Tips for Managing Your Job Search in a Recession
Posted by Diana Needham on Saturday, March 21st, 2009
Remember all those business books we read, such as Tom Peter’s In Search of Excellence? Many of those books reflected a few key themes:
- A bias for action, active decision making-”get on with it’
- Be close to the customer-learn from the people served by the business
- Entrepreneurship-foster innovation and nurturing ‘champions’
- Productivity through people- treating rank and file employees as a source of quality
- Hands-on, management philosophy that guides everyday practice
- Stick to the knitting-stay with the business that you know
- Simple form, lean staff – some of the best companies have minimal staff at the headquarter office
We can apply some of those key business principles to managing our careers during a recession. Here are 4 tips to consider.
1. Reset priorities to face the new reality. As companies downsize and those with long career histories hit the street, many hold on to our resumes and try to sell “who we are” so we can get another job like the one we had. Forget it. While it’s not impossible, the likelihood that you will find the same work you’ve always done is small. While your past experience may be less meaningful, your skills and abilities are even more critical than ever before.
2. Face the new reality. That reality is that target companies are looking for those who can fill the needs they have. Ask yourself the question: How can I re-organize my skills and abilities to do a new kind of work? You must figure it out for yourself, based upon the position description and the skills and experience required. You must be able to cope with the shifting needs of the employers you want to work for.
3. Give your target employers new solutions to the new problems they are facing. What matters is the employer’s needs, not your resume. Many job hunters waste a lot of energy trying to sell their resumes, to explain themselves, to promote their history, their credentials, their education, their accomplishments. Don’t defend your resume…and don’t expect a hiring manager to read a resume and figure out what to do with that package of history. Embattled employers don’t give a hoot what’s in your past if you can’t show them that you understand their problems — and show them how you will tackle them. Think about it this way: Successful salespeople don’t talk about their products. They talk about a prospect’s problems. Try it and watch what happens!
4. Keep investing in your “core”. Focus on what you do best, and get better at it. Keep investing in what you do best and get better at it. We will all suffer in the downturn. But when the market turns back up, the winners will be those who are the best at what they do, the survivors. Let me give you an example. In my days within financial services, I worked on many projects with technology experts. I personally know expert mainframe computer programmers who were laughed at when pc’s and local area networks came to dominate corporate information technology. The smart ones didn’t abandon their core skills. While many of their cohorts ran toward the newest technologies, the mainframe guys (programmers in ancient languages like COBOL, APL, FORTRAN) cashed in on the never-ending demand for software maintenance and application-conversion engineering. They were the last men standing in their fields because they were the best. They earn top dollar today because they never stopped investing in their core skills. (I’m not knocking those who made the shift to new computer platforms and languages. Rather I am crediting those who continued to develop core skills and made sure they were always “hot”).
Now..let’s “get on with it”…
Stay focused on your search. Please contact us to discuss how we can support and help you on this journey.
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