Not sure what I looking for from this post maybe a bit of a moan and some solidarity.
Been made redundant from my family's business, it has entered voluntary administration.
It was in an industry where you take someone else's product and make it into another product think Vans or HGVs into horseboxes or dustbin lorries only not either of those (trying to be vague) niche but only a very few who provide the whole industry.
For years the business had worked with one automotive supplier, making one set of products, one set of processes and one level of complexity.
Then the supplier stopped that product this meant the business had to develop other products on other platforms anyone who has been near automotive knows it's been changed after change since COVID and this has meant multiple rounds of product development this last round we planned for supplier delays but unfortunately the delays where much greater and due to navigating the challenges of the last few years there was no financial buffer left and it became clear we need to sell or enter administration.
As you'll see from my previous post under this name when I joined the business on the outside looked successful and was profitable but pretty soon it became clear that it had grown without any foundations.
I joined and became a director after a few years.
I put those foundations in often with very little support from some of my fellow directors. Literally no department was left untransformed the whole organisation became more professionally managed and controlled.
So I have put years in to try and stop the ship from sinking and we were so close actually reduced the loses by 2.2m nearly back into profit if the suppliers had delivered on-time or even 2/3 month late it would have been a success story.
During this I have also put up with huge amounts of stress and pressure plus being patronised by my own relatives who would often say well this doesn't sell or produce more of X. No a PO or stocking system doesn't sell more but I did control our procurement spend and reduce it by 50%.
So now I'm redundant having been one of the directors to raise the alarm we probably wouldn't have known had I not set up the systems to track cash, manage finance. I supported the employees, customers and suppliers through the process of adminstraton.
So if you have got this far in my rambling I really don't know what to do next, another job, try interim or consulting work I've got a lot of experience that some never get including adminstraton.
At the moment I have applied for a few Director roles and manufacturing operations as well as outside in roles I have transferrable skills, I've not had one interview.
The rejections I have had have been positive great candidate interesting CV but no direct experience, one even marked me 50/50 and still didn't offer an interview.
I think my best option might be a fractional/ interim or set up my own consultancy and help other struggling businesses but I'm sure those areas are struggling to get work at the moment.
So what do I do? I think a parallel strategy of keeping applying while setting something up.
Oh and to top it all the utterly useless male family member has got a job with our competition traitor which is great considering he doesn't even know how to make text bold/italic in emails.
I'm the main earner and I can probably keep us going for about 6-9months.