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#BestofFSCBlog : Over 12K Reads! Instead Of Worrying About A Recession/Job Loss, Do This Instead. Great REad!

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It doesn’t matter if the United States is in a recession or not. The Federal Reserve Bank chair Jerome Powell, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Biden have all weighed in: America is not in a recession, and is headed for a more robust economy.

The current administration needs to make Americans feel confident that although the U.S. may be mired in a bad situation, the country is headed in a more positive direction. The longtime, standardly held definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of contracting growth. If the Fed, treasury secretary and president all offered a present and future of lower expectations, including continued high inflation, a recession and job losses, businesses would pick up on their lead and engage in massive cost-cutting initiatives to remain solvent.

The current climate is far different than past recessions. Usually, recessions have high unemployment rates. The U.S. is at full employment with a record-low unemployment rate of 3.6%. Businesses are begging for workers. There are over 11 million jobs open.

Also, consumers are spending despite the higher prices. In a recession, it’s reasonable to expect families to curtail their expenditures. Instead, restaurants, bars, airports, hotels and in-person events are packed.

Why It Doesn’t Matter

It’s the job of Wall Street experts, economists and politicians to prognosticate stubbornly high inflation, a possible recession and layoffs. Tune them out, as it doesn’t matter. You don’t have control over these global macro events. The one thing you have is the ability to manage and drive your own career.

It would be naive to think that the litany of woes, such as supply chain disruptions, inflation eating into your paycheck and savings, an endless war in Eastern Europe, constant political in-fighting and a steady flow of announced downsizing, won’t impact your job and career. Despite all the obstacles, you need to block out the noise and look out for yourself.

 

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What Skill Sets Do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, LLc (FSC) is celebrating over 30 years in the delivery of corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 of our corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, UK, & Mexico!  

We here at FSC want to thank each of corporate partners in the opportunity in serving & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment !

Article continued …

What You Need To Do Now

Tune out the negative and take a good, hard look at your job, career and the company you work for. Research the financials of your organization. Search online for any developments that could negatively impact your company’s products and services. Request a meeting with your boss. Ask them to share what is going on with the organization. Delve into questions about the possibility of layoffs, hiring freezes and allowing attrition without replacements. You want to know the company’s financial shape and whether or not it can withstand the current challenging environment.

If you sense that your future within the company won’t be too rosy, take immediate action. Put together a résumé and complete your LinkedIn profile. If you’re not sure what to do, reach out to professional career coaches and résumé writers who can do it for you.

Get In Touch With Recruiters

Contact recruiters for assistance. Not all headhunters are the same. Some are contingent, meaning they only get paid by the company if they make a placement. Retained recruiters primarily focus on C-suite and top executives. Staffing firms generally deal with contract and gig workers. You need to know the differences, so you won’t get offended if a retained recruiter ignores your reach out. You’ll have a better outcome if you find a search professional who focuses on your specialization. The recruiter will intuitively understand what you do, without needing a lengthy explanation. Inquire if the search agent has long-standing contacts with hiring managers, human resources and internal, in-house talent acquisition professionals. Good recruiters will have insider knowledge about the people, corporate culture, the type of applicants they tend to hire, salary ranges, bonus expectations and future internal-growth potential. Experienced headhunters have negotiated salaries for years, and can relieve you of this unpleasant exchange.

Seek Out Job Leads Through Your Network

One of the best ways to find hidden jobs that aren’t posted online is through networking. The term “networking” tends to have a negative connotation for many people. Put this aside. You want to tap into the people you know and trust for job leads.

Make a list of friends, family, neighbors, folks from groups and organizations you’re involved with, colleagues, former co-workers, college alumni and others who could potentially help you. Let them know the type of job you desire, a target list of companies you want to work with and the approximate compensation and title you’re interested in.

Asking for a favor can be awkward. Depending upon the closeness of the relationship, make a phone or video call, invite the person for a coffee, drinks or dinner or simply just send an email. Be honest and direct about your intentions. Keep in mind that it’s less uncomfortable than being unemployed or stuck on a sinking ship without options.

Engage On Social Media To Gain Attention

Another act that requires you to get out of your comfort zone is getting involved with social media. Depending upon your job and career, seek out relevant social media platforms. LinkedIn is an excellent way to start if you are a mid to senior-level, white-collar professional. Send invitations to people who may have access to the jobs you desire. Respond to posts from leaders in your space to attract notice. Write your own content to stand out as an expert. For those in between jobs, it’s acceptable to place the #opentowork banner on your profile. However, this one act isn’t enough. Explain why you are seeking a new role and concisely share the responsibilities you held at your last couple of jobs. Be sure to indicate what you want to do next. By doing this, recruiters, HR and others can understand what you’ve done and what you are now looking for.

TikTok and Instagram are go-to sites if you are young and starting your career or work in a creative field. Twitter is a valuable medium to share your expertise and wisdom, attract an audience and let them know about your search efforts. Join job-seeking groups on Facebook. Let your connections know that you are embarking upon a job search and need their advice, guidance and access to leads.

Stay Positive And Manifest Your Bright New Future

The goal is not to let yourself get overwhelmed by all the dire events. It’s easy to succumb to the never-ending barrage of negative news. To combat the doom and gloom, make a practice of staying positive. It won’t be easy. Throughout the day, think of something that worked out well. Have gratitude for all the good things in your life. Beat back ruminations over past failures. Have several mantras to repeat internally when you need a pick-me-up. Try manifesting getting the job you want. On the more concrete side, enroll in online courses that could provide the knowledge, skills and credentials that may help you stand out against other job applicants.

Forbes.com Author: Jack Kelly – Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.
Forbes.com | July 29, 2022

#JobSearch : Worried About Layoffs? 5 Tips For Job Seekers (And Job Seekers-To-Be) In A Slowing Economy. Study: Nearly 80% of Americans Worried about their Job.

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More workers are finding themselves out of a job (or becoming worried they might soon be) as a string of high-profile companies, mostly startups and in tech, have moved to freeze hiring or even to slash workers and rescind job offers.

New unemployment claims edged up to an eight-month high last week. Initial unemployment claims increased by 7,000 to 251,000 in the week ending July 16, making the four-week moving average rise by 4,500 to 240,500, according to the Department of Labor. Those numbers are still a marked improvement from last July, when the four-week average of unemployment claims hit more than 405,000. And the actual unemployment rate in June (the last month reported) is still a rock bottom 3.6%.

Still, fears of an impending recession have made nearly 80% of Americans worried about their job security, with almost a quarter of workers extremely concerned about their job security, a recent survey found. With more cuts expected in the near future, you might be wondering how to prepare in case of a layoff, or what to do if you do lose your job.

1. Maintain and expand your network

“Relationships can always expedite your success,” says Kimberly Brown, a career coach and author of Next Move, Best Move: Transitioning Into a Career You’ll Love. “I know someone who may be unemployed may not want to hear that…but they are literally the only thing that can expedite your success in that way because if someone’s able to put a word in when there’s 1000 applications, and you have a contact there, you can at least get an interview.”

Brown says she wishes that during her time working in college career development offices, she provided students a more structured approach to maintaining relationships.

“It doesn’t have to be a big thing to maintain a relationship,” she said. “I think people will think that you need to meet with folks once a quarter, you need to have a one hour conversation once a month. Maintaining a relationship doesn’t necessarily look like that, there’s so many different ways to keep top of mind, even something as simple as being active on LinkedIn.”

 

 

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What Skill Sets Do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, LLc (FSC) is celebrating over 30 years in the delivery of corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 of our corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, UK, & Mexico!  

We here at FSC want to thank each of corporate partners in the opportunity in serving & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment !

Article continued …

 

2. Reach out to past recruiters

Interviews with past job-and job offer-losers demonstrate that maintaining relationships with recruiters can be key.

For Patrice Ju, founder and lead coach at Carpe Diem Careers, the current wave of layoffs are reminiscent of the job cuts many, including herself, experienced during the Great Recession. “​​I was devastated and in shock. I didn’t think that that could happen to me,” Ju said of losing her first job out of college in 2008. But her first step of reaching back out to recruiters she had been in touch with during her initial job hunt proved advantageous.

“One of my tips is, if possible, to stay in touch with old recruiters, because you never know where you may land down the road,” Ju said. “So I reconnected with a recruiter, reconnected with my friends that were then working at Deloitte, and was able to get some interviews and then eventually got the job offer.”

Ju’s story is similar to that of Jenna Radwan, who previously told Forbes about her experience losing a job offer due to the economic downturn. Radwan was able to quickly land on her feet because she reached back out to previous recruiters she’d been working with during her job search — one of whom offered a position that she ultimately accepted.

3. Keep learning

Ju has offered career coaching for more than 400 individuals across all types of industries but one piece of her advice always remains the same: “keep your skills up to date” and always keep learning “​​so that if something does happen to your role or to your job, you can easily and quickly pivot and interview and then show a future employer that you are still very competitive in the current marketplace.”

Ju earned an industry-based certificate during her time between jobs, something economist Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, says can help job seekers stand out from a crowd of applicants. “It makes you look more like an experienced worker somehow.”

Earning a certificate is one way to stay competitive as a candidate and keep your skills up to date, but so could be going back to school or learning on your own. But make sure “whatever it is you’re doing will yield something,” says Brown. She suggests looking at job descriptions to “make sure you’re doing and gaining those skills, whether it’s public speaking, or coding, or writing, communications.” She adds: “Whatever it is, make sure it’s directly correlated to the job and is not just a nice-to-have skill [because] you can get the nice-to-have skills from having a really great mentor or a coach.”

Brown says that if you choose to go back to school — as many people did during the Great Recession — make sure it’s to a program that will help you land your next job, whether it’s through a robust career development office, alumni network or job placement program. Indeed, Carnevale says, many people view education as “a safe harbor from recessions and bad economic news” — and for good reason. Hiding from a recession in college “is not only safe, it improves your position when you come back into the labor market,’’ he says.

Zachary Herrmann, executive director of the Center for Professional Learning at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, says that he has found the networking that comes from participating in one of their programs to be “remarkably valuable.” In other words, it’s not just what you’ll learn in some professional or continuing education program. “So much of the value that comes from engaging in some of our professional learning programs, is the ability to form networks and relationships with other individuals in the field,” Herrmann says.

4. Hone your interviewing chops

“When people are getting laid off, it’s hard to not feel desperate,” Brown said. “And while you may be desperate, I think it’s really important that you don’t convey that in interviews and in conversations and still keep your conversation skill-based.”

Brown recommends the STAR (situation, task, action, and result) method when answering behavioral interview questions, meaning job applicants describe a specific situation, the goal they had, what steps they took to reach that goal, and what the outcome was. She stressed that answering questions with the STAR technique might not come naturally, so people should practice telling stories that showcase professional success.

“If you have not interviewed in many years, don’t think that you’re magically going to put those shoes back on and it’s going to be fine. It’s not going to be fine,” she said. “You don’t need to test it when the stakes are high. So you have to practice. Whether you’re practicing with a friend or just yourself, make sure you know what are the stories that showcase you being successful? What are the stories that showcase you being resilient and navigating through a problem? What are the core stories that really share who you are and what you’ll be able to do? The secret to interviewing is that most of the time, all these doggone questions are the same.”

5. Be open-minded

Brown recommends staying flexible during a recession, particularly for recent graduates. “We have to think a little bit more long term when there’s a recession [about] how can you build skills now or take a step now that will allow you to do exactly what you want to do later,” she said. For example, if you’re able to get your foot in the door of a company you want to work for, but maybe in a different field, be open to that, and “when things get better make that transition” to what you’d rather be doing.

In some instances, being laid off might provide the time to consider changing industries or doing something slightly different — in which case practicing interviewing and practicing “communicating your skills” and how they would benefit a different type of company are paramount, says Ju.

Herrmann echoed Ju’s advice, encouraging individuals who were laid off to reflect “on what it is that they’re passionate about, the impact that they want to make [and] the type of organization they want to work for.” He added: “If they do want to make a transition, that might require developing new skills, interacting with different types of people or different types of organization. It might require some work, but that work might ultimately prove to be important in the long run.”

 

Forbes.com | July 22, 2022 | Katherine Huggins

#JobSearch : New Study Provides Insights On Bouncing Back From Job Loss. Job Loss can Lower both your Mental & Immune System.

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Stress associated with job loss can have a host of negative effects on individuals that may hinder their ability to become re-employed. A new study shows that self-regulation of your emotions is an important quality for finding re-employment.

Robin and Lisa lost their jobs due to pandemic layoffs. Robin believed no employer would hire her at her age. She became angry, cynical, and defeated. Her hopelessness blunted her motivation, and she halfheartedly conducted a job search. Lisa believed, regardless of her age, she had a lot to offer an employer who can benefit from her skills. She quickly accepted being unemployed, eagerly launched a job hunt, and hooked two interviews within one week. Lisa didn’t let stress get the upper hand. She outsmarted it with her beliefs. and Lisa isn’t alone. Duke university researchers reported a 2011 study showing that people who adopt an optimistic outlook are more likely to be quickly hired.

Job Loss And Stress-Related Illness

The worries that come with the current trend of Coronavirus job layoffs, shrinking financial resources and a questionable job future are raising stress levels across this country. Questions such as how you’re going to find a decent-paying job, will you lose your house, how will you get the kids through college or will you ever be able to retire can make you sick.

Studies show that for some of the unemployed, like Robin, job loss can lower the immune system, making you more vulnerable to viruses such as COVID-19. Workers living with unemployment and underemployment are five times more likely to catch colds than workers without job threats.

Job insecurities can make you more vulnerable to diseases and worsen existing chronic ailments such as heart disease, diabetes or depression. And a study by Yale researchers, published in the journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, found that older adults (50 years of age or older) who lose their jobs fare worse than the younger unemployed. They have more depression, and their risk of heart attack and stroke more than doubles compared to employees who do not lose their jobs.

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What Skill Sets Do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Article continued …

The Importance Of Self-Regulation

A new study published in the Journal of Employment Counseling examined the importance of self-regulation for enabling people to effectively search for a new job and to maintain their psychological well-being. Self-regulation allows unemployed workers to manage their emotions and behaviors in a way that produces positive results and to consider adversity as a positive challenge rather than a hindrance.

The study involved an online survey completed by 185 individuals who had recently been laid off and had not yet been re-employed. High levels of self-regulation predicted better well-being, job search clarity and job search self-efficacy—the belief that you can successfully perform specific job search behaviors and obtain employment.

The findings suggest that employment counseling efforts should help people improve their self-regulation in order to achieve positive outcomes after job loss. According to lead researcher, Dr. Matthew McLarnon, “Together, results of this study suggest that the components of self-regulation are key to a comprehensive model of resiliency, which plays a crucial role in enhancing well-being and re-employment outcomes during individuals’ search for employment.”

Self-regulation and a positive perspective reduce stress and cultivate peace of mind. That allows job seekers to manage what they can, let the rest go, and eliminate stressors that interfere with re-employment.

Reference

McLarnon, M., Rothstein, M.G., & King, G.A. (2020). Resiliency, self-regulation, and reemployment after job loss. Journal of Employment Counseling, 57 (3), 115-129.

 

Forbes.com | October 17, 2020 | Bryan Robinson, Ph.D.

#JobSearch : Preparing Your Finances for a Job Loss. Many People Have an “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” Mentality.

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Due to its very nature, job loss is something many people try to avoid thinking about. It’s a stressful situation, and many people have an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality for it. But this doesn’t stop it from becoming an ever-present fear in working-class America.

A global pandemic, shifts in the job market, economy, and even within one’s own company can lend itself to thoughts of “What if I lose this job?” This is especially difficult at a time when more and more jobs are becoming automated or being outsourced to freelancers and other firms.

Fortunately, the fear of job loss can be mitigated by preparing for it well in advance of losing one’s job. There are some great ways to create a safety net early in your career for a time when you might not be working. 

Build an Emergency Fund

An emergency fund is a type of savings account, usually with a few thousand dollars in it for a car repair or medical expense. While these are all great reasons for having one, an emergency fund has a lot of added value when it is created as a way to prepare for job loss.

Depending on your situation, unemployment can last a few months to as long as a year. This means that to be prepared, you should save up enough money to be able to live comfortably for up to a year, while you search for your next job.

It sounds like a scary thought, but you can determine this by calculating your average monthly expenses, and then multiplying that by the number of months you want to be prepared for. For example, if your average monthly expenses total about $2,000, you’ll want to have at least $12,000 set aside in an emergency fund, enough to get you through about six months of job loss. However, if you’re looking to be prepared for a year-long period, you would need about $24,000 set aside for job loss.

While the total amount needed may seem daunting, preparing can be made easy by putting aside a certain percentage of your income from every paycheck into a bank account with no fees, allowing you to hold onto everything you save. Avoid withdrawing any money from this account unless absolutely necessary, as this will act as a fixed income source in the event you lose your job.

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What Skill Sets Do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Article continued …

Have Multiple Sources of Income

Unemployment can become a lot less stressful if you have multiple sources of income, as they offer a great fall back. (They also have the added benefit of making wage negotiations much easier and less stressful.) There are two types of income to take into account when discussing ways to generate money on the side: active and passive income.

Active income is any type of secondary job or side hustle you might have. I’m a huge fan of the side gig. If you have been considering starting your own small business or taking on an evening or weekend job like consulting or project management–or even ridesharing, consider it as a safety net for potential job loss. Passive income involves making investments, either real estate or dividend stock investments, that produce income on a monthly or quarterly basis. These require less work but more upfront costs than a side hustle, due to the fact that they require an initial investment cost. 

Networking and Personal Branding

Finally, you can make the process of finding a job faster by building strong career relationships. Networking gives you the opportunity to have people to rely on when switching careers for references, and may even be the push you need to find your next gig. Remember to spend time socializing in a professional and productive manner on LinkedIn so that you build a great network of people at your job. These relationships can give you a sense of security, and even make it less likely that you’ll lose your current job.

Consider building your personal brand on websites like LinkedIn that allow you to put a heavy focus on your career successes. Spend time writing well thought out posts about the industry you work in, and share other people’s content as well. This will be a great fallback to reference when looking for a job, as most employers look at social media profiles before hiring.

At the end of the day, job loss is a scary prospect, but the harm that comes from it can be mitigated by spending the time to create a safety net for yourself. This allows you to spend more time focusing on your current career, which in turn makes the risk of job loss far less likely.

 

FSC Career Blog Author:  Ms. Erin Kennedy, MCD, CMRW, CPRW, CERW, CEMC, is a Certified Professional Resume Writer/Career Consultant, and the President of Professional Resume Services, named one of Forbes “Top 100 Career Websites”. Considered an influencer, she is consistently listed as a “Top Career Expert to Follow” on Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

FSC Career Blog | July 13, 2020

 

#JobSearch : Rebounding After A Job Loss. The Less We Attach to a Title or Company, the More Agile we Can Be in Our Careers.

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People have been furloughed or let go at alarming rates these past few months. Never before has the job market experienced this type of shift. Most people out of work are in this situation through no fault of their own and no fault of their company’s. Covid-19 through an economical curve ball on everyone.

Many are left feeling a sense of deep loss and sometimes shame. But many of the most famous business successes we know are experienced job losses. Steve Jobs was famously fired from Apple, the company he co-founded, only to come back later to reinvent it. Oprah Winfrey was told she was unfit for television news. Ford didn’t want to hear Lee Iacocca’s ideas so he took them to Chrysler. The list of successful people who have turned a closed door into a whole new path is endless. The question is, how do you make sure you create a rebound that brings you to a new level of career success.

Embrace this as another chapter in your career. Those that are reeling from losing their jobs and finding themselves struggling to move forward have a hard time embracing that they are starting a new chapter. We all struggle with and resist change that we didn’t ask for. But the sooner we embrace the reality of what has occurred, the sooner we can process the emotional upheaval it has caused.

Be kind to yourself. Val Wright, author of, “Rapid Growth, Done Right: Lead, Influence and Innovate for Success,” says, “Getting fired or pushed out is nothing to be ashamed of. Do not disappear from view, do not retreat, it is precisely the time you want to wake up your network and discover the possibilities ahead of you.” Traditionally, we’ve been taught to view a job loss that we didn’t choose as a sign that we’ve done something wrong. But chances are you were great at your job. Most people out of work at the moment are not in this situation through fault of their own. Sitting in shame will only inhibit your capacity to get back out there and find the next opportunity.

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What Skill Sets Do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Article continued …

Write the story from the perspective of a business owner not an employee. An employee is someone who lost their job. A business owner is someone who needs to expand their client list. Their primary client is currently not in need of their services, so they need to expand and diversify their client list. This keeps you in the driver’s seat of your approach. It makes the job market the terrain you’re navigating vs. the force that’s dictating whether you are employed.

Increase your trilingual power. Most of us have a preference for the ‘language’ we speak when we work. In her book, Val lays out how there is an ‘innovation trifecta’ when it comes to being successful in any job. Some speak to the creative aspects of work. This is common in departments like marketing or product development. Others speak fluent technical. Engineering and IT are common departments where this language is the norm. Finally, others speak the language of business and financial impact. This tends to be sales or accounting. However, to really set you up for success, you want to learn to package what you do in all three languages. Focusing less on the language you’re comfortable with and highlighting how your approach and services support all three aspects of a company can help you get the job and keep the job.

Learn to spot the shifts of employment security. The reality is, many of us couldn’t have seen this one coming. But losing a job can have some predictable phases if we know what to look for. Val shares the five phases that can be used to spot employment challenges.

  • Phase 1 – Being obliviously satisfied. “This is common for many high performing individuals. They are so fully engaged with the work that they are actually dehydrating their network,” explains Val. This is why having a business owner’s mindset helps you stay in tune with your network. A business owner is always growing their ‘market reach’ vs. having all their eggs in one basket. Val recommends asking yourself, “Who in my network could and would hire me?”
  • Phase 2 – Doubts start to form. This is when we start to sense that something has begun to shift. This could be something as tough as falling out of favor with key individuals or even your function not being as much of a priority as it once was.
  • Phase 3 – An explosive incident occurs. Something happens that signifies your work or role is in jeopardy. This could show up as a budget cut, shift in leadership, new executive hires or a conflict that severely damages trust and reputation.
  • Phase 4 – You are exited. Whether it’s a furlough, layoff or firing, you’re told the job you had is no longer available. The question is, were there opportunities to turn the tide during phases one through three. By the time we get to phase four, there’s very little chance of reversing decisions.
  • Phase 5 – You are dealing with the aftermath. This can be the toughest if you didn’t see anything coming. However, if you actively spotted and worked through the above phases, you will have been doing the care and feeding of your network along the way. Ideally, you find yourself understanding and aligning with the decisions that were made that brought you to this point. Regardless, you spend little to no time in shock and are ready to make your next move.

“The less we attach to a title or company, the more agile we can be in our careers,” emphasizes Val. This mindset invites you to evaluate the worth of the work you provide vs. seeing any of those decisions as a marker of your worth as an individual. When you get clear about that, it becomes much easier to think strategically and take proactive action on your behalf.

Author:  H.V. MacArthurContributor Careers I write about navigating the unspoken rules in today’s workplace.

 

Forbes.com | June 8, 2020

What To Do When Your Career Is Disrupted Later In Life. A Stable Job for Life is Arguably a Thing of the Past.

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Despite the various proclamations that we are living in an age of increasing footloose behaviors and we are going to have multiple careers throughout our life, the prospect of losing one’s job still has many of the pangs associated with other forms of grief. Indeed, losing your job is perhaps the toughest thing you can ever face, with damage not only in the immediate aftermath but over a prolonged period of time.

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Overall, 31% of job seekers aged 55 and older report they have been looking for work for 27 weeks or longer.

Around 50% of American workers over 50 years old are at risk of redundancy. The research, which was conducted by ProPublica and the Urban Institute, grimly tells us that this cohort is being pushed out of jobs held for some time before retirement causing the kind of financial damage that is irreversible.

Acting now

At the later stage in your career, the chances are that you may have developed a degree of financial security, and this can hinder your efforts to reinvent yourself as it removes the sense of urgency that is required to successfully transition into a new career. What is more, you may also be lulled into a false sense of security by the skills and experience that you have built up over the years.

Valuable though these skills may have been in your old career, there’s no guarantee that they will be equally valuable in your new one. This narrow focus and intense specialization may have worked in the past, but careers are changing, and the stability and security that typified the work-life when you were growing up are increasingly being consigned to the dustbin of history.

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Continue of the article:

Now, skills such as adaptability and agility are far more important, with organizations relying heavily on cross-functional teams where collaboration and emotional intelligence will come to the fore. Here are a few things you can do to make a successful transition:

  1. Forget your titles – Chances are that your old career came with a good dose of prestige, with titles and all that came with them attached to your seniority. Those are lovely, but they are holding you back from moving on.  It is far healthier to think akin to a film director who goes from project to project. Your past work was nice, but this is a new you, applying yourself in new ways.
  2. Develop your portfolio – As you will no longer be able to rely on your title to open doors for you, it is important that you start to develop a portfolio of projects to showcase your skills. In this transitionary period, these can be projects outside of work. Not only will they give your life a renewed purpose, but you will almost certainly develop a wide range of invaluable skills too.
  3. Adjust your outgoings – If you have high expenses, it can be tempting to jump into the first opportunity that presents itself, just to get some money coming in, but it is quite likely that this will be a bad choice. If you can build up some savings so that you can go for the right opportunity rather than the first opportunity then you are likely to be happier in the long-run.
  4. Embrace the unexpected – Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) has become a bit cliched in the business world, but the essence of uncertainty and volatility do nonetheless ring true.  You will need to be agile and open-minded to make the most of your new-found freedom, so consider fresh ways to stretch yourself and develop new skills.
  5. Develop a love of learning – When you achieve a certain level of seniority it is tempting to rest on your laurels, but the world waits for no one, so it is vital that you are learning each and every day. There are countless opportunities to do this, from books, blogs and massive open online courses (MOOCs). You might even find mentoring young people can be a great way to learn from them as much as they from you. Admit where your knowledge has holes and work to plug them.

The chances are, your previous status gave your life a certain narrative, with your role and title key parts of that story. Now, you have the opportunity to craft a completely new narrative, and it is important that you spend time thinking about what that is. When you meet people, this is your point of entry into the conversation. You will be telling this story as your introduction to you to each new person you meet.

A stable job for life is arguably a thing of the past, so the ability to pivot one’s career and adapt to the changes in the market are likely to be valuable skills to learn. If you have to learn them later in your career, then so be it. In this way, the stability in your life comes not from your employer, but from within you, which is an altogether healthier place to be.

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