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!
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