Career Insurance Is Best Built While You Are Employed
A couple of months back I joined a networking group in my community. One of the practices of the group is that in addition to the regular meetings that the members meet privately between sessions to get to know each other on a more personal level. One of the first members I met was the publicity chairman for the organization. During our conversation we began to discuss his desire to do part time work as a project management consultant. He was posting resumés on the internet, but not receiving any responses.
At that same time I was in the middle of my Five O’Clock Club certification studies. I mentioned to him about the multitude of methods the Five O’Clock Club texts suggested about promoting yourself when you have something to offer others in terms of employment. I indicated to my colleague I could order him the texts and that he would find them beneficial. He asked me to go ahead and get the books for him.
He indicated to me the other day that he and his wife are both now reading the books and find them fascinating. In fact, he had indicated to me that while when promoting my business at the networking meeting I did an excellent job of promoting what I had to offer for those who were looking for employment, that I really did not stress enough how what I had learned from my Five O’Clock Club studies was some of the best “career insurance” available to those currently working. I took what he said to heart and realized how right he was. When I began my studies, the Club indicated it actually liked to have a balance of currently employed and unemployed people among its members. Each group helped the other along with various aspects of their career development. In recent times while the number of unemployed outnumbered the employed, given what is going on in the economy, it is sometimes possible to lose focus that job search guidance is not only for those who are currently out of work.
My colleague is very much correct. Some of the best “career insurance” any individual can obtain for themselves is to prepare oneself for eventual job search while they are fully employed in their current job. Among the things one can consider doing is:
• Taking an assessment which will help them to realize if their current position is meeting their needs in that it is matching with the skills that motivate them to their most enjoyable accomplishments.
• Projecting their life forward five years at a time to see where they want to be and how their current job is either helping them or keeping them from reaching to where they want to get.
• Researching trends in their current field or related fields so they can begin preparing themselves with the proper skill sets to make a move in their profession if all of a sudden what they are doing is no longer being sought.
• Building their network of contacts so that if they do need to make a job or career change they have people with which to start the process as opposed to having to build that network from scratch when they are out of a job.
These are just examples of some of the things that can be done while still in your current position. That very day at our networking meeting, another of our colleagues had spoken to us about how a new management team at her place of employment had changed the entire sales staff of which she was one of the individuals. As quickly as that, she was in job search, when just a few short weeks before she had been promoting to the group the benefits of the company for which she worked.
Our colleague’s situation is obviously not unique. The average time now an individual is in any one job position is 4 ½ years. Just about all employers are “at will” employers meaning they can let you go at any time. As such, those working have to consider themselves “at will” employees. They too need to be preparing for that next position that is best going to meet their career and life goals.
Yes, it is a different way of working than many of us may have experienced in the past. It puts far more responsibility in our hands for our own stability. My networking friend was right. The need to stress for people to be looking toward their career development not only occurs when they are in job search, but when they very much are in their current job. Taking the time to “invest”, in oneself, from a position of strength, only helps an individual to respond more quickly when they need to cash in that “career insurance policy”.
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