
A pair of adult trumpeter swans. The trumpeter swan, Cygnus buccinator, is the largest North American swan, and is almost entirely migratory. The swans of the Lacreek National Wildlife Refuge spend winters there, and migrate to Greenwater Lake Provincial Park in Porcupine Plain, Saskatchewan. Annual migrations, like all migrations, are expensive strategies for any animal, adopted only when they offer significant advantages. Many professionals today face stark choices similar to the choices the ancestors of migratory animals faced: keep doing what you're doing in the place you're now doing it and risk extinction, or go somewhere else and perhaps do something else that might be better. Migration for professionals can be a relocation, career change or a combination of both. It isn't pleasant, but what's the alternative? Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Finding work in tough times is like marketing in an environment that's flooded with sellers. At the executive end of the job market, compensation is high enough to support professional executive placement specialists, but if you aren't one of the elite, you'll be doing your own marketing.
Here are some suggestions for positioning yourself as a superior product, reaching the buyer ahead of your competitors, creating a compelling message, and making yourself easy to find for anyone looking for someone like you.
- Participate in local chapters of professional societies
- Professional societies emphasize education, networking, and job search services tuned to your profession. You can exchange news and techniques with colleagues. Especially valuable: leadership positions or responsibility for posting job openings.
- Teach
- Teaching in continuing education programs dresses your resume; keeps you fresh; and gives you networking opportunities, access to library facilities, and faculty discounts for equipment and software.
- Speak
- Tight budgets are compelling chapters of professional societies to favor local nonprofessional speakers. Extra income is unlikely, but you'll make yourself known to people who might want to hire you.
- Use Google alerts
- Avoid surprises in interviews by being informed about current events in your profession. And be among the first to learn of new opportunities. If you're targeting a particular company, set a Google alert related to your target. Set alerts for people you know, your target industry, yourself, and anything that appears on your resume or record, or anything anyone might ask you about. Include misspellings.
- Avoid surprises in interviews
by being informed about current
events in your profession - Network, network, network
- Effective networking requires discipline, organization, and dedication. Networking in person is best; telephone is next best. Networking through Web sites can be helpful, too. There are books and Web sites galore. And job search networking groups are almost everywhere. Search for groups in your area by modifying this example for Boston.
- Get into electronic business networking
- As an active electronic networker, with a presence at LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter you'll create a multi-media resume. You'll gain a clean, professional presence that highlights your accomplishments, capabilities, and assets.
- Keep submitted resumes fresh
- On-line resume databases often display submission dates to employers, who sometimes interpret older dates as indicators of undesirability. Visiting your submitted resumes monthly and making slight modifications probably resets the submission date.
- Publish
- Publish books, scholarly articles, book reviews, or articles in trade magazines or Web sites. Regular book reviewers often get free books, and you'll be helping the world find you.
- Blog or tweet
- If you have useful things to say, create a blog, or tweet regularly. It's a commitment, but it can also keep you sharp and engaged, and the word will get around.
In this environment, you have to be inventive to stand out. Sending out resumes isn't enough. In May, 2009, software engineer Larry Fowler placed ads on WCRB, a Boston radio station. Whatever works. First issue in this series
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For more on finding work in tough times, see "Finding Work in Tough Times: Strategy," Point Lookout for July 8, 2009; "Finding Work in Tough Times: Infrastructure," Point Lookout for July 15, 2009; and "Finding Work in Tough Times: Communications," Point Lookout for July 29, 2009.
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
Emailstorming
- Most of us get too much email. Some is spam, but even if we figured out how to eliminate spam, most
would still agree that we get too much email. What's happening? And what can we do about it?
We Are All People
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we're all people — and all different people — is an important key to success.
Workplace Myths: Motivating People
- Up and down the org chart, you can find bits of business wisdom about motivating people. We generally
believe these theories without question. How many of them are true? How many are myths? What are some
of these myths and why do they persist?
How to Make Good Guesses: Strategy
- Making good guesses — guessing right — is often regarded as a talent that cannot be taught.
Like most things, it probably does take talent to be among the first rank of those who make conjectures.
But being in the second rank is pretty good, too, and we can learn how to do that.
Risk Creep: II
- When risk events occur, and they're of a kind we never considered before, it's possible that we've somehow
invited those risks without realizing we have. This is one way for risk to creep into our efforts. Here's
Part II of an exploration of risk creep.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming April 2: Mitigating the Trauma of Being Laid Off
- Trauma is an emotional response to horrible events — accidents, crimes, disasters, physical abuse, emotional abuse, gross injustices — and layoffs. Layoff trauma is real. Employers know how to execute layoffs with compassion, but some act out of cruelty. Know how to defend yourself. Available here and by RSS on April 2.
And on April 9: Defining Workplace Bullying
- When we set out to control the incidence of workplace bullying, problem number one is defining bullying behavior. We know much more about bullying in children than we do about adult bullying, and more about adult bullying than we know about workplace bullying. Available here and by RSS on April 9.
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