How to Save your JOB during Cost Cutting Mission of your BOSS
Rajesh Rana
"1. Specialize
People think that if there are fewer jobs, a wide range of skills makes someone more employable. It's not the case, though. In a tight job market, employers can hold out for the perfect fit. And if you are not clearly defined as a specialist, then you are not going to be a perfect fit for anything.
Researchers have found that you get the most benefits from specializing after you have three to five years of experience under your belt. So don't specialize too early - because you won't have learned enough about what you want. But if you have a few years of experience, and you see layoffs looming, try to get on some focused, short-term projects that will allow you to market yourself as a specialist in something when you have to get your next job.
2. Do something great - right now
Most people have been participants in the last decade of manic job hopping. Which means most people have followed a pattern of performing well at a company, writing those achievements on their resume, and then making the next hop. This works in a job market where you can control when you leave.
But if you get laid off before you accomplish something significant, you will end up with a dark spot on your resume - a place where you did not do anything particularly notable.
So do something now, fast, that you will be able to quantify as an achievement on your resume - as in completed X project in X percent less time than anticipated, or saved X dollars by working twice as fast as normal.
3. Consider graduate school
There's a reason why so many Generation Xers went to graduate school: There were no jobs in the early '90s. In a down job market, grad school is a way to enhance your skills when there are no available jobs that will do that.
One of the most popular choices is law school because a law firm provides a clear path (and an A in organic chemistry is not a pre-requisite). I have never been a fan of law school as a fall-back plan, because 44% of practicing lawyers recommend that you do not go into the field.
That said, law firms have become much more accepting of people's personal lives since the last recession. Many law firms have retooled how they operate to give people more time to have a life outside work, and they have changed their policies to accommodate different stages of life.
Grad school is a treacherous route, though: Be careful about spending money for a degree with no career path to follow it. But also, be careful of investing in a career path you wouldn't want to follow.
(Hat tip: Elise)
4. Focus on the quality of work and quality of mentoring
The hardest thing to do in a bad job market is to keep your learning curve high. If the market goes sour, instead of focusing on the perfect industry or the perfect company, focus on developing new skills. And then refocus your career into a more suitable industry or location when the job market gets better.
By cultivating a great mentor in your current job, you can make your job a spot where you can wait out an economic slump should one come. So instead of focusing on the negative predictions of economic doom, focus on the positive conversations that build a solid mentoring relationship, and you will weather the storm better because you won't weather it alone.
5 Ways to Recession-Proof Your Career
We could already be suffering a recession in the U.S., and the tech industry is not immune, as potential Yahoo! layoffs show. What should you be doing now to protect yourself?
Keep building that online persona. Share who you are and what you're about online — through a blog or other means. Raising your professional profile online is one of the best ways to attract new job and business opportunities your way. Don't just create an online version of a resume; get active and connected online.
Create additional income streams, even if you are an employee. Or perhaps especially if you are an employee — because your salary is vulnerable to disappearing all at once, while freelancers and business owners usually have multiple clients.
How can you create additional streams of income? Find a side job as a freelancer (be careful not to break any of your employer's noncompete policies by doing so), start an ad-supported blog, sell products online, or offer consulting services in your field of expertise. While none of these things will — at least initially — make enough money to replace a full-time-with-bennies job, they can cushion the pain of income loss while teaching you new skills and growing your professional network.
Stay aware of what the market wants. Even during a recession, jobs go begging when employers can't find people with the right skills. Even if you're not looking for a job or more contract work right now, subscribe to Craigslist job listing feeds using searches that match what kind of positions might interest you. You'll keep yourself informed as to what skills you might need to add to your arsenal, what companies are hiring in your area, and whether hires in your field are trending up or down.
Invest in human capital. In other words, beef up your skills. You don't have to spend money on classes to do so, though that might be the easiest way to learn the basics of something unfamiliar to you. You can spend your time: find an unpaid internship with training as your compensation, do volunteer work for a nonprofit, get involved in an open source effort, or start your own just-for-learning-purposes project.
Create social capital too. If you do lose your job or a major client, your next one may very well come through your online network of friends and associates. Your online social network can not only help find new opportunities just when you need them, it can also provide emotional support when you go through tough times. Not sure exactly how to go about creating social capital? Here are some tips for networking like a human.