In my readings and research, I’m led to believe that there are no longer such things as permanent employment, job security, planned retirement at a specific age, or work/life balance attainable in long-term or “permanent employment .”  None of these are possible unless we plan our professional destinies in advance, take control of our own career management, advance our careers by shopping out our skills, and remain constantly diligent in our search for our next “gigs” or professional opportunities.

Some people will never work as a permanent employee

I recently read an article that stated one of the future trends of the work world is that “Some people will never work as a permanent employee.”  It was dated April of this year.  Matt Rivera wrote in his blog, “Staffing Solutions and Recruiting in the Future”,

“The recession forced many people into working independently or starting their own businesses. Some will probably never work for corporate America again. (For many this was already the case.) In the future, many businesses will simply have a network of partners and independent workers. In many areas, staffing companies will provide the link to a vast network of independent workers.”

I don’t think that this is a future trend, but that it is the real world today.  I think this for several reasons:

Tina Brown was credited in the Urban Dictionary with identifying and naming “gigonomics.”  By its definition, gigonomics refers to an economy where no one has a “real” job. Everyone has “gigs”, i.e. short-term contracts for doing things with no benefits or pension plans.

In her article published in The Daily Beast on January 12, 2009, Ms. Brown expressed:

“Gigs: They’re all that’s standing between them and…what? The outer-outer boroughs? Eating what’s left of the 401(k)? Moving to Alaska? Out-and-out destitution?

To people I know in the bottom income brackets, living paycheck to paycheck, the Gig Economy has been old news for years. What’s new is the way it’s hit the demographic that used to assume that a college degree from an elite school was the passport to job security.

“With so many part-time people on—and not on—the job, corporate America has started to feel like it’s on a permanent maternity leave.”

My own anecdotal evidence among friends is now borne out by an exclusive poll conducted last week by The Daily Beast and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. Five hundred employed U.S. citizens aged 18 and over were interviewed via the Internet on January 8 and 9.

A full one-third of our respondents are now working either freelance or in two jobs. And nearly one in two of them report taking on additional positions during the last six months.

Just as startling, these new alternative workers are not overwhelmingly low-income. They’re college-educated Americans who earn more than $75,000 a year.

Welcome to the age of Gigonomics.”

Remember, Ms. Brown reported this in January of 2009.

Is this shift away from Permanent Employment – permanent?

In February of 2010, a year later, Bruce Johnson of the workforce-reality blog spot posted an article titled “Defining the New Normal” in which a section of the article spoke about a permanent move to contingent labor.  It stated:

“…writes Joe Caparella in Business Week, ‘Now HR and corporate managers must carefully evaluate every aspect of their talent supply chain in order to maximize cost-efficiency and productivity.’”

The article goes on to say,

“There are good reasons to believe this shift is permanent. Even before the Great Recession, Daniel Pink documented the shift to a ‘Free Agent Nation’: “The residents of Free Agent, USA are legion: Start with the 14 million self-employed Americans. Consider the 8.3 million Americans who are independent contractors. Factor in the 2.3 million people who find work each day through temporary agencies. Note that in January [2008] the IRS expects to mail out more than 74 million copies of Form1099-MISC — the pay stub of free agents.”

Let’s just let that sink in – 74 million copies of Form 1099 were sent out by the Internal Revenue Service in January of 2008.  According to the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the civilian workforce of 2008 was projected to be only 154,287,000.  So that means that in 2008, 47.9% of the U.S. Civilian Workforce was contingently employed with no guaranteed benefits, no job security, and constantly looking for their next “gig.”

A trend?    Not with a 47.9% active participation rate.  It’s a reality.

Where do Millennials stand on the issue of full-time permanent employment?

On May 4, 2012, Jennifer King states in her blog titled, “Six Ways to Sell a Millennial with Your Job Description” that the Gen Y generation needs to be sold on coming to work for any company.  She advises,

“Talk about what the job could do for them. While it’s motivating for Millennials to know about all the great things this position would allow them to do for the business, they also want to know what they’re going to get out of it. Aside from a salary and benefits, what skills will they gain, what professional connections are they going to make, what opportunities exist for growth within the company, and why would this position make them more desirable candidates when they start looking for their next jobs?

Here’s a revelation – Gen Y workers start looking for their next job the day they start a new job.  The new workforce generation has no false sense of “loyalty” with an employer – they’ve seen their parent’s and grandparent’s careers abruptly suspended in company’s ‘down-sizing’ and layoffs throughout their entire childhood.

Despite popular business dogma, the Millennial Gen Y generation realizes that nothing is permanent, nor do they want to be tied to a long-term career with only one company.  The rewards are not worth the risk or the lifestyle of fear:  Fear of losing the job, fear of becoming a slave to work, fear of not being able to enjoy their lives.  And as for retirement, this new generation has no illusion of ever being able to retire – and they really don’t want to.

And one more thing to think about

David Bass published a recent article called, “The Millennial Perspective.”  In it, he speaks about how Millennials view retirement, and attitudes towards employment, but mostly he’s focused on the funding of his generation’s retirement.

Pensions are drying up and disappearing.  Social Security is perceived as a Ponzi scheme by the Millennials that they have no hope of benefitting from.

According to Bass, this leaves only one means for Millennials to obtain any prospect of retirement – personal savings.

He states,

“… because so few workers remain with the same employers throughout their careers. Job-hopping is especially the case for Millennials…”

“…how much will Millennials need to save for retirement? Financial experts peg the figure at $2 million – double the $1 million figure typically used to describe how much boomers must have to weather their declining years.”

The reality of our work situation and this movement towards Gigonomics has tremendous implications – for businesses and for individuals.  The prospect of retirement is fading quickly, unless we as a working people grab control of our future and start making our own way to prosperity.

If we haven’t already, we need to start planning our own careers, saving for our old-age, and creating our own financial security by job-hopping our way to greater incomes.

Within a company, pay increases per annum have been averaging around 2% to 4%.

To move to another job, the average pay increase is around 7% to 10% above current compensation.

Today, most American workers in professional occupations change jobs every 3 to 5 years – sometimes even more frequently.  Verify this with your professional contacts.  See how frequently people are changing jobs.

Do the math over a 35 to 40 year career, and see how permanent employment undermines your financial security.

What do you think…   is there Permanent Employment in your future?

Tags:

Bruce Johnson, Careers, David Bass, Employment, Future, Jennifer King, Job, Matt Rivera, Millennials, People, Permanent, Retirement, Security, Tina Brown, Work

Photo Credit:

Gold Watch by net_efekt on Flickr.com

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"CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?"

What has become blaringly obvious is that the tools currently available are not doing the job efficiently or effectively.  The pain involved with using the old tools is so severe, that not only new entrepreneurs, but social media platforms and even familiar industry icons are rushing to fill the void and ease the difficulty.

Does shouting louder than your competition help you to succeed? 

New Companies are rising to address this opportunity.  For example, RealMatch has launched a promising employment advertising solution to further enable their public reach to potential job candidates. Still “free” for job-seeking users, but RealMatch is hoping to make a boatload of revenue from this additional ad service to hiring companies, Trade magazines and associations, trade publications and Broadcast media as well as the job boards.

How many advertising impressions does it really take to overcome existing brand loyalty?

Does treating a symptom cure the disease?

In a recent post by The Job Board Doctor, Jeff Dickey-Chasins dedicated a blog to reveal some “interesting, unusual, and mind-blowing things have happened in the online recruiting and job board world here.  The Job Board sector is so hot now and changing so fast, Dickey-Chasins has to update his readership every other month with the industry buzz.

I’m not so sure that the rapid development of apps into an industry that is fundamentally broken, expensive and time-consuming will solve the underlying problem of confidentiality.  It seems to me that this strategy is treating the symptom and not the disease, right?

When did my personal business become Public Fodder?

On the social media front, Facebook has introduced a number of apps developed by some of the biggest names in Job search.  Indeed, Simple Hired and even Monster want in on this action.  Facebook has also recently introduced “BranchOut” professional networking service and over 25 million people, hoping to network their way into a new job through social media have joined in and uploaded their professional information and profile.

If you’ve never heard it before, social media is public information.  All job seekers using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other Job Boards to “network” are in fact publicly proclaiming that they want a new or different job than the one they have.  All of their friends, colleagues, new contacts, old contacts and all of their past and present employers are aware of their search and are encouraged to help them.   But here’s the flip-side – their current employers are put on immediate notice that they need to find replacements for those publicly dissatisfied employees very soon!

It’s an interesting time in an industry just two decades old – more talent available while less available skills; Band-Aid apps on broken technologies; labor intensive searches for white collar opportunities; and entire billion-dollar industries built on inefficient core business models.

Over 214 years ago, in 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner:  “Water, water, every where,  And all the boards did shrink;  Water, water, every where,  Nor any drop to drink.”

Or to put it in a relatively contemporary context, it appears that the Online Recruiting and Sourcing Industry is on the cusp of having a “Netflix” solution of its own…

Tags:

Apps, Candidates, Companies, Employer, Help, Industry, Job, Job Boards, Media, Public, Recruiting, Social, Tools

Photo Credit:

Golden guy with megaphone by lumaxart on flickr.com

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1.  The ever present War for Talent – No it’s not something new.  It’s been ongoing for over a decade now and it will only accelerate as the US and the world battle global economic issues and business globalization.  Its not a people or labor shortage – it’s a skill shortage whose needs are changing so rapidly, that companies have not been able to either train their own employees nor have they been able to find already trained and skillful employees in the conventional public job boards and candidate aggregation sites.  Strategically, every business should be investing in their own future with training programs, education scholarships, technology distribution, and cross training of all employees – from the bottom to the top of the organization.

2.  The need for HR to be faster, better and cheaper in order to remain competitive globally.  The internet has major impact on our ability to harness technology to cast wider nets for sourcing candidates, but has not done a very good job of reaching confidential candidates already employed that need to search privately.  This is a whole different cache of highly qualified candidates that are nowhere to be found on public job boards.  Current internet technologies have also been slow in developing better and more intelligent matching of candidates with opportunities.  Some companies have had job openings for more than 2 years and still are not reaching their target candidates.  And even with new tools like LinkedIn and social media sites, the antiquated fee-based variable-cost structure of the entire industry is not helping American companies become more globally competitive.  A new, innovative model needs developing for the benefit of all – companies and job-seekers alike.

Here are the two articles that I recommend.  Take a minute and discover for yourself how these two ideas whose times have come with a new sense of urgency, can work together to change the industry that the world has already passed by.  BOTH concepts must be acknowledged and addressed.  Successful businesses are already onboard.

The War for Talent Is Returning; Don’t Get Caught Unprepared

by Dr. John Sullivan, Mar 19, 2012, 5:31 am ET

http://www.ere.net/2012/03/19/the-war-for-talent-is-returning-dont-get-caught-unprepared/

Here is a heads-up alert for you: be prepared because not only will the infamous “War For Talent” be returning to impact your firm, but it is already underway in its full intensity here in the Silicon Valley. Begin planning for this next round of talent wars, because once the intense competition begins, there simply won’t be time to catch up with, no less get ahead of your talent competition. If you’re not familiar with the “war for talent” phenomena, it involves a prolonged period of intense competition where top applicants are both scarce and arrogant, employees leave by the droves, firms regularly raid each other for talent, and bidding for top talent is commonplace.

If you have global contacts, you already know that not just in the Silicon Valley, but also in Australia, as well as parts of Canada, India, and China are already involved in the latest round of the “War for Talent.” Entire industries like social media, gaming, and oil/minerals are currently involved in a war for talent, as are top-rated firms like Facebook, Google, Apple, Zynga, and most startups in social media, mobile phones, medicine, and technology. Here in the Silicon Valley, talent competition has already returned to near 1999 levels. For example, recently a recruiting firm sent 150 cookie baskets directly to key employees at Zynga, the social game developer. They didn’t send them to their home, but directly into the office where they could provide the maximum impact by creating a buzz and letting every employee learn that outside firms wanted them. Winning a war requires bold action not conservatism.

Examples of How Boldness Is Required in a War for Talent

Here are a few of many examples on how firms have stretched the limits of talent management in order to remain competitive.

• Match this referral bonus - DNAnexus, a Silicon Valley sequence storage and analysis firm, offered a $20,000 referral bonus for successful referrals for the relatively common job of software engineer. They also threw in a full genome sequence for the employee as an added bonus.
• Low tech drive-by recruiting – Zspacer, a cloud security firm, drove a van with a “we are hiring” banner continually around the building of its “target” competitor, Blue Coat, in order to entice the competitor’s employees into leaving.
• Turn a job into a game – most people like playing games and competing, so turning a cashier’s mundane job into a competitive game with a score (gamification) can make it more fun. While at the same time, an employee can know how well they are doing as an individual and compare to others. This new “personal leaderboard” process at retailer Target has been reported to have resulted in increased cashier efficiency, lowered checkout times, and increased employee morale.
• The death of the cubicle - rather than employees having offices, the Silicon Valley has been the home of the cubicle. But once firms like Google and Facebook found that cubicles reduce interaction and collaboration between employees (both of which are required for innovation), they took steps to eliminate them and replaced them with an open space arrangement for the team. Google goes even a step further and now offers “standing desks” (like a counter where the employee stands instead of sits), which dramatically increases the number of interactions, while also being healthy for employees.
• Free beer for life – the Silicon Valley startup Hipster offered new hires $10,000, a lifetime supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon, “authentic” skinny jeans, striped bowties, and a pair of Buddy Holly glasses. A little weird, but innovators like weird.
• Interview live from anywhere – most interviews take forever to schedule because they require travel to your site. This new iphone app from HireVue allows candidates to interview from anywhere at anytime, using their mobile phone or iPad. Now almost every candidate and manager can find time for an interview.

Why Should I Be Concerned About This War for Talent?

An analogy between police weapons and military weapons might help you understand why a war for talent requires completely different tools and preparation. Consider the work environment of a policeman. It is a difficult and sometimes a dangerous job but the tools and strategies required to do the job are relatively basic (i.e. equivalent to normal recruiting, retention, and talent management). However, when you’re facing a real war, a policeman would be outgunned. Instead, soldiers with sophisticated equipment and strategies would be required. The tools that they would need in order to win the battle would have to be two or three times more sophisticated than those of a policeman.

The same is true when you’re in a war for talent. You need to overhaul everything and develop completely different and much more powerful talent management tools, strategies, and approaches. You may even need a completely different team of talent management professionals. To make matters more difficult in this current round of the war for talent, the recent growth of social media and the mobile platform now requires the creation of talent management tools that have never existed before. This upcoming “war” will be even more ferocious than the last because of the recent litigation and government actions to eliminate informal “no-poaching” agreements between firms. Firms that in the past have been your “friends” will now be encouraged to raid your employees continually.

Action Steps to Take to Get on a “War Footing”

Now is the appropriate time to begin preparing for this next war for talent. In order to be prepared, you will definitely need to revise your talent management strategy and you will certainly need more than a handful of new tools. The battle will require sophisticated recruiting, powerful onboarding, superior retention, predictive metrics, exciting training, and a leadership development program that can replace lost leaders rapidly. You will also need to develop a competitive analysis function to stay ahead of your competitors and a market research function in order to better understand the changing expectations of your target talent. You may even need new talent management leaders who are agile, who learn fast, and who know how to operate under “wartime conditions.” It requires a different breed and many on your staff may not be ready for it.

There Won’t Be Much Advance Warning Before This Power Shifts to Employees and Applicants

Obviously you won’t receive a formal announcement, so unfortunately, by the time you realize that you’re actually involved in a war for talent, it may be too late. You simply won’t have time in the midst of the battle to renew your strategy, your staff, and your talent management approaches. Things that you have taken for granted over recent years like a high applicant flow, complacent candidates, and low turnover may completely turnaround in a few months. Workers who have recently demanded security will shift their expectations to include challenge, innovation, development opportunities, and an opportunity for wealth through stock options. And unless you have good metrics, you won’t realize until months afterward that the changes have occurred.

But it Seems Calm Now Where I Work!

If you work in nowhere, smaller town, USA, for example, you might think that this author is crazy because the high unemployment rates where you are means that candidates are still begging for jobs in your town. But you should also be aware that if you had been a talent manager in the mineral-rich areas of Montana, Alberta Canada, or Western Australia, you too at one time had little difficulty finding skilled labor. That is until all of a sudden, you experienced a dramatic shift in the competition for labor. You may not see the war for talent appearing at your doorstep for a longer period of time if your firm trains its own workers or if you hire mostly hourly workers with basic skills. However, if any part of your operation requires technologists, mathematicians, scientists, or experts in monetization or social media, you’ll soon find that your current approaches to talent management will become ineffective. And as unemployment rates continue to drop and the housing/mortgage crisis subsides, finding top talent will become difficult everywhere.

What Are the Foundation Causes of a War for Talent?

A war for talent is a relatively recent phenomenon because in the past, finding and applying for jobs was a slow paper- and mail-driven process. But now that almost anyone can be found on the Internet and interested people can find and apply for dozens of jobs within an hour, fighting over talent has become common. These “war conditions” occur when there is continuous rapid change in the marketplace due to intense competition. And as a result, employee skills need to be updated continually. In this situation, the shortage is not the number of people available (there may be many) but the number who have the required advanced skill sets. So, a war for talent is a skills shortage not a people shortage. For example, today if you need advanced skills in technology, oil and minerals, medical research, and social media you are likely to find plenty of labor available (due to high unemployment rates) but finding people with the right skills, in the right location with right performance levels for these critical jobs may be a continuous battle.

Final Thoughts

Many of the professionals who currently work in talent management were not in the field when the original war for talent occurred during 1999 and 2000. To those and others that may have forgotten what it was like, remember that even though talent management received a great deal of attention and boatloads of money, it was not a good time. If you weren’t prepared, days were long and hectic and even with unlimited resources, it was a struggle to hire and retain even mediocre workers. If you don’t think the war for talent can be stressful and even ugly, connect with someone on your network who worked at Cisco, HP, or Intel during the late 90s or today at Zynga, Facebook, or Twitter.

Like it or not, the war for talent is returning and it is already at ferocious levels in the Silicon Valley and in other high-growth areas around the world. These tremendous differentials in talent demand between different business units and regions may even force large global firms to adopt a dual talent management strategy — one where you simultaneously manage for both slow and fast growth at the same time. So if you skip over this warning, please remember later on that you read it here, when there was still time to prepare.

tags: advertising, corporaterecruiting, retention, trends

HR Must Be Faster, Better AND Cheaper to Stay Competitive

Blog: Author: Alan Mellish | Source: Human Capital Institute (HCI)

http://www.hci.org//lib/hr-must-be-faster-better-and-cheaper-stay-competitive?utm_source=HCI_Members_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=04-03_DD_HR_Mbr&utm_content=byrd_mac%40yahoo.com

With economic chaos waiting in the wings abroad, the U.S. economy has managed some slow growth. Unfortunately, the persistent rise in average gas prices has economists concerned that this recovery may falter before it gains any momentum. Companies are definitely feeling the pressure to avoid increases in their fixed costs (full-time employees, equipment, etc.) Coupled with this need for lower operating costs is a longer term imperative to ensure the company’s ability to attract, deploy, develop, and retain skilled employees that are in short supply. To deliver on these strategic priorities, HR organizations are hungry for ways to optimize the employee experience but also to act as strategic partners to “line-of-business” leaders.

HR leaders have been given a set of marching orders that seem contradictory:

• Hold the line on costs.
• Increase the company’s ability to find, hire, develop and retain critical talent.
• Act as a strategic partner with business leaders.

Technological advances in data analysis, automation, and the application of social media to business are showing promise as a way to make HR faster, better, and cheaper all at once. Many organizations are implementing HR Shared Services programs with this thought in mind. Not only can an HRSS program reduce the cost and time spent fulfilling basic employee needs, it can also increase the quality of that service. Ideally, these reductions in cost and increases in quality allow HR to focus its energy and people on solving strategic issues such as ensuring the organization will have the right talent to execute a new business strategy across the next five years.

For HR leaders to focus on the big picture, the tactical, day-to-day operations of HR (e.g. payroll, benefits, scheduling maternity leave) must run smoothly and continuously improve. To acheive these goals, a new HR Shared Services program needs specific objectives and must track the right metrics. Karen Francks, Manager of HR Services at Pepco Holdings, has created a webcast devoted to this challenge. After the initial implementation of this new HR framework, what happens? How should a company set its priorities and measure them? Finding answers to these questions and putting them into action is of paramount importance given the effect that a properly managed transformation can have on HR.

It’s worth a few minutes to learn of the new developments, technologies and best practices available in managing these new challenges and work towards insuring our businesses their future in this globally competitive business environment.  Click the links in both articles for details and opportunities.

Tags:

Business, Company, Candidates, Employees, Firms, HR, Jobs, Management, Requirements, Talent, War, Work

Photo Credits:

Globe by Mishel Churkin of Flickr

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I also came across another great article about changing your routine for better job search success by Rich DeMatteo in his blog, Cornonthejob.  We are all somewhat resistant to change.  His article suggests ways that we can overcome our resistance and fear of change by doing a few simple things that reward us for change.  Rich’s complete article can be found here: Cornonthejob.

First, let’s talk about Craig’s article on changing careers to another industry.  Craig Writes:

“What many of us struggle with in changing occupations is lack of focus, and poor understanding of our own market. We think the grass looks greener over there. But over there is across a big pond. The odds of jumping across it are low. So, instead, we should think of side stepping around to get across.

If you want to change careers, look at the companies that align with or serve your current industry. They may not be what you think. Look at every vendor to your current firm and your competitors’ firms. Chances are those vendors hire people like you in some capacity. Then you can start side stepping around the pond to the place you want to be on the other side.”

Craig has 5 ideas to help people make this transition, but I think his graphic is the most salient point:

To find that sweet spot career that combines what you love, what you’re good at and what pays well, form 3 concentric circles that overlap each other.   Notice the bits of reality inserted into the areas where only 2 of your circles overlap.  Also notice the central sweet-spot that that becomes your target.

If you construct objectives lists for each of the circles and move the strongest skills, desires and needs toward the center sweet-spot, you will improve your focus and be able to better target your opportunities.

Aside from the brilliantly simple chart, Craig suggests the following for utilizing social media to gain a credible foot-hold into your chosen industry:

“When you decide who your targets are, and who the players are within those companies, network with them, be supportive, re-tweet, like, and share their posts. Cozy up and get friendly…and listen…before you ask for anything. Post useful information, tips, and articles in groups and places you know they participate.

Then, when you have become a valuable resource, let them know that you think they are great, and that you are very interested in their organization. Invite them to a phone call or a cup of coffee. Be honest and tell them you want to change careers and you think their company is a good prospect for you and you for them. Ask about the best way to get referred in. Chances are, if you have proven yourself knowledgeable and valuable, you will get an intro to the firm.”

Now Rich has a different idea regarding embracing change that I also think is very useful.

In his article, 10 Ways to Change Your Daily Routine for Job Search Success , Rich shares some very easy ways that we can all adopt to ease the jolt of learning to accept change.

“If you’ve been job searching for more than you’d like, you’ve probably settled into a bit of a routine and I imagine you’ve become bored. There are a number of ways to spice up your life and your job search to help meet more people. Sure, I could start comparing this to dating, but it’s been done…thousands of times.”

Rich lists 10 different ways to change up your routines, but here are the 5 that struck me as the easiest to implement:

• Freeze your current gym membership and sign up for a month or two at another gym.
• Try a different coffee shop.
• Join a bowling league. Not only do you meet tons of people, it’s actually fun.
• Like art? Take a class.
• Walk everywhere. Everyone knows the local neighborhood walker.

Whether you have a job and are looking for a new one or if you don’t have a job but are considering changing careers and industries at the same time, these suggestions can help.  Try these two ideas and see what changes in your job-search approach you can manifest.  As Rich says, “What do you have to lose?”

How would you suggest initiating a career change?

Resources:

• Fishdogs.com
• CornOnTheJob.com

Tags:

career branding, careers, craig fisher, fishdogs, Job Hunting, Job Search, LinkedIn, Social Networking, Rich Dematteo, cornonthejob, change,

Photo Credit:

Change by rockmixer on Flickr

Source: bitsandpieces.us via Craig on Pinterest

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by Phil Rosenberg originally published on March 12, 2012 in recareered.com (reposted with permission)

Do you have a Job Search Plan Z?

Most job seekers concentrate on either what they are doing now or changing careers.

What you are doing now may be the easiest path to a new job because it’s easy for hiring managers to connect your abilities to their needs. You’re more likely to have recently solved the problems a hiring manager has today.

However, changing careers to a path that seems more fulfilling is tempting for those trying to move to a new job. After all, if you’re going through the effort of changing jobs, why not get a job that you’ll enjoy more, make you feel like you’re contributing to society, or that will earn you a higher standard of living?

In typical job search planning, job seekers have been encouraged to think of a:

• Plan A: What you’re doing now (or your most recent job). – This not only may be your smoothest way to finding your next job, it’s also the easiest to visualize. In tough job markets, many candidates seek the easiest and most predictable path.
• Plan B: What you’d like to be doing – If you’re a career changer, this is your new career; if you’re looking longer term, this is your next step towards your dream job (see Dream Job Visualization). Even if your dream job seems far-fetched, starting with visualizing that job you can start to plan a path to get there, breaking it into smaller achievable steps – if you’re a janitor and you want to be a test pilot, you might want to start with a couple of flying lessons.

Plan B might be a job with another company, or might be starting up your own as an entrepreneur. Regardless of this choice, an entrepreneurial thought process will help you.

• Plan C: Your fallback plan – Where do you go if you don’t want to do what you’re doing now and you’re not able to make that next step to your dream job? That’s plan C. More senior candidates might consider a step (or more) backwards, while rookies might consider temp work or work outside of their major. Plan C is the work you can get, rather than the career you want. Plan C pays your basic bills, but it’s unlikely (on it’s surface) to make you rich.
• Plan Z: Your safety-net, “what if nothing else works” plan. Plan Z might be consulting, freelancing, interning, or starting a small business (anything from eBay sales, a website for Bruce Springsteen fans, to lawn care services). Plan Z might seem like your worst case scenario, but Plan Z can turn up some very pleasant surprises.

Reid Hoffman, founder of Linkedin, writes in a recent Mashable article, “if you’re in your twenties and single, working at Starbucks and living with your parents might be a viable Plan Z, but if you’re in your thirties or forties with children, your Plan Z might be cashing in your 401(k).”

Having a viable Plan Z gives you the guts to go all-out in pursuing your A & B plans. If you have a Plan Z that you can live with (not like, but live with), it allows you to go after Plans A & B with 100% of your effort … because you won’t be distracted by worrying about “what if things don’t work”. If you have a livable Plan Z, you’ll know you won’t be left out on the street.

In his book “The Start Up Of You”, Hoffman relates in his Plan Z for starting Linkedin: “When I started my first company, my father offered up an extra room in his house in the event it didn’t work out — living there and finding a job somewhere else to earn money was my Plan Z. This allowed me to be aggressive in my entrepreneurial pursuits, as I knew I could draw my assets down to zero if necessary and still have a roof over my head.”

Hoffman’s book teaches us how to be entrepreneurs of our own lives – he states: “We must act as CEO of our careers, take control of our professional future, and become globally competitive. Not everyone should start companies, but everyone must be the entrepreneur of his or her own life.” Hoffman focuses his readers on “start-up mind-sets and skill sets you need to adapt to the future.”

These mind-sets are critical as candidates adapt to a flatter corporate structure, to global competition and competition from automation.

Global competition and automation doesn’t just affect the market for products … it affects the market for jobs also. As technology has brought increasing productivity gains and the internet has enabled work to be done away from a central office or factory – this was on the horizon for years, just waiting for an event like a major recession to kick the transformation of work into full gear.

But with every loser (the traditional definition of work) there’s a winner – the entrepreneurial work force. Seth Godin writes about the changed nature of work in “The Forever Recession”, giving this message of hope: “every forever recession is followed by a lifetime of growth from the next thing … ”

What’s right for you? Hanging onto the status-quo of your career (Plan A)? Reinventing yourself to create your dream job (Plan B)?

By developing an effective Plan Z, you’ll have the strength to give Plan A or B your best effort.

What’s your plan Z?

Tags:

Career, Competition, Dream, Phil Rosenberg, Job, Path, Plan, Reid Hoffman, Seth Godin, Start, Step, Work

Photo Credits;

“Z” Creative Commons JPEG from Recareered.com

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The two questions have been staring us in the HR Industry for years, but seem to be moving up our collective industry consciousness ladder very rapidly.

The Questions are these:

• What’s the better model for filling roles in the UK and the US – Agency Recruiting or Corporate Recruiting – and which approach is more strategic and relevant?
• Should talent professionals report into HR or should HR report into talent?

I’m not going to tell you her answers – you can go to her blog here and find them.  But I will tell you this: her answers are as stimulating and thought-provoking as the questions.

And her punch-line is killer.

About Laurie Ruettimann

With over a decade of Human Resources experience in Fortune 500 organizations, Laurie Ruettimann is an influential speaker, writer and social media expert who now works with The Starr Conspiracy.  In addition to creating Punk Rock HR, which was recognized by Forbes as one of the Top 100 blogs for women, Ruettimann was the co-founder of several HR start-ups including New Media Services LLC and HRM Today — the first social network for HR professionals.  She is a columnist for The Conference Board Review, an advisor to SmartBrief, and her advice has been featured in various publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, CFO magazine, Shape Magazine, and Men’s Health.  Listed as one of the Top 5 career advice websites by CareerBuilder and CNN, her work has also been featured on the Suicide Girls, AOL, and Lemondrop websites.

Tags:

Answers, HR, Questions, Recruiting, Talent. Laurie Ruettiman

Photo credit:

Quel Talent by gwenboul on flickr

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View at Work

Last month, jobmob.com reposted an article by Dave Thomas with 5 tips for Safe Job Searching at Work.

Among his suggestions were; your stock is higher presently employed; utilize former employers as references; keep your routine the same; and don’t send out resumes when you do not know the source

This is all great advice, and there is a very good bonus tip for job seekers in this article too, that is well worth the read.  Dave’s post can be seen in its entirety here…

But extreme caution is necessary when gambling with your current job stability.  As Dave puts it, “The last thing you want is to really need to search for a job because you just lost your current job due to wasting the employer’s time.”

I think only one tip is needed:   DON’T SEARCH FOR A NEW JOB AT WORK!

Here’s a few more don’ts that are related:

• Don’t job search on the company computer or the company phone – it’s your employer’s equipment and they receive the traffic logs from their suppliers.
• Don’t send e-mails from your company computer or the company’s mobile phone – again, it’s their equipment and they receive the traffic logs from their suppliers.
• Don’t browse job boards on your company computer or the company’s mobile phone – ditto, the same as the first two ‘Don’ts’.
• Don’t store your resume on your company computer – all the information is stored on the company servers and is accessible to your managers if they have reason or suspicion of abuse.  Why would you want to risk having your resume, bank statements or any other personal information available to your employer?

And whether you are at work or not, check these out:

• Don’t click the box on your LinkedIn profile that states you are interested in “Career Opportunities” – many sourcing recruiters (some hired by your own company) are constantly searching for new talent on LinkedIn.  How awkward would it be to have a recruiter approach you for an opportunity to have your exact job at the same company?
• Don’t tweet that you are looking for a job – employers and recruiters are using social media more and more to find referrals for open (or soon to be opening) positions.  Don’t let your current employer have confirmation that you are already looking for your next job.  To Dave’s point, that will put a whole lot of pressure on you to find another job fast.
• Don’t put on your Facebook page that you are unhappy at your present job or are looking for a new job – for the same reason as for twitter, Facebook is mined daily for new (read: “other”) talent for every job.
• Don’t post your resume on any public job board – and they are all public – News flash – all job boards supplement their online fees with ad revenue.  All of them sell your data to advertisers.  And once you are on a job board, just try to remove your name from their list – its damned near impossible!

There is a reason for all of these “DON’T’s.”  Every one of these activities is possible grounds for your immediate dismissal from your current job.

In this economic environment, neither you nor your family can afford for you to lose your current job.  Until there is a confidential online sourcing and recruiting network available, be as smart as you want your new employer to think you are – and DON’T !

For things you SHOULD DO when looking for a job, check out these posts:

• 7 Life-Changing Job Trends You Need to Know About
• Mastering the New Freelance Economy
• 52% of US Companies Will Add Jobs in the Next Year

Tags:

Company, Current, Computer, Don’t, Employer, Job, Job Board, Search, Resume, Employment

Photo Credit:

View at Work on Flickr by Slightlynorth

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This weekend I was reading through several articles and noticed this common theme.

For example, Dan Waldschmidt wrote about it this morning in his article titled “It’s not about what you do,” in which he speaks of success not being a series of actions, “but rather an obsession.”

He writes:

Business experts will tell you that if you think hard enough and plan long enough that you can generate ideas and strategies that avoid obstacles and end up leading to your success.  But that’s just not reality. And you shouldn’t waste a second believing it.  The hard truth is that success isn’t a series of actions. It is an attitude.  It’s not about what you do. It’s about who you are.

Recently, inspired by Dan Waldschmidt and Seth Godin, Business Insider’s Vivian Giang recently posted, “This is Why Everything You Have Ever Accomplished Doesn’t Mean a Thing,” in which she writes:

 If brains aren’t going to solve your problems, the only chance you have is developing an obsession for your career that will make you consume, live, and breathe it. It’s “raw courage and guts that allows you to bend elbows and knees and lift yourself from the bloodied canvas you’re lying on.” The more you do this, the more diligent you’ll become at overcoming those road blocks and the faster you’ll get to this thing called “success.”

And the go-to guy himself, Seth Godin recently stated in a live interview:

“Here’s the thing – the recession is a Forever Recession… and here’s the other thing – it’s the end of the industrial age.  It lasted for 80 years” …and now its over.

According to Godin, for years working people were taught to ‘do what you are told’ and an average worker could make an above average income.  That era is gone forever.

Now, in order to be successful, you can’t be an average guy doing average work.  The company will use technology to find someone or something to do it faster, better and cheaper.  “…never mind the race to the top, you’ll be racing to the bottom.”  Or you can look at it this way - if you are an average worker, you’re going nowhere.

However, “if you’re different somehow and have made yourself unique, people will find you and pay you more,” Godin says.  Godin has written 13 books on his observations that can help us understand this position, including, Poke the Box, Linchpin and his latest effort We Are All Weird.

Giang sums it up with this:

Instead of waiting around for someone to tell you that you matter, take your career into your own hands. In other words, don’t wait for someone else to pick you and pick yourself!  If you have a book, you don’t need a publisher to approve you, you can publish it yourself. It’s no longer about waiting for some big corporation to choose you. We’ve arrived at an age where you choose yourself.

Or, I like the way Godin concluded a recent blog post saying, “Once the water is deep enough that you must swim to stay afloat, does it really matter how deep the pool is?”

I look at it this way:

It takes grit and courage to be successful.  It takes guts and fortitude to persevere in the face of change.  And it takes obsession to become the better than the rest and extremely valuable to most.

About Dan Waldschmidt

Dan Waldschmidt is a speaker, author and strategist.  Dan has been refusing since birth to accept business as usual.   He got the usual entry-level job right of college, but then he changed the sales process, earned millions of dollars for the company, and became CEO by the time he was 25.  These days, Dan is a people strategist, a conversation changer and an ultra-athlete.  The Wall Street Journal calls his blog, Edgy Conversations, one of the Top 7 sales blogs anywhere on the internet and hundreds of his articles on unconventional sales tactics have been published.

About Vivian Giang

Vivian Giang is a writer for Business Insider, one of my favorite sources of information on the web.  Previously she was with CBS News Investigative Unit.  She graduated from NYU in 2011 with a Master’s Degree in Business and Economic Reporting.

About Seth Godin

Seth Godin has written thirteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.  American Way Magazine calls him, “America’s Greatest Marketer,” and his blog is perhaps the most popular in the world written by a single individual. His latest book, Poke The Box is a call to action about the initiative you’re taking – in your job or in your life, and Seth once again breaks the traditional publishing model by releasing it through The Domino Project.

Links:

Dan Waldrschmidt:  here

Vivian Giang:  here

Seth Godin:  here

Tags:

Average, Career, Godin, Grit, Guts, Obsession, People, Success, Work

Photo Credits:

On the Brink by eprescott on flickr

Change or Die by colros on flickr

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Now Hiring!

With research from Talent Technology (www.talenttech.com), Jessica Miller-Merrell summarized the finding of the State of Recruiting Survey for 2012.  In her summary, Jessica states that online recruiting and  Job Boards are the most effective means of hiring – but she (and Talent Technology) includes the professional networking site LinkedIn.com into this category…

Some of her findings:

All signs are pointing towards an improving economy and yesterday’s release of Talent Technology’s State of Recruiting for 2012 supports what many in the industry are seeing. Business is happening. Hiring and adding new staff is in the works with 52% of companies planning on adding jobs in the next 12 months making the importance of a solid recruiting strategy even more important. In case you were wondering, the survey which had 1,100 respondents offered insights mostly from the US and Canada with the majority of respondents coming from US companies between 100-999 employees.

Open positions are taking 45 days to fill with job boards still serving as the primary candidate source. These findings are further supported by SHRM’s announcement that hiring in January will remain weak, and that makes since many organization’s new fiscal years started January 1 and if new positions are taking 45 days to onboard new employees, it’s likely that we will not see an upswing in hiring until March of this year.

Talent Technology provides an interesting look at the state of recruiting in their infographic show below. Their entire findings can be found here. While the data doesn’t provide any earth shattering revolutions it does point to the increase in demand of talent and a likelihood that companies will experience a longer time to fill as the job and candidate market becomes more competitive. In fact, this surge in jobs growth is expected to exceed 12% this year. According to their findings job boards, followed by referrals and internal candidates, and career sites prove to be the top three online recruiting candidate sources. Social media follows resulting in 12.5% of candidates. Let the war for talent in 2012 begin.

See the pictorial infographic and the complete article with active links here.

Tags:

internet recruiting, job board recruiting, online recruiting, recruiting 2012, recruiting strategies, recruiting strategy, recruiting trends 2012, war for talent

Photo Credit:

Now Hiring, Zach Klein on Flickr

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You at your BEST

We’ve been taught to sell ourselves at our average

We learned most of our body of knowledge of job search from placement and career offices, starting with our College/Grad school placement office – even High School placement offices teach much of the same stuff.

From the Great Depression up until the end of 2007, there was a valid assumption about job markets – candidate shortages. Even in prior recessions, there were shortages of qualified candidates.

During candidate shortages, employers have a tough time finding candidates with the basic skills they are searching for … so employers search for skills and experience. Doesn’t this sound much like the way we were all taught to write a resume – focusing on skills and experience?

Today’s job market doesn’t describe candidate shortages – it describes job shortages. The current job market features about 5 unemployed workers for every advertised job and 84% of currently employed workers looking for a new job (CareerBuilder estimates) … this means that there are more than 25 times more candidates than jobs.

… but we weren’t taught how to job search during job shortages, remember? We were taught how to job search assuming candidate shortages.  And employers choose who to interview and hire in a very different way during job shortages.

Employers expect candidates to sell themselves at their best

During times of job shortages, especially when so many currently employed workers are competing for openings, employers find plenty of candidates who meet their basic requirements of skills and experience.

Since employers find many candidates with matching skill sets, HR reps/recruiters pre-screen for skills but hiring managers look for superior candidates. When there are many candidates who meet basic criteria, hiring managers look for candidates who have already solved the problems they face today.

How can you show an employer that you’re a superior candidate?

1. Personal Branding Statement: A well-crafted personal branding statement gives a      crystal clear first impression that you are a superior candidate, who has already solved the priority problems the hiring manager faces. Creating a great personal branding statement requires research (beyond publicly available information) and inside information into the hot buttons of the hiring manager. (See here for more information on personal branding statements)
2. Don’t focus on job responsibilities: Focusing your reader on your job responsibilities tells your reader that you think the most important thing about you is that you met the minimum requirements of the job – that you’re an average performer. Focus your reader’s attention on examples of how you’ve already solved their priority problems and how you’ve delivered value to your past employers.
3. Show Subject Matter Expertise: When an employer expects to find many qualified candidates, employers look for candidates with a subject matter expertise that can help solve their most pressing issues. Generalist skills are secondary, even for generalist positions – employers first look for subject matter expertise to determine who they will interview, and then determine ability to apply skills to new situations during the interview. In today’s job market, branding yourself as a generalist is a great way to get overlooked … because it’s impossible to see what makes you superior when you describe yourself as a generalist.

So what do you think happens to your resume when you describe yourself at your average, but your target employer is expecting candidates to describe themselves at their best?

Tags:

Average, Branding, Candidates, Describe, Employers, Job, Search, Shortages, Skills, Superior, Taught

Photo Credits:

Courtesy CareerCentral.com and reCareered.com

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