When your role is cut: how to respond and move forward

Professional tennis's doubles players are reportedly furious at proposals that could significantly reduce their opportunities and earnings on tour. Whatever the outcome, the situation is a sharp reminder that even skilled specialists in established industries can find their roles threatened by decisions made above their heads.

Most of us aren't professional athletes, but the emotional response — 'you're taking our jobs' — is one many workers recognise. If you're facing redundancy, a restructure, or a role that's quietly being phased out, here's what actually helps.

Don't wait for the final decision

The period between 'there might be cuts' and 'your role is gone' is the most valuable time you have. Use it. Update your CV now, while you still have access to your work records, recent achievements, and colleagues who can vouch for you. Waiting until after the announcement means competing with everyone else who also just became available.

What to put on your CV when your specialism is niche

Doubles specialists face a version of a problem many workers know: their skills look narrow on paper. If your role has been highly specific — a particular tool, a particular market, a particular function — your CV needs to do translation work. Recruiters in adjacent fields won't automatically see how your experience transfers.

• Lead with transferable skills, not job titles. Coordination, communication, performance under pressure, and working within a team structure matter across industries.
• Reframe your achievements in language the new audience understands. If you've only ever described your work in sector-specific terms, you'll be invisible to anyone outside it.
• Don't undersell breadth you actually have. Specialists often have more varied experience than they give themselves credit for — training, mentoring, logistics, client-facing work.

The anger is valid — but it won't help your application

It's completely reasonable to feel wronged when a role you've built a career around is threatened by decisions you had no part in. But interviews and cover letters are not the place to process that. Recruiters want to know what you can do for them, not what was done to you. Keep your professional materials forward-looking.

Practical steps to take right now

1. Pull together a list of your concrete achievements from the past two to three years, with any numbers you can attach to them.
2. Identify two or three roles or sectors where your skills genuinely apply — not wishful thinking, but honest overlap.
3. Tailor your CV for each of those targets separately. A single generic CV sent everywhere rarely lands.
4. Reach out to your network quietly and early. Most roles are filled before they're advertised.

FixMyCV analyses the job description you're targeting and adjusts your CV to match it — without inventing experience you don't have.

Source: BBC. FixMyCV summarises and comments; we never reproduce articles.