Beat the Odds!

I recently tuned into a special "town hall" meeting about finding a new job in a soured economy courtesy of that herald of financial wisdom, CNBC. The advice included: take a job flipping burgers at McDonald's, search for jobs online, and think about government jobs. I filed it all under "Duh".

Times are tough everywhere for almost everyone. There are billionaires downsizing their private planes for goodness sake! Something must be done. I do not know much about how to live off the interest of a seven figure principal, but I do know a thing or two about making a dollar out of fifteen cents. The following advice assumes a few things. One, I assume that you want a job. I have been working since I was 15 years old. I do not know anything about being unemployed. Two, I assume you can read, write and form complete sentences. Not to play the blame game, but if you are even borderline illiterate this is not the economy for you. Finally, I assume you are employable. Ultimately, only you know if that is true.

All Skills Are Transferable

I do not care if you spent the last decade fashioning whozits into whatzits for thigamobs that excavate Martian remains. If you have ever been employed in any kind of organization with any modicum of success then your skills are transferrable to a new industry and career.

This is crucial. Times they are a changin'. They are changing so quickly that even people paid to keep track of such things struggle to identify the growth industries with precise accuracy. The only certainties at the time of this publishing are healthcare and education. Basically we are assuming children will be born and old people will get sick. Not exactly prescient.

There is no way to predict surefire career options, but you can predict ways in which the skills you currently use can be used in another way. This takes some creativity, and I am not ashamed of that. I consider it my revenge against all those freaks who decided they wanted to be biomolecular scientists in the fourth grade when I was still coloring outside the lines. Creativity rules! These days a dose of creativity is needed by people working in every industry because no industry is inoculated against change and market loss.

Hear this: the days of working in one career, much less with one company, for the duration of your working adult life is unrealistic. You must reset your expectations. This is NOT your grandparents' economy. The sooner you let go of any fantasies to the contrary the sooner we can get to success out here in the real world where the rest of us live.

So, start by making a list of what you can do: from the mundane - answering a phone - to the quirky - drawing maps. Do this no matter how important your current or most recent job title. In fact, the more impressive your title the more you probably need to do this. Call center employees and admins know how to be flexible. Vice-presidents tend to lose that ability because they do not have many chances to employ it. Break through any perceptions of safety you may be living with because I promise you they are all mirages. The more you cost a company, the more likely you are to find yourself expendable.

List what you can do now and it becomes one less fear to manage should you find yourself suddenly unemployed.

Break All Habits

Once you have a list of all of your abilities it is time to forget everything you think you know about yourself and your career.

Look, we all get busy living. It is hard not to. It is even harder not to bury your head in vodka-flavored sand when all the news seems to be so dire. Let's admit that it is possible you missed the advent of a new industry, a new technology, a new company, or a new job title. 20 years ago you would have been hard-pressed to find a need for Chief Creative Officers (CCO). A recent search on Monster (more on them later, by the way) revealed no fewer than 50 such positions throughout the country. 20 years ago the skills that are needed to become a CCO - account and personnel management, relationship development and resource allocation - would have been found in purchasing directors or sales executives. If you were searching for sales execs you would have missed 50 potentially good fits for your established skill sets.

So, let's assume you do not know everything.

Take that handy list of skills and plug them into a major internet job search engine like Monster or Indeed. You are not actively searching for viable jobs at this point. You are just trying to find out what you don't know about what exists. So, do not narrow your search by location or job title. Just search for key words from your list of skills, nationwide. Make a note of job titles as you scan the results. More importantly, look at the language used in the job descriptions. You are looking for "buzzwords" - those crafty little earworms that some army of khaki-wearing branding execs churn out with alarming frequency to keep themselves relevant and you out of the loop. Things like "strategic relationship building" and "key performance indicators" for what used to be sales and reports.

If my initial assumptions about my audience are right then you should begin to figure out that these words will need to appear in your new and improved resume, not that you are ready for that step yet. We're still learning the market here. Be easy; the more time you spend in the planning stages, the more efficient your eventual ROP, or Resume Offshoot Process, will be down the road.

Who Needs You?

If you don't know who needs you then don't expect them to know they need you. That is to say, do your market research.

You know what really chaps my hide? People who need a job expecting people with jobs to work harder to hire them than they are willing to work to make themselves hireable. Throughout the entire job search process remember that your number one job is to make hiring you the easiest decision that person has ever made. If an overwhelmed hiring manager has to consider an extra step to bring you aboard then you have failed, and with so many qualified people on the hunt failure can mean many extra months of being unemployed.

However, you cannot make hiring you easy until you know exactly how you can benefit an organization. To know that you must start by identifying people who need someone just like you. There are a dozen ways to do this, but I will list just a few that I have personally employed. Remember that you must, must be creative. Come up with some of your own and let me know about them. Sharing the wealth of knowledge builds good career karma.

Everyone starts with Google. Be original. Go old school. Start with your local newspaper. Start reading the local business section. You don't have to understand finance or the markets. You're not looking for understanding, but awareness. If a new company is coming to town or there is a shortage of a particular skilled employee you will hear about it here. Note interviews with local business executives. Look up the company they work for. Everyone knows about the Fortune 500, but over 50% of our economy rests on the shoulders of small businesses. Find out who supplies Pepsi or who has the vending contract for Home Depot or the construction company that wins the bid for the new school that just broke ground. Working for Bluedog Fasteners may not sound as sexy as working for Amazon, but eau de paycheck gussies up everything.

Following the local business news should really become a habit, whether you are looking for work or not. That way, should the unexpected happen you already have a database on which to draw. However, it's never too late to start paying attention. By the time the cattle calls that are job fairs and open interviews start taking place you have dramatically decreased your odds of success.

Do not stop with the news. Most cities publish alternative newspapers. Pick those up regularly, too. Read the fine print on everything. At the bottom of websites see who designed it and Google them. Ask the drycleaner who supplies their paper products. Take note of the name on the side of the 18-wheeler supplying your local grocery store. Pay attention and assume that everything that is in motion and sells something needs employees to make that happen.

By now I hope you have figured out that you should be taking notes. During this process you want to make notes of not just company names, but where you heard about them. It makes great small talk in your interview. See? Connecting the dots. That's all we're doing, bebe.

A word of warning: the unemployed cannot afford haughtiness. Every company -- no matter their actual product or service -- needs accountants, executives, creatives, and someone just like you. While everyone else is chasing the big fish in your industry you should be finding a niche for yourself with a company no one ever imagined. Consider that 1-800-Got-Junk is just Fred Sanford on steroids. Now take a look at their snazzy, functional website. Someone has to design, manage and integrate the web presence that helped generate over $50 million last year.

Still feeling too good to do junk?