November 2008
Resisting Layoff in a Tough Economy
By
President of Workforce Associates
November 2008
Resisting Layoff in a Tough Economy
By
President of Workforce Associates
It's tough out there! Folks who thought that they could retire in one, five, or even ten years are rethinking whether they can ever afford to. And the pink slips continue to fly. How do you protect yourself in these uncertain times when job security has disappeared?
Very simply, you need to work harder--and smarter at the same time. Make a renewed effort at your job to show your colleagues and your boss that you take your employment opportunities very seriously. You can't make yourself irreplaceable but you can demonstrate by performing at 110% all day every day that you're necessary to your company's bottom line and productivity.
Take an online class to upgrade your computer and business skills. Crank up your membership in your local professional association and become active in it. You never know when/if you may need those extra networking contacts. In the meantime, you'll pick up new skills and knowledge while promoting your company on your nametag and projects at this local group. Invite your colleagues and boss to the occasional meeting so they can see how highly you are regarded by others in your profession. This will go a long way to making them think more highly of you and reluctant to let you go.
Study where the layoffs may be occurring in your office. If the layoffs are happening to the core staff, you should start looking at new alternatives. If the layoffs occur to temporary staff or accessory staff, you're probably safe--but only for a little while longer. A sad commentary on companies is their knee-jerk reaction to want to cut training budgets first during a downturn--just when they should be cranking them up, in my humble opinion, to keep staff morale up and to provide staff with razor sharp skills to practice with until the economy turns around.
I used to hate watching folks hover at the coffee pot all day long, trading ignorance and speculation while so much needed to be accomplished. But I was mistaken! Vault.com's electronic water cooler convinced me that I was missing out on some very essential tribal knowledge among those who spent more time in the lounge or company cafeteria.
Turns out that these folks became experts in sifting through the junk gossip and the gems to protect themselves when/if a layoff occurred. The rest of us were blind-sided because we thought that we were indispensable while these other folks goofed off. How na•ve we were! Usually the water cooler was the place that bosses would casually mention that the company wasn't getting new orders or a big sale that they had hoped for. The water cooler was a safer place to let these hints drop to the gossip savvy. The rest of us waited much too late for a pink slip or a company-wide meeting to learn the bad news.
So, what should you do when the water cooler gossip is consistently handing out gloom and doom? Make sure that your resume is up to snuff! Most of us let our resumes become ancient documents before we dust them off. And so much has happened in the Internet world of electronic job seeking and resume writing.
Here are the classic don'ts as you make major surgical overhauls to your out of date resume:
* Do not bother applying for a job for which you are clearly not a 80% match or better. This means that your salary requirements don't match the job. Your educational requirements are way above/way below what is necessary. You are unwilling to move or commute to the new position. Your career goals only remotely match the job description.If you make sure that your resume passes the "Don't tests!", it will pass the initial screening and then undergo a more thorough, critical reading. The hiring manager will concentrate on your related work experience and look for answers to the following common questions:
* Don't forget the essential new ingredients in electronic resumes: keywords! How do you find out about keywords? Scan the company's website for ideas regarding how they describe their jobs and product and services. Litter your resume with these words and similar ones.
* Don't treat the recruiting person like a cretin. It's easy to insult a recruiter by sending them a resume so that it is difficult to read and poorly organized. Another insult is to use vocabulary in your resume that is only understood by those in your company or industry. Your goal is to make your experience perfectly understandable by a knowledgeable layman. Make sure that you provide a neat, well-organized, and easy to read resume so it will give maximum positive impact and effectiveness.
* Don't give too much information in your resume to oversell yourself. If a previous job had nothing to do with your current job application, leave it out. Combine several jobs into one category to indicate that you have broad, related experience. That's why so many successful job seekers use functional resumes not chronological ones so they can massage their list of employers and job functions.
1. Do you have plenty of relevant experience?Now that your resume has passed the first two tests, you can prepare to dazzle your interviewers that you are someone with exceptional talent and a positive attitude about work:
2. Are your relevant experiences in the appropriate skills, related industries, etc.?
3. Is any critical experience missing or lacking? If so, have you indicated that you are currently taking classes to deal with that deficiency?
4. Does your experience indicate that you have both breadth and depth of technical knowledge? Take refresher computer classes in spreadsheets and data base management just to make sure. There are plenty of them online.
5. How current are your managerial or leadership skills? Within your company? And/or at your professional association? Or in volunteer work? If you've let your social networking world slide, now's the time to quickly resurrect it.
6. Have you noted your history of contributions to previous employers and achievements in earlier jobs?
7. How would you stack up against other candidates for this job? The more that you can find out about why this position has opened up, what the corporate culture is at this company and how it will resonate with your own style, the better prepared you'll be for an upcoming interview.
* Give examples from your previous jobs as to how you made a positive difference to your company's productivity and bottom line. Simple case studies go a long way.It's an awfully lot of work holding a job during anxious times and checking out other job opportunities just in case. But you'll find the alternative much worse; that is, being let go without notice or witihout having explored new opportunities to see what your alternative future might look like. It's up to you whether you sink or swim, and we'd prefer to see you operate like Mark Phelps rather than with sharks nipping at your heels!
* Demonstrate how well you've worked in teams to accomplish results. Interviewers like to hear how job seekers are not grandstanders but find satisfaction in arriving at solutions to big projects or problems with many diverse colleagues.
* Be prepared to ask questions about the company you're thinking about moving to. This means doing your homework by thoroughly checking out the company's website and tons of Internet and business resources first before asking targeted questions. This also demonstrates that you are confident in your abilities to make the interview a two-way discussion, not just a monologue.
* Probe about your prospective new job: Who will you be working closely with? How well has this team worked together before? Will you be interviewed by them to determine how well you'll fit into this new team? How many opportunities are there for additional training in this company? How many workers have taken advantage of the company's tuition reimbursement plans?
* How remote is the CEO? What can you read to find out about the senior management's priorities and vision for their company? How often will you be evaluated? Once this line of questioning has been answered to your satisfaction, then ask about salary ranges and possible benefits.
I can always be reached at jlommel@WorkforceAssociates.com
Jane M. Lommel, Ph.D.
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