|
Enlightened Self-Interest
Capitalism runs on self-interest. Although the management of your company may be enlightened in their people management skills, it has a fiduciary responsibility to protect the company’s shareholders. Also, if you are in a position that is affected by politics; i.e., the bailout or investigation of malfeasance, remember that politicians have to get reelected and will keep their contributors’ interests ahead of yours.
If you are at all anxious about your position begin now to think about what you can do to weather the unemployment storm. If you are not anxious about your position, think again. Today, no one is safe…unless you have incriminating pictures of the CEO from the last company party. Just kidding.
But, speaking seriously, there is no job security today. You are only as good as you are perceived to be by upper management. I am not suggesting you should spend more time kissing up. But you do need to seriously think about your own self-interests.
Taking Care of Yourself
So, how do you take care of yourself? There are two ways:
1. Make yourself more valuable to you. Learn new skills, take on new projects and solve problems you can point to on your resume if it comes to that. If you are not yet looking for a job pull out your resume and study it. What needs to be strengthened? When or if you enter the job market you will be facing heavy competition. How can you honestly put yourself above the crowd? One tip: if you are in HR learn analytics and become financially literate. You don’t have to be a statistician or a CPA but you must understand and be able to converse intelligently in these disciplines. If you can show the interviewing manager that you speak the language of business rather than just HR you will be ahead of 80 percent of the people in line for an HR job.
2. Make yourself more valuable to your employer. What are the major sore points with your company today and tomorrow? What is keeping the C-level up at night? Is it cost reduction, marketing, new technology, the competition, new regulations, product obsolescence? How can you help solve those problems? If push comes to shoving someone out the door you will need allies at different levels in the company. Who will support you if the axe is about to fall? The answer is that the people who you have helped sort out their thinking, make themselves more valuable and move up in the organization will go to bat for you.
New Fields
What can you do if you are looking at a job in an industry in which you have never been employed? Years ago I was coming from banking and competing for a job in a computer company. My competitors were people from the electronics industry. I could barely spell electronics. My pitch was that I was going to bring in fresh perspectives to the company. If they hired someone from another computer company they were just recycling someone else’s old ideas. It worked. I got the job.
Golden Advice
When I came out of the navy and was seeking my first job I recall that I had over 20 interviews without success. One day I was at American Airlines talking about employment. Toward the end of our interview the nice man gave me a piece of advice about interviewing. He said something like, “I know this is a tough job market and you probably have suffered through a lot of interviews. Let me tell you something that might be helpful. No matter how tired and discouraged you might feel – smile. Show yourself to be a very positive personality. We can teach you our business but we can’t teach you to be positive if you are not naturally upbeat and energetic. “
I never forgot that. Throughout the rest of my career I went into interviews with a very positive aura about me, no matter how I felt. Thereafter, I won every job I interviewed for. You can too if you just remember to smile, inside and outside. By the way, it also works for any meeting you go into. It gives you an aura that people want to follow.
|
Article Archive 
