It’s no small task finding you niche in life.  Dad had trouble and so did I.  In the last six years, I’ve been at six different companies, due to this time of recession.  “Nick’s son Dale, who has been working in a top executive job with General Electric for 19 years, has just been laid off,” write Mom in 1991.  “It was a shock as he has a wife and family and an unpaid house to take care of.”  After a quarter century of highly skilled work as an engineer, my brother Paul was laid off more than a year ago, and was unable to find a job in his chosen field.  This summer we drove past the area where he lives and saw the acres of steel mills and brown fields that have now been padlocked in Coatesville.  There are no guarantees for either blue or white collar workers.  My own profession is especially vulnerable to offshoring—transferring the support of computer systems to India, Malaysia, and Eastern Europe.  Anything now that goes down a wire today is up for grabs. 

      It’s important to like what you do, but it is even more important to be realistic.  My first suggestion:  make learning a life-long habit.  If we act like machines, companies will replace us—sometimes with other machines.  My second suggestion:  don’t hope for work in such areas as art, music, writing, and sports.  No matter how good you are, the explosion of talent at the top is such that it is seldom realistic to aim to be, for example, a professional baseball player.  Now, this is not to say that you cannot make an exciting and lucrative career within the sports industry.  But the most important thing is to be flexible as you look for opportunities while you go through your schooling.  Notice in particular how teachers and friends affirm in what you do especially well.

      Pounding the pavements through the concrete canyons of Manhattan after college in the recession of 1977 impressed on me just how difficult finding good work really is.  While the labor market is fluid and offers lots of second chances, it is also filled with risks.  We can never feel really secure that our job will last.  And success in the market place is only partially determined by family advantages, skills, and credentials.  The US Bureau of Labor puts out projections of careers that are undesirable, based on overcrowding, advancing technology, and a shortage of openings.  But there is always room for the very best.  The most important thing is to follow your passion, but also be as realistic as possible as to whether there is a market demand for your passion. As much as I liked to write, it was clear that writing was no way to make a sustained living, and I looked for work elsewhere.

       “What we do vocationally must not be contrary to or do violence to Christian principles,” Dad wrote in an article published in early 1980s.    “Let us recognize too that the Lord is sovereign.  He opens and closes doors of opportunity vocationally.  One of the ways God guides vocationally is providentially through circumstances.  God also gives to each Christian a combination of natural abilities and gifts, and also a lack of certain talents and gifts.  These need to be taken into account in seeking to know the will of God vocationally.”

         Nancy has never had trouble getting any job that she has wanted, but that is probably because of her inherent enthusiasm and superior people skills.  It has been more difficult for me, but I’ve tried to learn from my experiences.  In 2002, I posted the following to a forum on the internet on how I was able to find two jobs in four months.  “I resigned one full time employee job (Wells Fargo) to begin another job as a consultant for three months before going FTE at the University of Phoenix.  It took me four weeks to find that job.  However, a consolidation was announced two months into this gig, effectively closing out the possibility of me going full time.  It took me just two weeks to find my next job.  For the benefit of my brothers and sisters in consulting who may be struggling with looking for work, I offer these thoughts.  They may or may not work for you, but they have surely worked for me. 

ADVERTISE, OR THE SHERIFF WILL DO IT FOR YOU

        This isn’t the time to be modest.  Put your resume out to all the major sites, agencies, and employees.  Network and affiliate.  Get your name out to as many people as you can.  You may even want to advertise in the situations wanted column of the Sunday paper.

BE A MARKETING AGNOSTIC

         I hear people say that they don’t use the internet or that they don’t respond to newspaper ads because they don’t work.  But how do they know for sure?  Try everything.  Don’t make assumptions about what will or will not work.  You don’t need ten jobs.  You just need one—and you never know where it will come from. 

USE THE TRIPLE EIGHT RULE

         You have just eight seconds to impress someone with your resume and just eight seconds to impress someone on the interview.  Hone down your resume to no more than two pages.  You also want a 1:1 cardinality between your resume and the job you are seeking mirroring as well as possible those skills that are specifically mentioned in the requisition.  My strongest recommendation is to make job hunting if you are unemployed your job.  That means working eight hours a day five days a week to getting that next job.  Doing what?  If you’re not interviewing, I would spend four hours elsewhere searching for opportunities.  I would use the remaining four hours prepping for the interviews—both the soft questions (“What is your definition of teamwork”) and the hard questions (“What is a FRM-40726 error?”)  You don’t want to know just concepts and facts.  You want to be able to articulate them clearly and smoothly and with authority without appearing arrogant or abrasive.  And remember that most people interpret a firm hand shake and steady eye contact as confidence.  Practice gazing at someone’s eyes and counting silently to yourself—one, two, three, four, five—before turning your gaze to someone else.   Also, practice your greeting, you “elevator speech”—a thirty second summary of why you’re the absolute best, and your departure.  I typically tell the hiring manager that “I really want this job.  I think I’m a great fit.  If you make me an offer, I will accept.”  

ENGAGE IN PERMANENT JOB SEARCHING

          It’s better to negotiate from a position of strength.  Thus, if possible, you should always try to land that next job while you’re still employed.   Si vis pacem, para belum!   “If you want peace, prepare for war.”  This aphorism, much beloved by generals, means that the best way to deter war is to be prepared to be resolute in war.  The same principle applies in the business world.  Thus, the principle is, if you want employment, prepare for unemployment.  It’s precisely when you’re employed—when times are good—that you need to prepare for when times are not so good.

        At the same time, be prepared to commit to your job once a company makes an offer to you.  Be hard working and conscientious, always admit mistakes as they occur, look for opportunities to leverage your skills, and be ready to put in extra effort.  In particular, demonstrate loyalty to your manager and your colleagues by words and actions. 

       How do you prepare for unemployment?  First look at what you would do if you were without work for one month—six months—a year.  You then consider what you would do on the Monday after you got laid off—apply for unemployment compensation.  Finally, you would develop a strategy to get another job if necessary, by networking with colleagues and keeping your resume fresh.  For several years now, I’ve been saving the computer section of the classified ads in the Sunday paper.  So, should I be unemployed, I will immediately have several hundred leads for a new job at my fingertips.”   

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