To Friends, Spouses, and Parents of Job Seekers Part 1 – The New Job Market

This multiple part series is not addressed to job seekers. Instead it is directed to the friends, spouses, and parents of job seekers. They want to help their job seeker loved ones and just do not know where to start or, with the kindest intentions, are doing the wrong thing. Job seekers: Do yourself a favor and to your circle of support by forwarding or giving a copy of this series to your friends, spouse, and / or parents so they will know how to support you in your job search.

Dear friends, spouse, and parents of a current job seeker:

Nothing feels as helpless as wanting to help a loved one in a job search and not knowing where to begin. I have heard this from a number of family members that I have met at events at which I have spoken and in my one-on-one coaching. In the case of the spouse, the job transition impacts you directly as well. Knowledge is strength. The following will give you information about the new job market and later in the series ideas on how to (and how not to) be supportive of the job seeker.

The New Job Market

If you have not been on the job market recently, you would not recognize it. Not only has the whole market changed, the approaches to successfully find the job have changed as well. Understanding the realities of the new job market will help you realize what job seekers are experiencing.

Not knowing how the new job market operates is like a job seeker walking into a pitch black warehouse and being told he has to walk to the other side. The job seeker can’t even see his hand in front of his face. Not only can he not see where the other side of the warehouse is, he can’t see the obstacles that are in his way. He can work as hard as possible but without knowing where the other side is, he has no way to measure progress. Knowing the realities of the new job market is like turning on the lights. Even though it is not a pretty place to be, the job seeker can see where he needs to go and what obstacles he needs to overcome and only then can he make the progress he needs to make.

Gone are the days of the gold watch retirement. Where companies used to only lay off bad performers, today positions are eliminated regardless of the person’s performance. Where good performers could expect employment for life at a single company, today workers can expect to have over 13 jobs and up to 4 careers in a lifetime. Where companies used to offer pension and benefits, today most companies do not offer a pension and many are discontinuing the 401K match and cutting back on benefits. Where companies used to have a majority of full-time workers, today companies are looking at a contingent and part-time work force. Where companies used to handle all functions in-house, today many companies outsource many, if not most, aspects of the work. Where in the past larger companies offered the most stability, today smaller companies seem to be more agile and therefore more stable. Where people used to plan to retire at 62, today workers are looking at the possibility of working the rest of their lives in one capacity or another.

What caused this new market? Many things contributed to reshaping it to what it is today including but not limited to the following:

Dot com and telecom busts
Export of jobs
Gas prices
Housing, banking, and auto industries
Travel and hospitality industry troubles
Corporate mergers
Stock market “correction” and the recession
9/11, war, and conflicts
Natural disasters (floods, Katrina, Haiti, fires) and global diseases (SARS, H1N1)

The results are:

Layoff of highly skilled employees. You could form a company with the talent that is in any job networking meeting at any one time.

Unprecedented unemployment. When you hear the high unemployment number (10.3 % in GA), realize it is greatly understated. The only way the DOL has to measure the number of unemployed is by counting the number of checks they send out each week. Therefore the number does not include those who are out of a job but do not qualify for unemployment (like contractors); it does not include those who have expired their benefits nor the job seekers who have given up looking. It does not include those who are looking for a job but are still on severance and it does not include those who did not apply out of some illogical sense of shame.

Reluctance to spend. Even those who are employed are reluctant to spend money because their house and stocks are not worth what they used to be and people need or want to increase their retirement fund. This reluctance to spend results in the closing of more businesses.

Delayed retirement. The natural attrition that would occur due to a generation of people retiring is not occurring because the money needed for retirement isn’t there anymore. Exasperating the problem is that some people who were retired are coming out of retirement because their house & stocks have lost value or their retirement benefits have been taken away and they must now work to cover their living expenses.

Companies are not knocking on job seekers’ doors and recruiters are not readily returning phone calls. In certain industries before the market changed, companies actively pursued people with certain skills. Following the dot com bust in 2001, the phones of Information Technology workers did not ring like they used to. This is true of other industries as well.

For years, recruiters used to be the main source of finding a job. That was true at least until the invention of internet job boards. Recruiters are working a smaller number of job openings yet receiving tons of resumes and phone calls from job seekers.


Today workers need to be “Me, Incorporated”. They need to think of themselves as a self contained unit, not dependant on a particular company for job security or sole source of benefits.

To illustrate how workers need to view themselves, I use the analogy of the residential phone and how it changed with time. Think back to the old phones that were shown in the TV shows Lassie and Leave It To Beaver. There was one phone in each house in a central location, whether in the kitchen or at the bottom of the stairs, and the phone was hard-wired into the wall. If the phone was removed, it would leave a hole in the wall and loose wires. Today if people even have a home phone at all, it is modular and there is a modular plug in almost every room. We plug the modular phone in and it works well. We can easily and cleanly remove the phone and plug it into another modular outlet where it works equally well. The job seeker must be like the modular phone; plug into a company and work well but at the company’s discretion or the worker’s, unplug themselves cleanly and plug in elsewhere and function equally well there.

This is the reality of the new job market.

In part 2 of the series we’ll discuss the approach that the job seeker must use to successfully find a job.

Copyright RightChanges, LLC. www.RightChanges.biz

The Other Skills That Will Help You Get the Job: Part 4 of 4 – Good Attitude

A person can have all of the experience and technical skills the company is looking for yet may not get hired if he does not demonstrate strong soft skills. Soft skills are the skills, abilities, and traits that pertain to personality, attitude, and behavior rather than formal or technical knowledge. It is the combination of abilities and soft skills that will set you apart from the crowd.

Soft skills include the following:

Active Listening

Body Language

Accepting Change

Good Attitude

Judi Adams, the founder and senior job search coach at RightChanges, the Affordable and Successful Job Search Coach, addresses each of these in the four part series The Other Skills That Will Help You Get the Job.

In part one of the series we covered active listening and how important that skill is to all of us especially when we are in a job search.

http://rightchangesjobsearchcoach.blogspot.com/2009/12/other-skills-that-will-help-you-get-job.html

In part two, we covered body language, the tool that comprises more than 75% of all face to face communications. It is important to the job search to leverage this skill by monitoring your own body language and reading other’s.

http://rightchangesjobsearchcoach.blogspot.com/2009/12/other-skills-that-will-help-you-get-job_11.html

In part three, we discussed the importance of accepting change, how one day we’ll embrace change and even create our own change.

http://rightchangesjobsearchcoach.blogspot.com/2009/12/other-skills-that-will-help-you-get-job_16.html

In the final part of the four part series, we discuss the importance of a good attitude.

The attitude we have is a choice; it is the response we choose to have in reply to a situation. As discussed in part 3, when we face a change, we need to give ourselves time to process the loss and then we need to move on. The attitude you have moving forward is up to you.

Effects of Attitude on the Job Search

Your attitude affects the success of landing that next job in three ways.

Body Language

Your attitude affects your body language. We saw in part 1 of this series how body language is the most natural and spontaneous form of communication and makes up the majority of the message we send to others. No matter how you try to suppress a bad attitude, your body language will give you away and during networking and the job search others will trust what your body is saying more than your words.

Word Choice

Your attitude affects your word choice. Did you know the word “why” can be negative? Asking “why did you do that?” puts the other person on the defensive. By changing the question to “what were the advantages in that choice?” you take the emphasis off of the person and onto the topic of discussion.

The word “but” is also a negative word. The word “but” indicates everything said before it really isn’t true. If I say to a person “I’d like to help you but…”that person is now bracing for the reasons I will not be there to help.

Saying “I like that idea but…” really means I do not like that idea. One way around using the word “but” includes stopping the sentence and beginning another one. Saying “I like that idea. Another approach would be to …” is a way to not negate their idea while sharing another idea.

Energy

Your attitude also affects the energy you need to conduct a full time job search. You will hear “no” or worst silence and that will impact your attitude. If you start out with a negative attitude, you have nowhere to go except down.

How to Maintain a Positive Attitude

Let’s be realistic; you will have bad days during the job search. When you do, you should have a strategy to implement to get yourself back up. Remember it is a choice. Here are tips for staying positive:

 Know how to navigate in the new job market. If you are not doing the right things to land that job, it will not matter how hard you work. I believe that most job seekers who are on the market for years instead of months are doing one of three things wrong: they have a bad attitude, they have not identified and can’t articulate their competitive advantage, or they are not networking as they should and instead are applying to ads online. Applying to ads online is the horse and buggy approach to the job search. Get out and network and make real progress.

 Be prepared. Have your resume developed and reviewed by a professional. Practice interviewing and improve the areas that need it.

 Get at least 20 minutes of sunshine each day. The lack of sunshine leads to depression (Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD) and a deficit of Vitamin D. Even if the skies are overcast, you will get more sunshine outside than in the house. There are light boxes available for regions of the country that have very little sunlight during the winter months. If you are affected by the lack of sunshine you may want to consider using one of these medically recommended devices.

 Do something for yourself (take classes, get new more contemporary glasses, workout / walk, get a new interview attire). Your self confidence will get a shot in the arm.

 Journal your job search journey especially your blessings.

 Develop a plan and work to it. In your last job you probably knew what you would be doing each day. Add structure to your job search. Have a daily and weekly job search to-do list and mark it off each evening. You will see the progress you are making and the structure helps keep you motivated.

 Assist others. Nothing feels as good as helping others and you will expand your network at the same time.

 Get out and reach out; do not close yourself off. Closing yourself off will only increase depression and doesn’t help the job search. Go to a minimum of 3 industry and job search network meetings every week.

 Turn on the positive and turn off the negative. Some TV and radio shows are negative. Instead turn on music that inspires you. If you feel worse after spending time with someone, consider reducing the time you spend with them as much as possible to distance yourself from the negative people in your life.

 Review your list of accomplishments and remember how valuable you are.

 Whatever your faith, pray and listen.

Get Help if You Need It

On occasion we need help with pressure points. You need to keep the roof over your head, food on the table, and the car in the driveway. Also during this time, there is a definite impact on the family dynamics. If you are struggling with one of these life issues, it will be very hard to concentrate on finding a job.

At presentations I ask people in the audience if they would hesitate to call 911 if their house was on fire. No one has ever said they would hesitate to call. I’m sure a trained fireman wouldn’t hesitate to call either; there are times we need the help of others. We have the phone number 211 for the United Way. The United Way has a network of organizations that can help with these pressure points. Keep in mind there are more options available the sooner you call. You would call 911; call 211 if you need them.

Remember: It’s a Choice!
You have a choice: to own a good attitude and do what you need to do to maintain it or you can choose a bad attitude. The good attitude will bring you closer to the new job so you should factor that into your decision and actions.

Now is the time!

Company recruiters are told to hire quickly before jobs are frozen. Don’t start the new year slowly. Get results with RightChanges.biz