across two weeks, not 16 hours spread over months).
Don't charge for one-off hour-long consultations unless it's an existing client or work you really want.
Assume anything takes three months or more to turn into paid work.
Expect year one to run on your old agency and old network.
Message your network with personalised pitches, track it in a spreadsheet, and ask for intro chats.
Get onto agencies' supplier systems (sign the NDA) even when there's no work. Urgent briefs go to whoever's already on the books.
Pitch your old employer.
Block dedicated business development time, and share insight generously before any contract is signed.
Price in the risk: if the hours go up, so should the billings.
Give back to the community. It's "active or out".
Get over cringe mountain. Sharing your work and thinking in public feels awkward at first, but it's how people find you and remember what you're good at. Post anyway: the cringe fades with reps, and the visibility compounds.
For a step-by-step version, whether you’re freelancing by choice or as a stopgap, read The Independency Co’s From redundancy to freelancing: a pragmatic guide (UK-focused).
What not to do when you're made redundant
Don't sign anything before you've checked it.
Don't contest the decision or fight HR over technicalities unless there's genuine wrongdoing. The decision's made, however hamfisted. Save your energy and move on.
Don't rush onto LinkedIn while you're still raw.
Don't pitch old clients without reading your covenants.
Don't carpet-bomb applications.
Don't make extras nobody opens. Tailored one-pagers tend to still get zero clicks.
Don't do unpaid tasks that take more than a few hours or use live client briefs.
Don't burn bridges or let anger leak into client relationships.
Don't say all the negative things you've been saving up, and don't bad-mouth anyone. Be openly sad about leaving the team if you are, but it's a small industry: leave them wishing they still had you.
Don't wallow or leave it too long. Momentum matters.
Don't turn up to a coffee with an axe to grind. Bring a useful, memorable perspective instead.
Don't read the silence as a judgement on your worth. It's the market.
Don't skip the processing.
