How to Boost Your Career in a Weak Economy

With companies in the United States laying off employees left and right, raising our unemployment rate to the highest it’s been since late 2004, working for a big company is no longer a guarantee of steady employment. Even workers who have dedicated twenty years or more to the same company, expecting loyalty in return for loyalty are being laid off in favor of less experienced, cheaper labor or in favor of offshoring those same tasks.

With gas prices soaring, many employees who haven’t yet been axed are opting to seek out employment alternatives that will allow them to work closer to home, or better yet, from a home office entirely. Then we have Generation Y, which has been tapped to be the entrepreneurial leaders of the future. The face of the U.S. workforce is changing. We are rapidly becoming a culture of independent thinkers, shying away from traditional molds of what careers used to be. No longer is it common for a professional to stay with one company for the life of his or her career. Working for one company will typically get you a cost-of-living salary increase, and maybe a bit of a merit increase. By switching jobs, you can leverage your experience and negotiate a higher starting salary.

Given these facts, it is clear that the new focus is not on your employer, but on your talent and your career. Your first priority must be to seek out those opportunities which develop and challenge your skills. To this end, it only makes sense to lean more towards a model of contract employment. Workers can freely move from one project to the next, without having to worry about dealing with office drama or politics, gaining a variety of experiences that can be used to build an impressive portfolio. Job burnout can quickly be solved by moving on to a new project with a new company. Companies are alleviated from the burden of keeping employees on staff who are not productive for fear of being accused of wrongful termination, as well as not being responsible for offering extensive benefit packages to lure employees to work for them.

Source: http://www.articleheaven.com/article_598759_36.html


Improve Your Career in Any Economy

Like many other areas of business, the tech industry has weathered the occasional slump over the past few decades. It's only natural that the fate of techies is closely linked to the tides of the business. However, in any economy, weak or strong, some people prosper and advance while others suffer the consequences. Understanding why can make all the difference, whether you're looking for a job, trying to keep the one you have, or are audacious enough to want to advance your career regardless of the climate.

The conventional wisdom, typically unspoken, is that when times are tough you just grin and bear it. Merely surviving is the best that you can hope for. Advancing is just too much to ask. To that, I offer my own bit of wisdom. Nonsense! (I actually had a more colorful phrase in mind, but discretion got the better of me.)

The principles of business do not alter based on a strong or weak economy, and people will always be people. What this means to those of us with careers to manage is that what works when business is good will also work when things are slow. In fact, in many cases, they'll work even better. In order to understand why, let's strip this down to the bare bones issues.
Getting Down to Business

Businesses exist to make a profit. People work at companies to make a living. Although enterprises are run by a class of creature known as management, it turns out that the ranks of management are, in fact, populated by people. As we've already observed, people work at companies to make a living. So, making money, both from a personal and corporate point of view, is a top priority that does not change based on market conditions.

Human nature is another constant. People have a desire for power, the need for personal fulfillment, and egos to maintain. When you add all of this up, you come up with some facts that are immutable constants in the business world. Of course, we'll be taking advantage of these to make sure that we continue to eat on a regular basis and have the spare money we need to keep our families happy and our compilers up to date. So, let's take a look at some of the more obvious points. The following actions will increase your value in the eyes of the company and / or your superiors:
* Increasing company revenues
* Decreasing company expenses
* Helping your superiors further their career

Source: www.sitepoint.com/article/improve-career-any-economy/



Business and Executive Coach

Listening to the news and many CEOs, you would think the country is in a depression. At a minimum, these reports put listeners into a depression. While I’m willing to let a few individual businesses slide because of what they do (e.g. residential real estate in Miami), if your company is not growing the way you want it to, and/or margins are shrinking, the problem is inside your company. If you believe otherwise, you are deceiving yourself. In many cases, even in sectors where the group as a whole is doing poorly, you should still be able to do better than you’re doing. Just like Warren Buffet does in the stock market, you need to jump on opportunities when the market is down and be aggressive, not defensive.



Some great examples:

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I recently met with the Managing Partner of a mid-sized accounting firm who confided in me that he just came off a record year and did not believe his company could sustain the pace. He was already seeing a slowdown. However, one of his competitors, who also is my client, is having another record organic growth year.
*
In the fitness and health industry, many companies see a drop off in memberships and attribute it to people spending less on “extras.” I have a client whose year-over-year growth this summer was 49%, and gross margins have expanded as well.
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Another client of mine has a business that services the airline industry. You would think they would be doomed. Yet based on their order backlog, they expect 33% growth this year.
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Staffing industry executives tell me their industry is down 30%, and many are laying off staff and otherwise cutting costs “until things get better.” I know of one company in the same market that entered the staffing business and in the last 2 years. They are growing in the high double digits and opening offices in several new states, having identified and pursued a segment of the staffing industry that is booming.

Source: executivecoachhms.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/7-tips-to-boost-your-business-in-a-down-economy/