Failure
How to deal with professional failure?
Separate your career from your worth, take stock of what you can do and turn the experience into an argument. Every solid career has its falls.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
A layoff, a lost position, a project that went wrong in front of everyone. Professional failure hits your pride and your bank account at the same time. But a career is not a straight line, and yours didn't end in this chapter.
What to do now
- Secure the basics. If you lost your job, check unemployment insurance, any FGTS withdrawal you are entitled to and your severance pay. Put together a transition budget for the coming months.
- Take stock of what you know. List everything you've learned to do, including what isn't on your résumé: leading people, selling, handling a crisis, learning fast. Failure often hides skills you can't see.
- Tell the story in an honest and useful way. In interviews, the question "what went wrong?" will come up. Answer with the fact, what you learned and what you would do differently. An experienced recruiter trusts someone who can explain a fall more than someone who says they never fell.
- Ask for feedback from those who saw it up close. A former boss, a colleague, a client. Ask what could have been different. It hurts, but it saves years.
- Try neighboring paths. Sometimes the next door is right beside you: another role, another sector, project-based work, a small business using what you already know.
- Study what the market is asking for. Free courses from public institutions and from Brazil's "S System" training network (Senai, Senac, Sebrae) help you update what's missing.
- Take care of your self-esteem. If the feeling of uselessness doesn't pass, seek support: CVV at 188, a primary health unit (UBS) or a psychosocial care center (CAPS).
When it happened to Bairo
Bairo says he arrived in Brazil in 2002, young, to take a management position at an education company. He was young to be in charge of anyone, and he was in charge. When he decided to leave to follow his own path, he lost much more than the position: he was left without documents in hand and without a network.
After that, he reinvented his career several times. He created a hair-treatment course, in a field that only years later found its place in Brazil, trichology. He built a cosmetics brand. He worked in events and digital printing. Each change felt like starting from zero, and each one carried something from the one before.
Years later, he says, without knowing how to code, he spent six months at home, in front of the computer, building the foundation of a financial platform for agribusiness.
The path
Professional failure doesn't erase competence; it tests it. Bairo's path shows that each lost role left a new tool in the box. In the capoeira circle, which was his bridge to Brazil, whoever stops, falls. In a career too: the ginga is to keep moving, changing sides, never standing still long enough to be knocked down for good.
Look at professional failure with the distance of someone reading another person's biography. If it were a friend's career, would you say it was over? You would probably say it was a hard chapter, and ask what the next one is. Ask yourself that question. The answer is usually closer than it seems, in a skill you haven't valued yet.