Where Outplacement Fails

Posted at January 8, 2010

There is a Wall Street Journal article from a few months ago that caused quite a stir amongst outplacement professionals, as well as resume writers and career coaches and counselors. It is titled Outplacement Firms Struggle to Do Job.

There are some very strong statements in this article… in the second paragraph it quotes an outplacement customer saying “outplacement was a waste of time.”

Read on and you learn that outplacement is a $4B/year business. That is a BIG business, especially if you consider the Big 3 control most of that money.

Questions about outplacement include:

Does it work? If you want it to, you probably shouldn’t read that sour article.
Will my employees use it, and get value out of it? Again, don’t read the article.

4 billion dollars a year spent on something that might not work, or that my ex-employee might not use? Why are companies paying for outplacement?

There are some good reasons, for sure.

More thoughts on the article in the next few weeks. And if you want to get riled up (whether you are an outplacement provider, or a purchaser of outplacement services), make sure you read the comments of the WSJ article