FireProof Your Career

More Than Practice Makes Perfect

Researchers believe, says Malcolm Gladwell in his new book Outliers, the magic number for true mastery is 10,000 hours.  He doesn’t deny that there is inborn talent, but he points out that ANYBODY who practices 10,000 hours is going to become quite good at whatever skill he or she is concentrating on.

There are more “ingredients” that, when added to the mix, result in people who are, in Gladwell’s view, successful.

The month you are born, for example, determines how successful you’ll be as a hockey player.  Most are born in January, February and March.  There’s no magic about these months.  But those kids had a distinct advantage because they were bigger and more mature throughout their school years.  That means, they were chosen early and developed carefully.

Then, there is extraordinary opportunity.  The Beatles, for example, went to Hamburg to play in a strip club 5 times between 1960 and 1962.  Before those gigs, they would play an hour-long show; in Hamburg, they played for 5 to 8 hours straight - 7 days a week. By the time they “invaded” America, they’d played together more than 1200 times. The Hamburg opportunity catapulted them to that 10,000 mark.

It’s quite possible to spend 5 years working 40 hours a week (with a 50-week work year) in a career and not to have “mastered” it.
How come more of us aren’t experts? 
• Maybe we don’t take perfecting one single skill-set seriously; we multi-task rather than specialize.
• Maybe we don’t take the responsibility for our own mastery, relying instead on our organization to send us to training classes when “they” deem it necessary.
• Maybe we don’t focus narrowly enough, content to be “Jacks of all trades.”

There was a letter to the editor in the Kansas City Star the other day from a man who had been out of work for three years. Wonder if he’s really, really good at something?  I bet he isn’t – and I bet he hasn’t spent those three years mastering something.

This 10,000-Hour Rule is relevant if you are determined to “fireproof your career.” In the FireProof Your Career Guide, you’ll find 101 ways to learn stuff.  All you have to do is pick one and get started on your 10,000 hours.

10 Tips for Moving From One Field to Another

1.  Look at specific job descriptions for the career you want to move into.  (You can find job descriptions on job boards or on the websites of companies that hire that kind of worker.)

2.  Using the job descriptions, list the skills you already have and the ones you’ll need to master to move into your new career.

3.  Assess your personal attributes and decide if people with your personality type can be successful in this field. Professional speakers, for example tend to be extroverts, but some are very skilled introverts.  It’s probably easier to go with your natural inclinations.

4.  Determine what professional association serves people in the field you want to move into.  (There may be more than one.)  Read the website – or websites -- thoroughly.

5.   Look, for example, at the speakers for upcoming conferences and webinars to find the names of leading-edge practitioners and the companies they work for.

5. Google them and read articles written by these leaders in the field and leading corporate practitioners.

6.  Using the website, determine if there is a local chapter of the association and attend meetings.  Set up interviews with people who have the kind of job you want to move into.  

7.  Look for other on-line communities, forums, and websites. Notice the kinds of problems people are solving and how they talk about issues.

8.  Sign up for a search engine alert (Try Google, for example) to bring news and information about your chosen field – or specific “stars” in the field -- to you via e-mail.

9.  Find a mentor.  Look for mentors at social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook or at meetings of the professional association. 

10.   For a mega-dose of training, attend a national/international conference of the professional association that serves the field you’re interested in.

Have You Had THE CONVERSATION?

It’s time.  Time to gather your family around and sit down at the kitchen table to take a hard look at your financial future.

The economy won’t, the pundits say, get well for a year or two.  Meanwhile, more jobs will be shed – and finding a job, if you’re laid off, will get harder and harder.  It’s time to get serious about taking all the steps you can take to get your finances in order.

Invite teenagers, but don’t include younger children.  Make a pact – a solemn promise – that you will all keep your tempers and will not utter a single word of blame.  Figuring out how you got into this mess is non-productive; figuring out how to take charge of your financial future is productive.  Enlist everyone’s help and everyone’s commitment to this

So set aside several hours.  And that’s just to get started.
Here’s what you will need on hand as you begin:
• Your paid bills
• Your check books
• Your credit card statements
• Information on loans
• Information on investments
• Insurance information

Here’s the family council agenda: Decide what your overall goal is:  Pay off credit cards?  Build up a cash reserve? Determine how you would deal with a layoff?

Sort bills into 3 piles: 
1. Fixed expenses (You pay exactly the same amount every month.)
2. Flexible expenses (You could reduce these amounts.)
3. Frills (You could eliminate these expenses).

Figure out how much money is required every month to pay essential bills.  This step is difficult, because it means looking at every category – such as food – and deciding if you can reduce the amount spent.  But coming up with a dollar amount that you must have every month is key to your planning.

Most people’s spending includes lots of “walking around money.”  Do you know, for example, exactly how much you spent on lunches in the last month?  Or latte grandes? Or eating out?  You may need to write down every cent you spend for a period of time to get a handle on these expenditures.  How much money could you save, for example, if everyone in the family began to take their lunch to school or work?

Bet you’ve already spent more time than four hours.  Decide on your next steps and schedule your next meeting to continue your planning. Check out www.tightwad.com and www.pennypincher.com for ideas on how to conserve what you have.

You may decide to adopt this Depression Era motto for your family:
Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
Or do without.

Make being smart about money your family project.

Ask Yourself, “What If . . .”

With economists using the “R-word” and layoffs ricocheting across the workplace, now’s the time to get serious about your personal protection planning.

Ask yourself the following question:  “What if I’m laid off in November 2008?”  What would that mean to you?  Here are the 20 questions you can’t afford to leave unanswered.

1. Do you have savings to tide you over? 
2. How much would you need to pay essential bills every month? 
3. How accessible is this money?
4. What’s the state of your network? 
5. Whom do you need to know? 
6. How will you get to know those people? 
7. Are your contacts fully aware of your skills, expertise, recent activities, special attributes?
8. How “leading-edge” are your skills? 
9. What skills do you need to beef up? 
10. How will you do that? 
11. What help can your professional association be?
12. What help do you need to determine your marketability?
13. Is your resume ready to use? 
14. Is your resume located in your home office, not at work? 
15. How about other documents and data you will need to use to job hunt?
16. What would you do about healthcare?
17. Is your home office set up to launch a job hunt? 
18. What do you need to up-date or add? 
19. Do you have all the tools you need?
20. Have you bought the FireProofYour Career Guide?  

The Guide will help you answer all these questions and get your personal protection planning underway quickly and efficiently.

Help From Family and Friends

Women who find jobs through their networks earn more, says research from the University of Oregon.  Women who found jobs through family earned $32,691 on average; those who found jobs through close friends earned $28,546;  and those with no connections to their employer earned just $19,415.

Contrary to expectations, men’s “old boy network” didn’t bump up their salaries.

Another researcher at the University of British Columbia found that racial minorities’ lower salaries can largely be attributed to the fact that they were less likely to have friends in the company where they were seeking work. 

Employees who did know somebody were able to command salaries that were 4.5% higher than their initial offers.  Employers, the researcher surmised, were willing to offer more money to candidates with inside recommendations because they were assumed to be a better “fit” with the culture.

Insiders also help their friends by tipping them off about the salary range, how desperate the company is to fill the position– all information that helps the candidate negotiate.

The lesson for job-hunters?  Network with your family and close friends. 

We’ve noticed that many job-hunters just assume that family and friends know they are in the job market and know what kinds of opportunities to send their way. Instead, be sure you teach those closest to you what you’re looking for and how they can help.

Three Things You Must Do Before You Lose Your Job

Here they are – the three essential FireProofing Tips that will make sure you are ready to job hunt, if you are laid off.

1.  Take Your Career Management to Your Home Office
It’s still happening:  the HR person comes to your cubicle with a security person and they remove your hands from your keyboard.  Then they instruct you to pick up the pictures of your kids, your potted plant, and your pocket book.  They say, “We’ll escort you from the building.  Any other personal belongings will be shipped to you.”
What’s in your office that you will need as you conduct your job hunt?  Your resume, kudos from clients, a portfolio with samples of your best work, your networking contacts’ list, evidence that you’ve taken certain training courses or that you’ve become certified in a specific area or skill?  Scour through your office to determine what you need to take to your “career office” at home.  You may need to copy documents.  Of course, you won’t take anything that doesn’t belong to you or is proprietary.  If you can imagine saying, “Oh no!  I wish I had my ______!” take it home.  Be sure your career office is well organized and that you have all the equipment and tools you need.

2.  Rebuild Your Network
Is your network ready to help you job hunt?  Or have you neglected it while you worried and worked harder to try to avoid a layoff?  You need Advocates – people who can talk with confidence about your character and competence, who can tell accurate stories about your triumphs, who can introduce you to contacts in a variety of organizations or even industries.  Contacts Count research indicates that networkers consistently overestimate their contacts’ knowledge of them.  Begin to shore up your network with this ABC approach. 
 A.  Assess what your contact knows about you by asking, “What would you say about me . . . .”  Or “Do you remember an incident that illustrates my abilities in that area?”  If you don’t like the answers you get, teach your contacts what to say about you. 
 B.  Bridge to new circles.  Ask all of your contacts what groups they belong to, who they know that you don’t know, and where they could introduce you to expand your reach.  Be ready to teach these new contacts about your character and competence through storytelling – not just shoving a resume at them.
 C.  Create heightened visibility for yourself by volunteering through your professional association.  If you can present a program or serve on a panel, you’ll have a chance to showcase your expertise to a large group. 
 Bonus C.  Check your calendar.  It’s the most revealing look at how much you really have been networking recently.  Fill it up with lunches, coffees, social get-togethers, after-work drinks., volunteer work, neighborhood activities – any thing that will get you face-to-face with the people you know and don’t know!   
 
3.  Assess Your Market-Readiness
Quick, what are the top 5 trends – or hot topics – in your profession?  If you can’t answer that question, if you can’t talk knowledgably about them, if you haven’t already boned up on them, you aren’t ready to job hunt. 
How about this?  Can you list the top 20 organizations in your community that hire people who do what you do?  Research them.  Find contacts who know people who work for them.
Final question:  What’s the one question you hate to asked in an interview?  Gotcha!
You’ve got to be at the leading edge in your profession to stand out in the ever more crowded marketplace.  Get busy.  Read professional journals.  Mosey around the website of your professional group.  Plan to attend an up-coming conference. Assume you’ll get a pink slip! Then you’ll be ready if you do! 

Career Agility

Are you able to move quickly and easily?  That’s career agility.

Connie out-ran several layoffs.  She started her career in HR as a compensation specialist. She says, “At that point, I joined Toastmasters and ASTD.  The professional association helped me learn about training.”  That was her next move. Seeing a layoff coming, she specialized in sales training and was asked to apply for the job of sales manager.

She explains, “I was constantly on the look out for opportunities.  I developed relationships with key people in the areas that looked like possibilities for me.  They knew what I could do.”

A merger was a wake-up call.  She could see that she had less experience than her counterpart in the other company.  Through networking she heard about a director of marketing slot for a start-up business unit.  When that business was sold, she moved again to product marketing manager for a product sold worldwide.

Several lessons here: 

• Use a professional association to learn about your next job.
• Don’t wait to be trained; get it on your own. Join Toastmasters, for example.
• Network strategically.
• Assess the impact of a merger, acquisition, or sale of a business unit on your job.  Benchmark yourself against your competition.  If you have fewer qualifications, get busy finding a new job before you are laid off.

You’re not born with career agility.  You can develop it. 
See additional ideas in the FireProof Your Career Guide.

It's TIME To Talk About Layoffs

Recently, TIME Magazine on-line called to find out “What  To Say When Someone Loses Their Job.”  You can read the tightly edited interview at TIME.com:  <http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1843507,00.html>  

But let me give you more, in-depth information.  When you are talking with a co-worker who has been laid off, reassure him/her that you want to stay in touch.  “Survivors” often shun their laid-off co-workers. Don’t act like the typical “survivor.”   As a “survivor,” you might feel like pulling away for several reasons.  You feel guilty about still having a job when faced with the person who has been laid off.  You need to explain to yourself why your co-worker got laid off and you didn’t.  You don’t know what to say to those who got laid off.  Your organization may actively discourage contact.  But the coolness or distance you exhibit to laid-off co-workers can be very hurtful.  Show them you do want to remain friends – or at least networking contacts.

Let’s assume that your co-worker did a great job at work.  You can help that person make contacts.  Go through his/her resume and point out strengths.  If you’ve worked closely on a team or a project, you might even be able to suggest additions to the resume that reflect the co-worker’s abilities.  You also can arrange a couple of lunches to introduce your co-worker to people you know who might be helpful.  You belong to circles that your co-worker doesn’t.  Finding a job is partly a numbers game.  You can help increase the number of people your co-worker is in touch with during his/her job hunt. Don’t ask your contacts if they have an opening:  chances are, they don’t.  Do ask your contacts to help your co-worker with advice about finding a new job:  brainstorm ways to put your co-worker’s skills to use in new ways or new markets.  Prompt your co-worker to tell stories about successes at work. Storytelling will teach your contacts to trust your co-worker and help reduce the risk they might feel about passing your co-worker’s name or resume along. 

In short, be kind and helpful to co-workers who have been laid off.  Who knows, you might be laid off and need their kindness and help someday!

What Are We Worried About and What Can We Do About It?

More than 80% of Americans are worried about job-related issues like the increased cost of getting to work, a stuck-in-the-past paycheck, the conflicting demands of life and work, and the shrinking job market, says a recent survey by Adecco USA.

If you share those worries, what can you do? 

Pain at the Pump
What alternatives exist?  Have you investigated carpooling?  Use your internal network to contact others who live near you and get together.  By teaming up, you can cut your costs of commuting by ½ or more!  What about public transportation? Riding a bike?
Meanwhile, cut other car trips to a minimum.  Group errands.  Carpool with other parents to get the kids to soccer.

Your Salary
Since 64% of hiring managers expect to increase salaries for full-time employees in the third quarter, according to CareerBuilder.com, now is the time to ask for an increase.
Be prepared.  Draft a report on how you contributed to the bottom-line this year and how you’ve exceeded your objectives.  (If you can’t truthfully document your contributions, get cracking.  What would it take to make it possible to write that report at year-end?)

Life-Work Conflicts
Call a family meeting to discuss your priorities.  Simplify and streamline your life. Expect everyone to contribute. Identify your Top 3 stressors.
One family decided that, since it would take professional house cleaners only 4 hours to clean their house, they could do it themselves in that amount of time. Every other Saturday, they clean.  To keep chaos to a minimum between cleanings, they do a 10-minute pick-up every night before bedtime. 

The Job Market
Use your professional association to get a handle on the job market for the kind of work that you do in your location.  Look for ways to gain additional expertise that will give you an edge if you are laid off.  Start a business on the side or check out teaching opportunities.  Use your skills to earn extra money.

Save, Save, Save
Nearly half of workers say they’re living paycheck to paycheck.  Now is the time to straighten out your finances.  Meet with a financial planner or advisor.  A third of workers are not participating is 401k, IRA, or retirement plans.  Sign up today.

Go back to the Depression Era mantra:  
            Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do, or Do without.
Buy kids clothes at garage sales or switch with other families.  Check out thrift stores and consignment shops. Make a budget – and stick to it. Decide now to cut back on holiday giving.  Talk with friends and relatives about scaling down. Pay off the credit cards. 

Quit worrying and start securing your career and savoring your life. 

What's An Hour Worth?

Bet you’ve never figured out what you actually get paid per hour.  Here’s the formula.

 

Yearly salary divided by 50 (weeks) divided by 40 (hours per week) = what you earn per hour.

 

Why is this an important number for you to know?  If you are pricing your freelance services, you’ll want to know the “hourly rate” you are making from your employer – or former employer.  Remember that all your benefits are on top of your salary figure and that your employer also has been withholding taxes and perhaps other monies for savings, etc.

 

If you are doing things other than job hunting – mowing your own lawn, cleaning your own house – you’ll want to decide if you should continue to do them or hire them out.  Rule of Thumb:  Never do anything yourself that you could have someone else do for less than your hourly rate.

 

Job hunters fritter away their time doing many things besides job hunting.  Put your focus on finding a job and do only those things that you only can do – networking, calling and meeting with prospects.

 

Make a schedule each week. Yes, fill in the blocks on your calendar. Make appointments with yourself and keep them.  Write in activities and meetings just as you would if you were “at work.”  “Meet with Jim.” “Revise resume.”  “Fill out application form.” Explore association website and job bank.” You are at work – sometimes the hardest work of your life.   Even though you may be tempted to try to save money by painting the house or mowing the lawn, putting all your efforts into your job hunt will pay off in the end.