When you’re laid off, is there anything worse than the feeling that nothing is in your control anymore? Over at U.S. News and World Report today (hey, I write a weekly column there now!), I talk about the five actions you can take to help you regain control, move on with your life and find a new job. Just in case you were thinking of climbing back into your bed permanently. Read it here.
Student debt is being compared to the housing crisis. Catastrophe? Imminent. We’re thrusting our kids into vast amounts of financial turmoil, and for what? Disaster. And while that may be true (education does need a transformation), debt is not the main issue on a young person’s mind.
“You would think that student loans are young people’s only priority,” argues New York Times columnist Charles Blow. “They’re not. In fact, a cleverly designed survey released this week by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics asked respondents ages 18 to 29 to choose between pairings of issues to determine which ones they felt were more important. Among domestic issues, creating jobs always won.”
Student debt wouldn’t be such a big deal if recent grads could find a job. Because the problem isn’t the loan, but the job to pay off the loan to start living life. You only care about paying off student debt if you’re ready to settle down, buy a house, get married, and have kids. But young people delay adulthood. We buy houses later. We get married later. We have kids later. So it doesn’t matter that paying off loans comes later too — if you have a job.
While there has been much ado about the cost of tuition – college debt has reportedly tripled since 1981 – students rarely pay the full tuition cost because scholarships and financial aid have risen as well. “For the current school year, the average sticker price for tuition and fees at a private, nonprofit college is $28,500,” reports NPR writer Jacob Goldstein. “And yet, the average price students actually pay is less than half that — $12,970. That’s almost identical to the $12,650 that students paid, on average, in the 2001-2002 school year.”
Not to mention, college debt is a deliberate choice young people make. I’m from Illinois, but went out-of-state for school. My mother pleaded with me to go in-state. Same education, lower cost. Of course I knew she was right, but every college student knows the price of higher education doesn’t simply include courses, room and board, but the experience of stepping out and being on your own. An experience I simply didn’t want to have in my hometown.
Many other young people have made similar choices. Kelsey Griffith, 23, attended Ohio Northern, a private college that costed her nearly $50,000 a year. “As an 18-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it,” Ms. Griffith, a marketing major, told the New York Times. “I knew a private school would cost a lot of money. But when I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.”
You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t sympathize with Ms. Griffith. Smart enough to go to a private school, but can’t do basic math? I pity the marketing budget she’ll soon manage.
We deliberately choose to take on debt to get the best possible education. And while the same could be said of mortgage debt and our pursuit of the American Dream, unlike the the housing crisis, student loan interest rates are low, and the forgiveness level is high. If you don’t have a job, you can delay payments. If you’re experiencing economic hardship, you can delay payments. God forbid you want to go back to school and incur more debt, you can once again delay payments. The system does everything it can to help you get on your feet.
Personally, I went to a public school trading the corn of Illinois for the cows of Wisconsin. At the time, University of Wisconsin-Madison’s out-of-state tuition was the highest among Big Ten schools. The University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana (located in my hometown) was the lowest. My debt totaled around $12,300 (the average per borrower is $23,300, not the $60,000-$100,000 outliers often strut out in news stories). I paid it off earlier this year, in part, because I’ve been continuously employed since graduation.
Many other young people aren’t so lucky. A whopping fifty-three percent of recent college grads are jobless or underemployed, and that’s why we care eighty percent more about creating jobs over addressing social security, lowering the tax burden on Americans, income inequality, combatting climate change, reducing the role of big money in elections, or developing an immigration policy.
Not a generation to be down on our luck, we’ll take a paycheck where we can get it. Recent graduates are now more likely to work as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined. Steve King of New Communications Research argues “the grim job market is another key reason more young Americans are pursuing work as independents (temps, freelancers, etc.).”
Gen Y just wants to work. So let us. Provide jobs that could change the educational system, the economy, the world, instead of fussing about student loans. Then Gen Y could pay our debts, and that would be energy well-spent.
Alexandra Levit has just published the book, New Job, New You: A Guide to Reinventing Yourself in a Bright New Career, which is a great resource if you’re looking for a job or trying to find more happiness in your career. And it got me thinking, one of the myths I see over and over is that job-seekers or those looking to switch careers don’t think they have the skills or experience they need.
What a cop-out.
Of course, any career has a set of knowledge specific to that field. As an architect you probably have some technical knowledge about the size of a door jamb as well as general education about your specialization, like hospitals. But now that you’re ready to move to a new field, you don’t feel you have the gutzpah (experience, skills, knowledge) to apply to that journalism position or get into business development.
Very few employers are actually looking for someone with high level of expertise in a topic, but rather someone who can gain results. This is especially true the higher up the ladder you get. Look at the CEO of Yahoo Carol Bartz who originally came from the AutoCAD industry (architecture and design software).
As an unintentional job-hopper, the next job never hired me because of my body of field knowledge, but my track record of results which is a skill-set suitcase that travels with me and increases (one day, I hope it’s bursting open) to any job.
Those transferable skills are what’s most useful to employers: problem-solving skills, project management, marketing skills, business development, staff management, training and development; communication skills, etc. – and those are what should show up on your resume, how you should talk about yourself when networking, and what to include when writing your cover letter.
New Job, New You goes into great detail on these issues so definitely check it out for a motivating way to start the New Year. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you:
Could you have any job you want? If not, what’s hindering you or holding you back? Do you have a skill-set suitcase? How do you define it?
Qvisory reports that nearly one in five young adults are unemployed or looking for work, and Harvard’s Jeff Frankel says the recession crisis is now tied for longest since the depression.
No worries though. Optimism is strangely abundant. “There is a newly forming society of people who are making the best of being laid off,” the Boston Globe reports.
So if you’re being a curmudgeon, stop it. The recession is a great time to advance your career. It’s a myth that there aren’t any jobs. Here are three places to discover your next position:
1) Companies that save consumers money.
“While most big retail chains are closing stores and radically cutting back on new outlets, the dollar chains are planning to open hundreds of stores this year,” reports the New York Times. Dollar stores are out-performing even the Wal-Mart giant.
Not only are these once-shifty chains grabbing up market-share, but they’re now considered hot. Not just for the prices, but because consumers are discovering their service is better.
Consumers opt for value and family time over shopping in a recession, so personal attention and conveniences like an easily-accessible staff, less-crowded aisles and traversable parking is tracking with the consumer’s re-discovered values.
The online coupon distributor Coupons.com is also rapidly expanding for similar reasons. Just look at their jobs page; they have twenty-nine open positions in engineering, finance, HR, sales, marketing, and operations. And my own company Alice.com has hired three additional employees since I began work in January.
Saving money, value and convenience are hot commodities during a recession, and these companies will need your help satisfying the consumer’s appetite.
2) Start-up companies that disrupt markets.
Start-up companies like Alice thrive during a recession not only because we will provide value to the consumer, but also because we will disrupt the traditional retail market.
Other start-ups with disruptive business models are poised to take a strong foot-hold as well, like Hulu. In a recent video interview, CEO Jason Kilar reported that Hulu is ahead of their revenue plan for 2009 and they have ten advertised jobs available.
Indeed, Business Week’s Mike Mandel cites evidence that 80% of the top-ten Fortune 500 companies were started during a recession. Recessions have historically weeded out bad ideas and enlivened entrepreneurship, all of which comes together in a perfect storm for job-seekers, innovators and new thinkers.
3) Public sector jobs that solve problems.
The shift in talent to disruptive markets and new growth industries (like green, tech and health care) will have a lasting effect on the nation and the economy.
Especially since traditional careers like law, journalism and finance are all suffering from an identity crisis drastically altering career paths towards public-sector jobs including positions in non-profits, cities, counties, states and other government agencies.
“New career directions are tethered less to the dream of an immediate six-figure paycheck on Wall Street and more to the demands of a new public agenda to solve the nation’s problems,” New York Times columnist Steve Lohr argues.
And those do-gooder jobs tend to be fairly recession-proof. The top ten cities for job growth in 2009 as reported by Forbes all benefited from plentiful government jobs.
Topping the list for job growth is Madison, Wisconsin, the city I call home. A spokeswoman for the city’s chamber of commerce claimed that Madison is “historically recession proof,” in part because the city is the seat of city, state and county governments, and they all provide jobs.
The tie that binds these three opportunities for job-seekers – smart retailers, disruptive start-ups and the public sector – is the emergence of meaningful work in the face of complex problems.
What do you think? Have you had trouble finding a job in the recession? What industries have you seen luck and growth in, and which have been more difficult? What companies are poised to hire the next generation of talent?
This post contains video. If you’re reading via email or RSS, please click through.
This video is a response to the comments I received on my post, ‘Don’t Burn Bridges’ is Bad Career Advice, that was also featured on Brazen Careerist.
One frequent comment talked about the idea that you will someday need a reference from a previous employer to get a job. I argue that you may not need that type of reference, especially for “cool jobs.”
This post isn’t about if you like your job. So please don’t write in the comments that you love your job and your boss so you would never burn bridges. Obviously.
People burn bridges when they don’t like their jobs and their bosses. Or work with totally lame people or are completely bored. So you get fired, or laid off, or there comes a time when your job just isn’t what it used to be so you leave.
You shouldn’t just walk out. You should give notice and finish your projects and be polite (if for no other reason than your own sense of pride and accomplishment). But there’s no point in continuing a negative relationship once you’re out the door. The advice to not burn bridges is outdated.
Here’s why it’s okay to cut ties:
1) You’ll change careers too often for it to matter.
Most likely, you’ll change jobs six to eight times before you’re thirty and 40 million people relocate each year, while 15 million make significant moves of more than 50 or 100 miles, reports Richard Florida.
The old rule was that workers would move to another job in the same industry in the same town. This encouraged politics and the necessity of kissing butt. But work is changing, and now you’ll change careers and locations so often it won’t matter.
2) Your old boss won’t help you.
“Healthy relationships, whether personal or professional, are formed on the basis of give and take,” LaTosha Johnson argues. It’s rare that someone will help you if you can’t help them. And besides, you won’t benefit from forcing a relationship with someone that doesn’t share your values. When push comes to shove, these people will not help you. Why would you want to be associated with them anyway?
3) You won’t need a reference.
If you’re leaving your job, you’ll probably be looking for a new job that is more fun and more challenging. Most cool jobs don’t require traditional references. Instead, they require that you know someone to get you in the door and vouch for you. That’s usually never your current employer.
It’s quite easy to prove yourself and your work ethic in other situations like blogging, volunteering or side projects that show your worth and capability. Networking outside of your career and company is a great path towards success and is your best safety net.
4) You can have an enemy (or two).
But probably not more. Caitlin McCabe says that competition is motivation. Having competition and people that remind you of who you don’t want to be is actually healthy.
In a playful but entirely useful article, Chuck Klosterman argues for both a nemesis and an archenemy: “We measure ourselves against our nemeses, and we long to destroy our archenemies. Nemeses and archenemies are the catalysts for everything.”
5) You can start over.
Whenever you start something new, ask yourself, “If the worst happened, would you be okay? Can you accept the worst case scenario? Can you fail and survive?” Because you might just ruin your reputation, bankrupt your organization and turn an entire city against you. It happens to good people every day. Really.
Failure is an option. And it’s your best negotiating tool. That is, the ability to start over gives you unlimited opportunities.
None of these reasons excuse you from doing a superior job or give you an excuse to be a dick or a slacker. But there’s no reason to hold onto baggage that isn’t healthy. Remember, there’s a reason you’re leaving.
Consider getting an online Associate Business Degree to start building your business network and learn the basics of entrepreneurship.
Marketing jobs are all the rage despite the fact that marketing departments are one of the first to be cut in a recession. And I’ve always liked marketing, but I didn’t major it in college, and none of my experience has ever directly related to the topic. But my new job? It’s all about marketing.
Here’s how to transition into a field that you have no specific education or direct experience in:
1. Ignore your last job title. Titles don’t matter. Experience does. “Director” could mean any number of things – managing budgets, event planning, fundraising, etc. But instead, I made it to mean word-of-mouth marketing, building community, and member (read: customer) acquisition and retention when I interviewed for my current job.
Your experience is valuable whatever you do, so you need to learn how to talk about it in a way that matters. Good managers realize it’s not about your title, but what you did. My first boss out of college looked for candidates who had waitressing experience (note: I didn’t, but still got the job), because she believed waiters learned a valuable skill set.
Translate your experience into how it will be meaningful.
2. Network now, while you still have a job. When I announced I was leaving my last job, I received several emails that read, “What’s this all about? I thought you were you going to give me a heads up when your mind started to wander…” Too many people start networking after they’ve started looking for a new position. You should be constantly networking.
More than anything, constantly networking means doing your job well, representing your company with integrity, and letting other people see that. Like when people ask, “How’s the job?” be ready to list two to three key accomplishments – both personal and company-related – like, “It’s great! We’ve acquired two new sponsors, expanded our Board, and are starting the process for building our new product on Monday.”
And it doesn’t matter if you just started your job. After a conference last week, I followed up with the business cards I collected. One email I received back read, “Let me know when you’re ready to job-hop again. I need a good PR person for [company] to manage marketing our own business and brand.”
3. Please, start a blog already. Now that I work for a start-up company, people keep asking me how to get a start-up job. Especially those with no online presence whatsoever. Uh, yeah. The easiest way to prove that you’re serious, knowledgeable and competent in an area that you seemingly have no experience or education in is to write a blog on that topic. Because writing a good blog isn’t actually easy at all, it’s hard.
And if you’re serious about finding a job in engineering instead of accounting, or intellectual property instead of family law, or sports-casting instead of painting, you have to be serious. If you think it’s stupid to start a blog on the topic, then maybe you don’t want it as much as you think you do. I’m just saying. Be honest, and then put the work in.
4. Customize your resume to the company. Don’t insist on putting everything you’ve ever done on your resume. If you’re a real estate agent, don’t describe the job, but instead describe your accomplishments, how you stood out, and why your experience makes you stellar to the position you’re applying for. Writing a great resume preps you for a great interview.
The easiest way to learn how to do this is to review other resumes. Reviewing what other people have done is the quickest way to improvement because you’ll see how much information is irrelevant and how quickly you get bored. Here, you can start by reviewing the resume I wrote to get my current job. It was pretty awesome at the time, but only a couple months later, this version already makes me cringe. You should constantly be updating since you are constantly changing.
Apply the same customization and personalization to your resume that you expect when you get book recommendations from Amazon.
There’s buzz in the media that Generation Y is finally being put in our place. The recession won’t play favorites and Gen Y will see just what Gen X and the Boomers have been talking about. Besides this being ridiculously sad – honestly, are we really a society that beats down optimism? – it’s also completely erroneous.
The Economist reports that “the touchy-feely management fads that always spring up in years of plenty (remember the guff about ‘the search for meaning’ and ‘the importance of brand me’) are being ditched in favor of more brutal command-and-control methods.” (h/t The Schiff Report)
Except companies that operate according to the latest trend and resort to command-and-control methods are neither Gen Y-friendly, nor anyone-friendly. You cannot have one set of values one month and a different set the next, because what makes individuals productive in one economy does not change in another.
If you value an open, collaborative approach, that shouldn’t change when times get tough. Especially when Gen Y values are so beneficial to everyone.
The Economist goes on to say that Gen Yers “have labored under the illusion that the world owed them a living. But hopping between jobs to find one that meets your inner spiritual needs is not so easy when there are no jobs to hop to.”
Except that those who can perform will always be able to find a new, exciting position. And Gen Y knows how to perform, especially under pressure. We’ve been multitasking since we could make a to-do list and we readily embrace change. We came of age during 9/11 and as Nadira Hira argues, “corporate America often appears just as scary and unstable (and untrustworthy) as the world at large, if not more so.”
Just because we’re experiencing an economic meltdown for the first time does not mean that we’re going to hide in the corner. We’re not going to settle. Really, we’re not surprised. We saw all this growing up– lay-offs, bankruptcy, politicking – and it’s exactly why we wanted to change the workplace in the first place.
As the Financial Times reports, “today’s younger generation are better prepared for economic hard times than their parents or grandparents: they were not expecting jobs for life… switching jobs and reconsidering careers are second nature to them.”
So, stop listening to those who say Gen Y won’t survive the recession. Here are four ways to really feel secure in today’s economy –
1) Turn down job offers. My mother was horrified and I was elated when I turned down a job offer a couple months ago. But it is one of the most empowering career moves you can make because you get to practice negotiating, you get feedback, you’re in control and you have the option of using it as a bargaining position later.
2) Get paid what you’re worth. I’ve increased my salary 60% since my first position out of college. If you’re keeping track, that’s a 20% raise each year. Silvana Avinami, a self-proclaimed strategic job-hopper reports on Brazen Careerist that she does even better than that, averaging a 30% raise with each hop (see comments).
You simply cannot do this by staying at the same job unless you’re there for a very long time. You just can’t. “Loyalty is about delivery,” and when you deliver, you should be rewarded accordingly.
3) Over-perform. You probably don’t love what you do. And if you don’t like your job, even a little, you’ll start performing badly. That’s bad because high performance is the key to a successful career.
“It makes sense,” Penelope Trunk argues. “If you don’t need to get another job anytime soon, then you don’t need to perform well in the next six months. You can coast. Job hoppers don’t coast or their resume will look bad.” Job-hopping allows you to find out what you like and figure out your strengths by forcing you to make an impact quickly.
4) Risk everything. Because safe is boring and maybe that’s good when times are easier, but they’re not. Safety doesn’t create innovation. But innovation does create new jobs and new opportunities. Innovation creates new markets and cures for illnesses and ideas that make us excited to get up in the morning.
You really want to help the economy? Put yourself out there. Risk everything. Do it for you, your family, your friends. We’ll all thank you.
On the third round of interviews for my current job, my interviewer was a Boomer whose opinion as the head of a similar and larger organization was valuable to my future Board.
After talking about Gen Y leadership, in which I blatantly quoted my blog to close the deal, she asked me what I would do if I witnessed unethical behavior.
“I would investigate to see if it was really unethical behavior,” I said, “or if I was misunderstanding the situation.”
It was the perfect answer for a business that loves gossip, but doesn’t like to make waves.
Then out of nowhere I felt compelled to add, “And I would probably call my mom and ask her advice.”
My interviewer smiled. Turned out my answer was right on all counts.
We ended up spending a large part of the remaining time talking about her relationship with her mom. She described how her mother had come to interviews with her, and how she continued to count on her mom in her high-profile position.
Gen Y isn’t the only one counting on parents for advice. This is behavior magnified and built upon from previous generations.
I call my mom all the time. Not as much as she’d like me to – a constant source of debate – but I value her thoughts and respect her advice more than anyone else.
She’s usually right too. Men, career, friends, she just knows. Everything. Annoying, that.
“Most Gen Y’s have strong, positive relationships with their Boomer parents,” Tammy Erickson argues at the Harvard Business Review. “They speak with Mom or Dad when they have a problem, and most feel that their parents understand them.”
I’m not saying that you should always listen to your parents, or that they’re always right. My own mother, who I referenced in my interview to get the job, and who praised me for my smart answers, was hesitant that I should even take it.
She didn’t really understand what I would be doing. I still don’t think she fully understands. But I took the job anyway.
I also listened to my mother at the same time.
Listening to my mom is recognition that I am becoming an adult. See, asking for help is one of the most adult things you can do.
There’s no one better to ask for help than your parents, because despite the fact that sometimes they might annoy or guilt-trip you, they really, in their heart of hearts, want the best for you. And they’re always proud of you. They always love you. That’s what parents do. And they know you better than anyone else.
I find it funny to read that some experts believe that Gen Y “may well shatter,” as the result of intense Boomer parental involvement. Do you know what I do when life isn’t going my way? I call my mom. And do you know what she tells me? “This is your life,” she says. “Stop crying and deal with it.”
Okay, it may not be those exact words, but today’s parents are not ignorant. They know that despite their coddling, Gen Y will need to become independent in order for us to succeed.
So we might as well stop getting up in arms that parents are helping their children. Because in the game called life, we really need as much as help as we can get.
“Use your parents’ insight to gain experience when you have none,” Rosie Reilman argues. “But don’t let them live your lives for you. This is your life. Take ownership of it.”
I agree. I’m not saying don’t grow up. We should grow up and take responsibility. I don’t believe, for instance, that you should move back home after college. Because of how I was raised, I think that’s irresponsible.
But I think we all feel, especially in our twenties – and maybe it never ends – that we’re doing a good job of just acting like adults. And maybe if we’re good enough actors, we’ll actually become adults someday. With the help of our parents, of course.
While Erickson believes we should accept all this as “a changing cultural norm,” Scott Williamson argues that “accepting this sort of behavior just enables more of it.”
But I believe we want to enable a workforce that asks for help, that respects their parents, and who aren’t afraid to admit that we don’t have all the answers. Certainly, there are instances when it can go overboard, but why must we continually let a few bad apples set the tone?
We shouldn’t sensationalize what is generally a good trend.
This post about going from bottom to top was inspired by this comment. Thanks, Milena!
I walked in and almost everyone was sitting down, and the speakers were close, shoulder to shoulder. It was so hot and sticky outside, I went to the bathroom to freshen before sitting down near the door, lest the presentation be boring and I should want to leave in the middle.
Big Brother was the moderator of the panel, and I had seen him in the press, but never in person. After the event, we somehow managed to walk out at the same time. He said hello to me, in that special way he has, gleaming with charisma.
Much later we sat at a coffee shop, and I saw him repeat this behavior with other people who stared at him, as people often do. And I must have been staring too, because I remember the way that I felt was that my future was intrinsically and inexplicably linked to this man.
I couldn’t have known then that we would eventually sit in a car together as he expertly handled a disastrous situation. Or that we would have flurries of text conversations at nine o’clock at night. Or that he would be the one of the few people who could simultaneously inject fear and ambition into my dreams, that he would be one of the few to infuriate and inspire me all at once.
At the time, I was confused and unhappy. What I thought was supposed to be my dream job wasn’t working out and I felt claustrophobic in an invisible box, like a mime putting on a bad show.
I had a ridiculous time getting up in the morning, often rising out of bed just fifteen minutes before I was supposed to be sitting in my office chair. A three minute walk from where I lived. I didn’t really tell anyone at the time, not my boyfriend, or even my mother.
And little did I know things were only going to get worse, much worse, before they got better.
Eventually, it was mutually agreed upon that it would be best if I left my job, which sounds better than being fired, and it was just two or three days before Thanksgiving.
I felt a huge sense of relief, and full from a big plate of humble pie, I applied for and started my next job a short two weeks later. And then, a short two months after that, my body decided to send me to the emergency room. The day that I got out of the hospital, my boyfriend broke up with me.
It’s a strange feeling, hitting bottoms you never knew existed. But what’s even stranger is the wherewithal you find in yourself to keep going. That night, I cried on the shoulders of two of my friends, but in part of my head – the part that was growing an antidote to my flair for drama – I also thought that it was no big deal.
I needed to get healthy. I needed to get a paycheck to eat. I needed to figure things out.
So, I did that. With no other choice, it was remarkably easy.
I won’t describe much more about my second job because, in short, I loved it, and it’s difficult to write about such happiness without sounding absurdly corny. Suffice to say, the job was like a retreat for my career, and the organization I worked for was tremendously good to me.
So it was a surprise to everyone, most of all myself, when I started to feel restless later that year, and into the next. Seemingly losing it all made me remember I wanted much more.
That’s when I started this blog. Actually, I started a different one where I posted bad prose that I had written, and told around three people to go read it. Then I started this blog. And I told everyone in my address book to read it.
See, here’s the thing. When you put yourself out there for all to see, when you make yourself vulnerable, and you’re taking a big risk, and you’re doing all this because you can’t think of doing anything else, people will rally behind you. They will support you. Because people like to see others succeed. The universe will conspire in your favor.
The rush of this risk was so big, and the potential payoff so great, that I started to take more risks. I acted in a play where I learned the lines just eight hours earlier. I went skiing for the first time, fell on my butt, and got back up again. I learned sushi was the best food ever.
Oh, and I applied for my dream job and got it.
I don’t want to make it seem that I went through this big transformation over a short period and I know everything now. I didn’t and I don’t.
Let me be clear. It was really the years before this one, and those before that, which set me up to succeed. But eventually, you reach a tipping point and things begin to flow in your favor.
The pace since that’s happened has been like a water slide at a water park. The ride down is fast, scary, and exhilarating, and once you’ve reached the bottom, you can’t wait to make the long, hot and sticky crowded climb back to the top and do it all over again.
Because now I have an entirely new set of challenges and struggles that I face. I work hard, but also strategically and intelligently. And Big Brother, who seemed untouchable to me a couple years ago, is now one of my many mentors.
Penelope Trunk argues that In today’s workplace, young job seekers hold the advantage. I wonder if this even matters when work no longer holds much meaning to Gen X and Gen Y. Having an advantage in a game that doesn’t challenge is useless.
Since the advantage is ours, however, let’s use it, and to negotiate more than extra vacation time:
1. Create a 3-position work week. Many of us complain that we aren’t challenged or don’t have enough to do during our 40 hours. Why work a full-time job in only one position? We already engage in extra-curricular jobs (blogging, bartending, volunteering, etc.) outside of normal work hours, but let’s take the idea further.
After you start a new job, monitor how much time it realistically takes you to complete your tasks. Then propose to your employer that they pay you a prorated version of your salary for those 20 hours, for example, that it takes you to do that job. Then go out and get another job. Repeat. This saves the company money and allows you to work two or three part-time jobs in order to showcase multiple skills and pursue numerous passions. For example, you could be an accountant for 15 hours, a personal trainer for 15 hours, and a graphic designer for 10 hours. And still have time for other extra-curricular jobs.
2. Request a trial period. For the company. Perhaps you have two job offers and aren’t sure which to choose. Or maybe you want to apply to several companies, but want a test-run first. The culture of one could be just what you’re looking for, but you won’t know until you actually work there. Why not request a trial period of a week or two to try out both jobs and see which you like better? If you request this pre-interview or job offer, this also provides an opportunity to show them what you’re made of, giving you additional negotiating power. It’s a hands-on experience interview.
3. Develop a partnership-job between companies. Let’s say you have two great skills: you are a stellar marketing guru and your research capability in biotechnology is cutting edge. The biotech company you work for hires out their marketing needs in lieu of staffing in-house. Why not work for both the marketing firm and the biotech company? At the biotech company, you are a top researcher. At the marketing firm, your major client would be the biotech company, who you would obviously have an intimate knowledge of.
Or maybe, you are a development officer at the nonprofit of which the bank you work at is a major donor. Or maybe, as the curator of an art gallery, you choose to use the firm where you work as an accountant. Discovering and using connections between separate fields will bring more meaning to your job experience and efficiencies to the companies you work for.
These are just some ideas to start us thinking bigger. Since we have the advantage, it’s up to us to make the next move and determine the pace, and outcome, of the game.
What are your thoughts? If you could have anything…