« Stop Waiting, Start netWORKING
TechCrunched »

3 Ways to Gird Your Career Loins in the Face of 6.1% Unemployment

September 14, 2008 | Author: Promise Phelon | Filed under: Musings

I was in a discussion recently with an engineer who works for a large technology company. I mentioned that unemployment went over 6% last week—he laughed and said there is little chance we’ll have layoffs.

 

I have a good sense of humor, but I don’t think high joblessness is funny. After all, your career—second only to your family—is your most valued asset. Joblessness impacts us all—it makes the work harder as companies struggle to shore up profits and increase employee productivity… so, longer hours, more stress, more emphasis on results and measurement. Joblessness makes the work environment just a tad more distracted as the bottom 20% worries about keeping their jobs—and they’re not happy unless you’re worried, too. Joblessness also means every function in the company is under more pressure—sales has to work harder to find and close deals; marketing needs to keep up results with less money and fewer resources; engineering and research have more pressure to deliver flawless products; finance has more pressure to push down a cost-saving temperament… and so it goes.

 

And this, before significant layoffs.

 

My goal here is NOT to cause you concern, but to get you proactively focusing on reaching your career goals. In fact NOW, before the layoffs begin, is the most important time for you to be focusing on your career.  This three-point plan will help you do so.

 

1. Be clear about and become conversant in what you’re impacting—mark my word, someone (current boss, new boss or prospective employer) will ask you. What unique value do you bring to the table? What skill or ability can your boss not live without?

 

2. Review your career aspirations and think about three different career choices you could make over the next 24 months that would NOT take you off course. Then, validate those choices with the first rung of your network—your comrades, a group of professional fellow travelers with whom you have a tight relationship. (We believe you should have between x and x comrades for best networking results; more than that is too difficult to manage effectively.) Ask your comrades what they think about those possible moves and to brainstorm a few ideas—companies, roles and connecters in their networks who might be helpful.

 

3. Expand your network in the direction of those three possible career moves. Do this by reaching out to your colleagues, the second rung of your network (we believe should be no more than 150 people), to gain a sense of what’s on their minds and how you can help and serve them.

 

Caution! Don’t wait until the situation is desperate to do these things. Now is the time to calculate which three possible moves you can make—moves that won’t take you off your career path—and to vet those moves with the people who will be your enablers if desperate events come to pass. Then expand and start serving your network to support those career moves—it keeps your finger on the pulse AND enables you to help a network of people who will someday be there for you.

Share/Save/Bookmark

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

xygoxen

No comments yet.

feel free to leave a comment

Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

All fields marked with " * " are required.