Key Point: regardless of where or what you’re doing, proactively work on your next career move now! I’m not kidding; I don’t care how good or indispensable you think you are superstar.
A friend of mine, Colleen Aylward a nationally renowned recruiter, has written a great book called From Bedlam to the Boardroom. It is about how job search has changed dramatically in the last 24 to 36 months and what you should do about it. Some data points:
- A job placed on Career Builder or similar sites can generate 1500 plus resumes in three days. A keyword filter can churn out a short list in minutes, 20 killer qualified candidates!
- Over 2.5 million business execs announced themselves unemployed a year ago; it is likely a much higher number based on those too embarrassed to take unemployment checks or who are seriously under-employed. The estimate is 5 to 7 million top execs are looking for work.
- With LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media sites employers can target exactly who and what they want and search on referrals alone.
- Try this: put your job description in Google, do a search, and note how many applicants come up. That should set your toes a jingling.
Character Move: future employers have the following questions, and you have to have a heck of a fact-based story to tell in answering them:
- How have you contributed to increasing revenues and profitability?
- How have you contributed to decreasing costs?
- What problems have you solved and how?
- How creative are you?
Be great at developing personal case studies right now, as you are working, and read Colleen’s book for a lot more insight!
Competing in The Triangle,
Lorne