JOB SEARCH ISN’T nanotechnology; you’ll find a common-sense logic in everything I show you and wonder why you didn’t see it before. You can get your job search moving onto a new trajectory this week, and reap the rewards for the rest of your career. You can do this.
Everyone feels crappy when they are looking for a job—you aren’t the only one—but while there used to be a stigma about looking for a job, times have changed. Job change is an integral part of modern life. It comes around about every four years, making change and job search a constant factor for everyone.
Because everyone understands this, once you organize and follow the plan of attack, you will find many, many people are ready to give you a helping hand if they can.
We live and work in a time of immense change. When you were born, there still existed a world in which hard work, dedication, and sacrifice led to long-term job security and a steady, predictable climb up the ladder of success. The world you now work in is entirely different: Companies still expect hard work, dedication, and sacrifice, but their only loyalty is to the profit imperative. You are expendable.
Different times require different strategies; you need a new mindset for today’s job search and for your long-term career success. The job security and professional growth our parents were raised to expect as the norm is a thing of the past. Here are the realities you’re facing, expressed in numbers:
50—4—3—7—10
A 50-year work life
Job change about every 4 years
3 or more distinct careers
Economic downturns every 7–10 years
Integrate my job search advice into the long-term career management plan I outline in these pages and you need never again be caught flat-footed, urgently needing a job to put food on the table.
Along the way, we’ll discuss many long-term career management initiatives that are also essential parts of your job search plan of attack. For example, you’ll learn about credibility, visibility, and professional branding. These are all issues that can have great impact on your job search and even greater impact on your long-term career management initiatives.
Not surprisingly, the process starts with your resume. The resume creation process helps you focus on the job you want and package your skills effectively. It’s the first step in turning your dreams into realities, and as you’ll see, the resume techniques you’ll learn in Chapter 3 to help you land a new job can also be leveraged to get you promotions on that job; but first things first.
Companies exist to make money for the owners, as quickly, efficiently, and reliably as possible. They make money by selling a product or service, and they prosper by becoming better and more efficient at it. When a company saves time, it saves money, and then has more time to make more money; this is called productivity.
If a company can make money without employees, it will do so, because that means more money for the owners. Unfortunately for the owners, a company requires a complex machinery to deliver those products and services that bring in revenue. You can think of any and every job as a small but important cog in this complex moneymaking machine, and every cog has to be oiled and maintained; this costs money. If the company can redesign its machinery to do without that cog (automation) or can find a cheaper cog (outsourcing that job to Mumbai), of course it is going to do so.
There are two reasons jobs exist. First, as I’ve said, every job is a small but important cog in the corporation’s complex moneymaking machine: It exists to help the company make money. Second, the company hasn’t been able to automate that job out of existence because in your area of technical expertise, problems arise.
Consequently, the company hires someone who has the technical skills to solve the problems that typically occur within an area of specific expertise. The company hopes to hire someone who knows the territory well enough to predict and prevent many of these problems from arising in the first place.
It doesn’t matter what your job title is, you are always hired to be a problem solver with a specific area of expertise. Think about the nuts and bolts of any job you’ve held: At its heart, that job is chiefly concerned with the anticipation, identification, prevention, and solution of problems. This enables the company to make money for its owners, as quickly, efficiently, and reliably as possible.
These aren’t the only factors that are critical to your success and that all jobs have in common. In the next chapter you’ll learn about a specific set of transferable skills and professional values that all employers are anxious to find in candidates, whom they then hire and promote just as quickly as they can find them.