The first few days after a layoff feel disorienting. Everything that structured your week, your calendar, your Slack channels, your team standups, is suddenly gone. And in its place is a long, open stretch of time that can feel either freeing or overwhelming, depending on the day.

This guide gives you a week-by-week plan for the first 30 days. It’s not a rigid checklist. It’s a framework to help you move through the practical steps at a pace that makes sense, so you can get organized without burning out or stalling.

Days 1 through 3: Handle the logistics

Before you touch your resume, take care of the administrative and financial pieces.

Review your severance agreement carefully. Don’t sign anything on the first day. Most separation agreements give you 21 days to sign, or 45 days if you’re over 40 under the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act. Read the full document. Pay attention to the non-compete clause, the non-solicitation clause, and the intellectual property assignment section. If the terms feel unclear or if you’re at a level where the clauses could materially affect your search, have an employment attorney review it. Many offer a flat fee for severance reviews.

File for unemployment. Do this early. Processing times vary by state, and there’s no reason to wait. Being laid off from a restructuring qualifies you in every state. Having severance does not disqualify you in most states, though some states offset unemployment benefits during the severance period. Check your state’s specific rules.

Take stock of your benefits. Your health insurance typically continues through the end of the month of your termination. After that, you’ll need to elect COBRA coverage or find an alternative. COBRA can be expensive, so also look into marketplace plans through healthcare.gov. If you had an HSA or FSA, check the balance and spending deadlines.

Save your work-related contacts. If you haven’t already, download your LinkedIn connections and note the names and contact info of colleagues, managers, and cross-functional partners you might want to reach out to later. Don’t rely on your memory for this.

Take a day or two off. Seriously. The urgency you feel right now is real, but so is the emotional weight of what just happened. You don’t need to have your resume ready by Friday. Give yourself a moment before you switch into job-search mode.

Days 4 through 7: Build your foundation

This is when you start working on the materials and the strategy that will carry you through the search.

Write down everything you did at Oracle. Before you start formatting a resume, do a brain dump. Open a blank document and list every project, every team, every system you worked on, every responsibility you had. Don’t worry about phrasing or bullet format yet. Just capture the raw material. Include things you might not think of as “resume-worthy”: on-call rotations, cross-team collaborations, documentation you wrote, processes you improved, mentoring you did. All of it is useful raw material.

Identify your target roles. Based on your experience, what kind of work do you want to do next? This doesn’t have to be a final answer, but having a direction helps you focus your resume and your search. If you’re not sure where your Oracle experience maps, our guide on where Oracle professionals are landing can help you think through the options.

Update your resume. Take your brain dump and turn it into a structured resume. Focus on translating your Oracle-specific experience into language the broader market will understand. If your title was PMTS or IC4, decide what external title best represents your scope. Write bullets that describe specific work with enough context for someone who has never worked at Oracle to follow. Our resume guide for Oracle professionals walks through this in detail.

Update your LinkedIn profile. Change your headline to reflect what you do, not where you worked. Turn on “Open to Work” if you’re comfortable with it. Write a brief summary that describes your background and what you’re looking for next. You don’t need to post about the layoff unless you want to.

Week 2: Start reaching out

Your resume is drafted and your LinkedIn is updated. Now start building momentum.

Reach out to former colleagues. People who left Oracle before you, whether in earlier layoff rounds or voluntarily, are now inside other organizations. They know your background, they understand your skills, and they can refer you with context that a cold application can’t provide. Send a brief, genuine message. You don’t need to ask for a favor directly. “I’m exploring new opportunities after the restructuring and would love to hear about what you’ve been working on” is enough to start the conversation.

Connect with recruiters in your space. Generalist job boards will show you hundreds of results, most of them irrelevant. A recruiter who specializes in your area, whether that’s cloud infrastructure, healthcare IT, enterprise software, or database engineering, can point you toward roles you wouldn’t find on your own and give you a realistic read on the current market for your skills.

Start applying to 3 to 5 roles. Don’t wait until your resume is perfect. Start with a small batch of applications to roles that genuinely interest you. Tailor your resume and cover letter for each one. This early batch serves two purposes: it gets you into the rhythm of applying, and it gives you data. If you’re not hearing back after 5 applications, something might need adjusting. If you’re getting recruiter screens, your materials are working.

Prepare your layoff answer. At some point in the interview process, someone will ask why you left Oracle. Have a clear, brief answer ready. “Oracle went through a large restructuring in March. My role was eliminated along with many others. I’m now looking for a role focused on [your target area].” Practice saying it once out loud so it sounds natural. Our interview guide for Oracle professionals covers this in more detail.

Week 3: Expand and adjust

By now you have a working resume, an active LinkedIn profile, and a few applications out. This week is about expanding your reach and refining your approach based on early results.

Broaden your search. If you started with a narrow focus, consider expanding to adjacent roles or industries. An OCI engineer might look at platform engineering roles at non-cloud companies. An Oracle Health engineer might look at health data startups or government health tech. A NetSuite engineer might look at fintech or SaaS companies outside the ERP space.

Follow up on your applications. If you applied to a role a week ago and haven’t heard back, a brief follow-up email to the recruiter or hiring manager is appropriate. Keep it short: “I applied for [role] last week and wanted to express my continued interest. Happy to provide any additional information.”

Practice interviewing. If you have a friend or former colleague who can do a mock interview, take them up on it. Focus on describing your projects clearly, explaining technical decisions, and keeping your layoff answer brief and composed. The more you practice, the less you’ll overthink it in the real thing.

Track your applications. A simple spreadsheet works. Company, role, date applied, status, next step. This prevents the “did I already apply there?” confusion and helps you see patterns in what’s working and what’s not.

Week 4: Iterate and maintain

Review your results so far. How many applications have you sent? How many recruiter screens or phone calls have you gotten? If the ratio feels low, consider adjusting your resume, changing the types of roles you’re targeting, or getting feedback from a recruiter or trusted colleague.

Keep the cadence going. A job search is a marathon, not a sprint. Set a sustainable pace. Maybe that’s 5 applications per week, or 3 networking conversations, or one interview prep session. Whatever feels doable without burning out.

Take care of yourself. This sounds like generic advice, but it matters more than most people admit. A job search after a layoff is stressful. It combines financial pressure, identity questions, and daily rejection into one experience. Build in time for things that aren’t related to the search. Exercise, see friends, keep a routine. The search will go better if you’re not running on fumes.

Don’t compare timelines. Some of your former colleagues will land new roles in two weeks. Others will take four months. Neither timeline says anything about the quality of the person. The market is unpredictable, and a lot of job-search outcomes depend on timing and luck in addition to preparation.

A few things to avoid

Don’t mass-apply to 50 jobs a day. Quantity without tailoring rarely works. Five well-targeted applications with customized resumes and cover letters will outperform 50 generic submissions.

Don’t spend weeks perfecting your resume before applying. Your resume will never feel perfect. Get it to “strong and accurate” and start applying. You can continue refining it as you go.

Don’t disappear from your network. It can feel awkward to reach out when you need something. But most people are happy to help, especially if you’re genuine and specific about what you’re looking for. The worst thing you can do is search alone.

Don’t take it personally. Rejections and silence are part of the process. They’re frustrating, but they’re not a verdict on your abilities. Keep going.

The point of all of this

The goal of the first 30 days is not to find a job. It’s to build a system that can carry you through the search, however long it takes. If by day 30 you have a strong resume, an updated LinkedIn, a handful of applications out, a few conversations with former colleagues, and a clear sense of what you’re looking for, you’re in a good position. The rest is consistency.

You did real work at Oracle. You have real skills. The market is competitive, but the skills don’t expire. Take it one week at a time.