Five Tips for Keeping Your Job

If you are fortunate enough to have a job in an uncertain economy, you may well be asking how you can keep your job. Unfortunately, your job could be impacted by economic issues and business decisions that are beyond your control. As an employee, your sphere of influence is limited. However, it is important to take control of your career and there are many things you can do to minimize the chance that you will lose your job. Here are five tips that can help you keep your job:

1. Manage Perceptions. At my first job, we had a saying: "Perception is reality." We were expected to make a good impression with our clients. If they perceived our performance to be substandard, they could and would change our reality. As an employee, you can manage how you are perceived in the workplace. You can arrive to work and to meeting either early or on-time. There is no late. You can also behave in a professional manner and be focused on your work. You must dress appropriately. You must handle administrative issues properly and get little things like weekly status reports in on time. While companies and projects come and go, you want to build a professional network that will stand up for you over time.

2. Be Professionally Competent. Once you've established that you are a professional, you have to be good at your job function. You have to deliver high quality deliverables that meet or exceed the expectations of your supervisors. If you have a reputation for professional competence, you are more likely to be picked for important projects. If you want to keep your job, work hard, be competent, and be productive.

3. Grow Professionally. After you've established professional competence, you have to grow your competence by staying abreast of professional developments, learning new techniques and technologies, reading professional journals, pursuing professional training, and taking on new challenges. Unfortunately, many companies have cut their investments in employee development. To keep your job in a changing economy, you may have to shoulder the financial burden of your own professional development .

4. Be Plugged In. You have to develop a good professional network within your company, through professional organizations, and via the internet. If you work for a large company with a gym, toastmasters, and other groups, make sure that you participate. Be sure to build a professional network using social networking sites like LinkedIn. Your professional network can help you keep your job by alerting you to impending layoffs, important new projects, and industry trends. In an economy where employers may not be loyal to you as an employee, it is increasingly important to plug into a professional network that you can rely on.

5. Be Visible to Management & Subordinates. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Not in the work world. If you want to keep your job, your work efforts need to be recognized. Your boss, co-workers, and higher managers need to know what you are doing and how it is valuable. There are several fairly low-key ways to ensure that you receive this recognition. Be sure that you provide adequate detail on weekly status reports and in annual review input. Then, develop that 1-minute elevator speech about your work and be prepared to use it when you encounter higher levels of management. While you don't want launch into a canned speech or be annoying, you do want to use face time with management to say something intelligent about your work and build the professional reputation that will help you keep your job.

While these tips may help you keep your job, millions of Americans have found themselves laid off in a terrible economy. Layoffs are often beyond your ability to influence. Sometimes layoffs are merely a cost-cutting exercise. You and a large percentage of your co-workers may still end up unemployed. If you follow these tips, you may not be able to keep your job. However, the professional network, references, and recommendations that you develop by following this advice may be instrumental in helping you land a new job.