This job market is a poser. It wants you to think it’s a regular old job market just like those we’ve always had. And, if you buy into that notion, you’ll be setting yourself up for failure.

Good old fashioned job markets were “come as you are” events. You found a new job with the skills you had from your old job. All you had to do, therefore, was update your resume, send it out to a bunch of employers, do a little networking around the edges, and before you knew it, you would have a couple of job offers, at least one of which was better than the job you last had.

It was a pretty nifty system … as long as it lasted.

Today, the come as you are job market has been replaced by the “get better if you want to get work” job market. And most people are unaware of the change. As The New York Times put it in a recent article describing a job seeker, this lack of recognition:

“… helps explains why Ms. Eisen [the job seeker]—who has never before struggled to find work—feels a familiar pain each time she scans job listings in her computer. There are positions in health care, most requiring experience she lacks. Office jobs demand familiarity with software she has never used.”

In other words, what she has isn’t enough to get what she needs. So, here’s the sobering truth: if you’re out of work in this middling recovery, your chances of finding a new job the old fashioned way are slim and none. The game has changed, which means that the rules have too.

What should you do?

Get better even as you get on with your job search. You have three options:
• You can update your skills in your current field of work if it is one that is still needed by employers.
• You can add new skills that will enable you to do more with your old skills and thus make a more valuable contribution on-the-job.
or
• You can acquire the skills of a new occupation, one that is now and will likely continue to be in demand by employers.

That’s it. Those are your only choices. If you want to find work.

Standing at a bulletin board filled with job listings won’t do it. And neither will checking the postings at job boards online. You can send out a million resumes, but if all they’re describing is the skills you had in your last job, they won’t get you a new one.

On the other hand, if you send out ten resumes and each one describes
• what you’ve done
AND
• what you’re doing to get better,
you’re much more likely to find an employer that will value who you are because they can see who you aspire to be.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

We’ve all heard of the Greatest Generation, the men and women who saved the world from totalitarianism in World War II. Well, now we have another generation deserving of its own title, but this one is different. It’s the Worst Generation—the single most self-serving and stupid group of “leaders” in the history of American business.

That statement is not hyperbole; it’s fact. Sadly, the details are well known to all of us. While stumbling into the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, this group of business leaders—and that includes all those C-suiters, their buddies on their Boards of Directors and the sycophants waiting for their turn at the trough—has richly rewarded themselves. They have booted over 7 million of their employees out the door while bonusing up their own compensation to the tune of billions of dollars.

And now, in the face of historic highs in job dissatisfaction among their workers, this Worst Generation has decided that they needn’t worry about workforce retention. According to a new report from Deloitte, over two-thirds of the country’s corporate employers—a whopping 69%—have no program to retain top talent. None. Nada.

On top of that, the Hay Group reports that planned salary increases for top performers in 2010—that’s the “A” level talent recruiters work so hard to acquire—will be a paltry 2.8 percent.

And, these are the same guys and gals who pontificate that “our workers are our most important asset.” They’re the ones you see on business cable waxing eloquent about how important their employees are. It makes for good sound bites, but that’s all it is—an investment of verbal capital or what most of us call hot air.

What can you do about it? How can you protect yourself from the Worst Generation?

Avoid the organizations they lead. Whether you’re a job seeker or a recruiter, don’t work for the Worst Generation. There are good and caring corporate leaders out there. Hitch your star to them.

How can you spot the good ones?

Subject their actions—not their words—to a simple test. The best leaders understand that their role is not teamWORK—pumping up company profits (and their own pay) by demanding more and more effort out of their employees. What they strive for, instead, is TEAMwork—creating success for both the company and its employees by supporting the development and accomplishment of each individual. Let that kind of leader put your talent to work, and you’re much more likely to achieve the career you deserve.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

The Conference Board reports that 2010 is still a month young and already it’s set a new record. Almost half of all Americans (45%) report that they are dissatisfied with their jobs. That’s the highest the figure has been since the question was first asked, way back in 1987.

What’s behind this malaise?

Certainly, it would be easy to point a finger at employers. They’ve made huge cuts in the workforce and then piled work on the survivors. They’ve paid their top executives obscene amounts of money and lavish perks and argued against adding a measly couple of dimes to the minimum wage. And, of course, you could go on and on.

I think, however, there’s another equally as important cause of job dissatisfaction that you don’t hear much about. Ask any recruiter to identify their single greatest problem, and most will say the number of unqualified people who apply for their openings.

Now, I understand that in this difficult economy, people are desperate; they’ll take any job they can get. But, here’s the simple truth: if you wan to be dissatisfied with your job, apply for one where you aren’t qualified to do the work.

I’m writing a book called The Career Activist Republic. It describes the rise of a new kind of worker in America. This worker demands all of their rights of citizenship in the workplace as well as in the rest of our society. But in order to claim those rights, these career activists also accept the responsibilities that come along with them.

How does that relate to job dissatisfaction?

If you believe you have a right to the pursuit of Happiness at work—and I believe you do—then you also have the responsibility to put yourself in a role where you have the skills and knowledge and the cultural alignment to achieve it. Or to put it another way, if you’ve been wasting your time applying for jobs where you aren’t qualified, invest the time, instead, looking for and landing jobs where you are. You are much more likely to be hired and infinitely more likely to be satisfied with the job.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

If you watched Meet the Press yesterday, you heard Alan Greenspan opine that of all the problems caused by the recession, perhaps the most serious will be its impact on the long-term unemployed.

Today, there are almost 6 million Americans who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. As Mr. Greenspan noted, besides the emotional and financial toll they are experiencing, they are also suffering a terrible occupational penalty. They are growing more and more obsolete. The longer they (or anyone) remain unemployed, the less current and employable their skills.

Sadly, this view is absolutely correct. Which is what makes our current system of “unemployment insurance” so senseless.

Why pay someone to be unemployed, when we could just as easily pay them to be employed. Not at a traditional job, but at the job of updating and expanding their skill set. In other words, in addition to the monthly stipend a person collects for being unemployed, why doesn’t the country also giving them an “employment insurance” chit good for the tuition at any accredited academic or training institution?

Such a program would have a wide range of beneficiaries, including:
• The individual working man or woman whose skills would be strong enough to compete and win in even the most challenging labor market;
• Employers that would have access to a larger pool of workers with state-of-the-art skills enabling them to compete and win in the global marketplace; and
• Teachers who would finally have enough demand for their expertise to be able to find a job and earn a living.

I know it’s important to upgrade our crumbling infrastructure, but construction jobs do not prepare the American workforce for the challenges ahead. Only the most robust set of skills will enable them to do that. So, here’s my modest two-step proposal.
• First, I suggest that we redefine the “troubled assets” in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to include the occupational expertise of America’s workers.
• And second, I suggest that we use the remaining TARP funds to finance an “employment insurance” program for American workers.

What will this proposal accomplish?

One very important outcome—it will, at last, spread the wealth from Wall Street to Main Street and help put America’s workers back to work, not just for the next six months, but for the rest of their careers.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

This Sunday’s New York Times had an article entitled “Not Taking ‘Not Hiring’ for an Answer.” Its theme was that “baby boomers were more persistent job-hunters than other age groups.” The tactics they’re using, however, can be just as effective for Gen Ys and Millennials.

In particular, the article noted that more and more people are turning to a temporary job not only for income, but perhaps more importantly, as a bridge to a permanent position. It’s an effective strategy—one I’ve recommended myself from time-to-time—but only if you understand the new definition of the term “permanent.”

Traditionally, we think of permanent jobs as those that are long lasting. We know it’s unlikely that we’ll work for a single employer for thirty or forty years, but permanent employment seems much more durable than … well than a temporary job. We don’t expect it to end in a couple of months or even in a couple of years.

In the 20th Century job market, such expectations were probably not unreasonable. On average, people changed jobs four or five times during their career or about once every six or seven years. That’s why most of us liked them so much. They gave us something we could count on—so we could buy a house or save for a child’s college education.

Today, however, a permanent job means something else altogether. The volatility produced by a highly interconnected global marketplace and the frenetic introduction of new technology has installed a pattern of much more frequent job changes. Instead of making such moves every six or seven years, we will now probably do so every three or four years. In effect, impermanence is the new norm.

What’s that mean for those of us in the workplace?

We’re going to have to adjust our own expectations and those of our families. Taking what the Times called “an honest-to-goodness, full-time, permanent job” no longer provides any meaningful security. Employers can promise it, but they can’t deliver it. If you have any doubt about that, consider this: the average tenure of a CEO is now down to under four years. If it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone and everyone else.

Does that mean there is no security in today’s world of work? No. It means we have to rely on ourselves for protection. We have to provide our own security.

How do we accomplish that?

By staying in the hunt even as we’re holding down what’s called a permanent job. Or to put it more bluntly, we have to make our job search permanent because our job isn’t.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

You may have seen the news story. A teen was recently found in New York City with no memory of her name or personal history. Her amnesia was profound. Happily, however, the story ends well, as a CNN viewer recognized the girl’s photo and identified her as a missing person from Oregon. She’s now on her way to being reunited with her family.

But think about what it would be like to be in her situation. Not knowing who you are. Unable to remember anything that’s important about you or to you. It would be a horrible even desperate condition. Without our self-identify, we are … well, that’s the point—without our self-identity, we aren’t.

Which is why I am astonished at how many people willingly subject themselves to “career amnesia.” They invest thirty, forty, fifty years of their life in a career without knowing what their true talent is or what they have the potential to do with their work. According to a recent poll, an astonishing 88% of Americans daydream at work about quitting their jobs to do something else, something more meaningful and rewarding to them. They don’t forget who they are; they never figure it out.

How do we fall into such a trap? Many of us graduate from college and head off into the workforce without having spent a credit hour on the tough subject of ourselves. So, what happens? We fall into a career field, work at it diligently and eventually acquire a degree of expertise in accomplishing the work involved. But here’s the rub: competence isn’t talent. We can do a job well, but if it doesn’t thrill or challenge us, we will never express and experience the best in us.

On the other hand, many of us believe we should work at our passion. We read all the books and listen to the gurus who tell us we should do what we love to do. And then reality sets in. We may want to write the great American novel, but Hemingway has nothing to worry about. So, what happens? We convince ourselves that work is a four letter word. It is a demeaning and depressing passage, and the best we can hope for is enough of a salary to support the enjoyable parts of our lives.

These kinds of experience are common in America today, and they are symptoms of career amnesia. Many of us are standing on a corner in New York City with absolutely no sense of who we are or were meant to be. And that’s a tragedy. Because we all have a gift, an identity—an inherent talent. It is not, however, either competence or passion. Our talent is the intersection of two things we know—or can know—about ourselves: it is both what we love to do and do best.

There’s only one way to avoid the tragedy of career amnesia. We must give ourselves permission to take the time and make the effort to discover our talent. We can’t rely on someone else to find out who we are. No photo on the evening news will reveal our true identify. We have to do it, and we must. We spend one-third of our day at work, and that time should be every bit as good as the rest of our lives.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

Big events change things. The Great Depression reshaped the world view of at least several generations of Americans. And, the same is happening as we emerge from the late, unlamented Great Recession.

Many of us will never again look at the world of work the way we used to. It’s different now—we’re absolutely convinced of that–even if we aren’t exactly sure what the changes are or what they may mean for our careers and future wellbeing.

One change, however, is already apparent. We now know that we can no longer manage our careers the way we have in the past. During those seemingly carefree days, we focused on our careers just once a year—during our annual performance appraisal and salary review. The rest of the time we concentrated on doing our job, believing that such an approach would provide the best measure of job security.

Sadly, the Great Depression proved otherwise. It didn’t matter how loyal we were or how strong our contribution was, if we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, we found ourselves suffering career cardiac arrest or what the pundits call unemployment. We quickly and painfully learned that doing our job wasn’t enough to ensure we would keep it.

So, what is the minimum daily requirement for a healthy career in this new world of work?

To answer that question, you have to know what constitutes a healthy career. I think it’s one that provides you with genuine career security—the ability to stay employed in a job of your choosing regardless of the financial condition of any one employer or the entire economy.

Unlike job security which is controlled by employers, career security is something you create for yourself. And that’s where the minimum daily requirements come in. If you want to keep your career healthy, you have to pay attention to it every day. In other words, you have to work at your career the same way you work at your job.

What tasks should you perform?

There are seven facets to a healthy career, and you should try to work on all seven daily. They are:
• Adding to your expertise in your profession, craft or trade;
• Expanding and nurturing your network of contacts;
• Acquiring ancillary skills to extend where and how you contribute;
• Increasing your ability to adapt to new work situations and environments;
• Identifying and finding ways to work with the winners in your field;
• Giving back by sharing your talent with others in your community; and
• Pacing yourself so you are always able to do your best work.

As the Great Recession has unfortunately made clear to all of us, you can’t rely on an annual checkup to ensure your career is healthy. In today’s turbulent, unpredictable world of work, you have to pay attention to your career each and every day.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

Last week, the blogosphere was all atwitter with the news that there are now six candidates for every job opening in the United States. That’s certainly a big increase from the historic norm—which is around 1.4 candidates per opening—but it’s hardly an earth-shattering event.

Ask anyone in the job market today, and the ratio for many openings is much, much worse. In fact, it’s not all that unusual to see dozens and sometimes even hundreds of applicants for a single job. And it’s that reality—that six represents your best odds—which creates a huge problem for job seekers and employers alike.

Six is Only a Dream for Job Seekers

For job seekers, of course, more than six candidates per opening means it’s tough to stand out. When employers are drowning in resumes, they spend even less time than usual scanning the credentials of each applicant.

What should you do if you’re in transition? Stack the deck in your favor by practicing the “application two-step.”
• Step 1 is easy and important, but it’s almost never sufficient to get you hired. When you see an opening for which you’re qualified, you have to submit your resume.
• Step 2 is hard and even more important. You have to network to find one of two kinds of contacts. The best is someone you know who works for the organization. The other is a professional connection (e.g., someone with the same alma mater or who is a member of the same professional association.) Whichever it is, ask that person to hand carry your resume into the HR Department and put it on top of the stack sitting on the recruiter’s desk. If that happens, you’ll go from being one of the crowd to being standout in the crowd.

Six is Only a Dream for Employers & Recruiters

For employers and recruiters, the problem is different. You want to show applicants the courtesy and respect they deserve, but it’s tough to do that when your systems are clogged with more resumes than they can handle. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the single greatest complaint applicants have about employers is the lack of any feedback when they respond to an ad posted online. To them, the submission process is a great black hole that seems indifferent at best and downright rude at worst.

And that’s unfortunate, because based on surveys we’ve conducted here at WEDDLE’s, the vast majority of employers do actually both acknowledge the resumes they receive and thank the applicants for their submission. So, what’s behind the disconnect? Spam filters. All too often, they derail the messages that employers and recruiters send to applicants.

How can that problem be solved? Stack the deck in your favor by adding a statement to every job posting that has two parts:
• First, it confirms that the organization WILL acknowledge the receipt of all resumes submitted by applicants
and
• Second, it encourages applicants to add the From address of the organization’s message (which it should provide) to their email manager’s white list or roster of approved senders. It’s not a full proof solution, but it will dramatically increase the number of those messages that are received.

Six candidates per job posting may not seem like much of a challenge—you face far longer odds in Las Vegas, for example—but it represents the best you are likely to get. Whether you’re a job seeker or an employer, the odds are usually much longer, so the only way to succeed is to stack the deck in your favor.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

“Why bother?” That was the retort recently from an unemployed person. Out of work for over a year, this individual was so discouraged he had given up. He wasn’t even looking for a job any more.

Such a point of view is certainly understandable, but it makes about as much sense as taking your foot off the pedal in bumper cards. As it will on that carnival ride, bringing yourself to a dead stop in today’s job market is a surefire way to subject yourself to even more battering and body slams in your career.

There’s no doubt that looking for a job these days is a jarring, gut wrenching experience. The lack of opportunities and the constant rejection can leave even the most optimistic of people feeling down on themselves and on the American Dream. Surrendering to that despair, however, doesn’t make it go away or even less painful.

That’s a lesson we all learn soon enough in bumper cars. Everyone gets thumped around a bit on that ride, but those who quickly turn the wheel and set off in a new direction are able to avoid the worst of the bumps and do a little bumping of their own. They adjust their course to adapt to the ever-changing situation, and that flexibility protects them. It makes them the master of the changes in their journey, rather than their victim.

So, if you’ve been unemployed for what seems like forever. If you’re beginning to doubt whether you’ll ever be able to find a job in today’s world of work. If you’ve started to ask yourself “Why bother?”, here’s the answer. Your survival and self-respect depend on it.

You may not be able to follow the course you’ve always followed. You may have to embark on a new heading with all of the risk and uncertainty that involves. But the one thing you can be sure of is that you have both the freedom and the ability to do so. Unlike any other country on the planet, there are many different paths to your version of the American Dream, and your opportunity to select one path or another is guaranteed. It’s a right called “the pursuit of Happiness.”

What’s not guaranteed, however, is a predetermined or set course for you to follow. And thank goodness for that! In the United States of America, there is no one prescribed path to success. You aren’t locked into a single fixed way forward that may not be right for you. You aren’t locked into one employer’s career ladder with one way up and no alternatives. You don’t have to stick with something that no longer feels right or serves you well.

You have choices. And the most important choice you can make is not to give up. You can choose, instead, to draw on the pride, the talent, the determination with which you have been blessed. You can decide to use those extraordinary attributes—your American attributes—to turn the wheel and head off in a new direction. You can elect to set out again on the road, a road that you select, the one you pick for your future.

Make that choice, and all you have to do is put the pedal to the metal and get going to wherever you want to go.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

Many of us are reluctant to critique the efforts of those in transition. They have enough problems, the thinking goes, without someone looking over their shoulder and pointing out their missteps.

That’s certainly a well-meaning point of view, but unfortunately, it has two unintended and very negative consequences:
• First, it prevents job seekers from getting the advice they need (and deserve) if they are to improve their efforts;
and
• Second, it debases job seekers by assuming they are too weak-kneed to hear some corrective input.

So, while some will say it’s hard-hearted, I think critiquing those in transition is not inappropriate. Indeed, done right, offering such a critique is not being critical; it’s offering assistance that’s critically important.

With that conviction in mind, I am compelled to respond to the words and actions of a job seeker who was profiled in the Sunday Styles section of last week’s The New York Times. This fellow was a very successful senior vice president in a private student-loan company until his employer fell on hard times and, at the age of 58, he found himself unemployed. He’s now been looking for a job for 18 months.

What’s he been doing? According to the article, he has applied for over 600 jobs, but landed just three interviews—two of them over the phone. Let’s look at the positive and less than positive steps he’s taken during that campaign.

First, to his credit, he was flexible enough to relocate to an area where he thought there might be a more employment opportunities. As we all know, that’s easier said than done when you can’t sell your house for the money you owe on it or your spouse has a job or your kids are in a school they don’t want to leave.

While this fellow didn’t have those obstacles, he did have hubris. He had moved from Maryland to Florida several years earlier believing he could work successfully from anywhere. When that notion proved to be incorrect, he was too proud to return to Maryland, despite the availability of openings there in his field. So, what did he do? He moved to an area where there were fewer openings and, in the process, diminished his prospects for success.

Second, he’s looking for a job the old fashioned way and not doing it very well. He sends out lots of resumes and then sits back and waits for employers to call. He apparently does little or no networking because, as he put it, “ninety percent of the people I worked with lost jobs”. As a consequence, he’s not reached out to those best positioned to help him—his professional contacts, including those who are in transition themselves—let alone his wider network of contacts among former customers and suppliers and even former college classmates and teachers.

Worse still, he’s wasting time. Here’s how the article described his day: “He can walk to shopping, but often drives his secondhand S.U.V. to a grocery store two towns away to have someplace to go. ‘If I walk to the store, I’m back in 10 minutes, and then what?’ Last Monday, asked what he had planned for the week, he said, ‘As of now, I have zero planned, not a thing.’”

In the old world of work, searching for employment was a full time job, not a part time activity. Today, it’s even more demanding. It’s two full time jobs. You have to work at finding work, and you have to work at strengthening your credentials.

Whether you’re a first time job seeker or a former senior vice president of a student-loan company, you have to re-imagine yourself as a “work-in-progress.” You have to get back into school or take a training program where you can add to your ability to contribute on-the-job. That’s what employers are looking for today. Not a track record alone, but a track record and an attitude—the demonstrated conviction that you can always be better and that you take personal responsibility for making it happen.

Thanks for reading,
Peter