Your Employer Has Got To Be Sharper and So Do You
In a growing economy, the market favors the job hunter. There are more jobs than there are job applicants. Sloppy job hunting techniques work "well enough." Companies can hire more people than they need and hope someone will do the job right.
In today's economy, job hunters face greater competition for the jobs that are available. Everyone has to be sharper. Just as your employer cannot be sloppy when competing in world markets, you cannot be sloppy when competing in job markets. Your prospective employers have to be more serious about every position they fill. You, too, must take your job hunt more seriously.
Job hunters are starting to realize that a large number of people may be laid off in one part of a company, while different kinds of people are hired in other parts of the same company. In the news, you will hear about the layoffs, but you will not hear about the hiring the company would be deluged with resumes.
Get used to the headlines. Companies must react quickly to changing world circumstances, and they no longer have time to figure out where the laid off people could fit into other parts of the same company. Some companies now allow laid off employees to job hunt both inside and outside the company. It can be an efficient way for the company to change direction, and save perhaps 10 percent of the laid off employees who can fit into the new direction.
The laid off employee is usually able to find a position outside more quickly because, by definition, there are more positions outside. No matter how big the old company is, it is small compared to the outside world. A smart employee would devote 10 percent of his efforts to an inside search, and 90 percent outside.
A Changing Economy
Today, we know that doing a good job is not enough. Our career prospects can now change for reasons that have nothing to do with our personal job performance, but with the performance of our employers. It's a new economy a world economy and the changes are not going to slow down. Not only will things not return to the way they were, the amount of change will increase.
Government statistics show the impact of change on job hunters:
- The average American has been in his or her job only four years.
- The average American getting out of college today can expect to have five careers during his or her lifetime that's not five jobs, but five separate careers!
- We will probably have twelve to fifteen jobs in the course of those five careers.
The economy is changing too fast for you to use the same old job ' hunting techniques. And you can't have the same old attitudes about job hunting.
Technological Change Is the Most Pervasive
Probably no change will affect our careers more than technological change. It's not like a stock market crash, or tearing down the Berlin Wall. It doesn't make the headlines, because it's happening everywhere every day. When you want money from a bank, you can go to a machine. The human the middleman doing the drudgery is no longer required in that job. People are required in new jobs to design and make the machines, service them, sell them, and so on jobs that did not exist a few years ago.
Computers are part of the reason companies have been able to cut the ranks of middle management. Companies no longer need layers of management to pass information up and down. The reports and studies and controls that were the domain of these managers are now that of computers.
As a result of technology, new industries are possible, such as direct marketing and the express mail industry. Desktop publishing has affected the publishing, typesetting, and printing industries.
Professions are changing. Many artists now work at a computer keyboard instead of a drawing board. Their jobs did not exist ten years ago. Accountants are no longer needed to do compounded growth rates and other complex calculations. Their jobs are changing. Salespeople are being replaced by computers and the UPC codes you see on packages. Musicians are being replaced by electronic synthesizers, which can replicate virtually every instrument.
Whether you are talking about manufacturing or hospital technology, artists or accountants, salespeople or teachers virtually every industry and profession has or will be affected. There are no secure jobs because the jobs themselves are changing. If you think your industry or profession is not being affected, think again.
