Weather The Storm
Stay Employed or Find an Even Better Job in a Turbulent Economy
Like a class 5 hurricane, COVID-19 has swept ashore across the country, sweeping away a robust economy in its wake. In just the first week of widespread stay-at-home orders that closed businesses nationwide, more than 3.3 million workers filed for unemployment insurance. Tens of millions more are working from home…or just quarantined there, with time on their hands.
Like the saying goes, there is a silver lining around the billowing storm clouds brought about by the coronavirus: you now have the opportunity to take steps to insure your existing job or find an even better one once the economy roars back to life.
Ahead we’re going to give you the steps you need to take now to be ready to protect your current job or find an even better one once the all-clear is sounded. Our in-house experts at Horizon Hire have decades of experience guiding workers to employment that provides fulfilment, financial security and longevity. Put in the work we explain here and you’ll make yourself into a more valuable employee, colleague or boss when life returns to normal.
Invest In Yourself
Your first step is to invest in yourself. You are a valuable asset. Your family knows this, your friends know this and now you must prepare yourself in every way possible to show your current or future employer this as well. Here’s how:
First, assess your skills, abilities and possibilities. By undertaking this hard work and being honest with yourself, you’ll have on paper not just the details you’ll need to help fill out your resume and LinkedIN profiles, but you’ll also be mapping out the strengths you need to highlight, the weakness you need to overcome (or mask!) and the targets for your job search. Detailed how-to’s will be available in future offerings from Horizon Hire.
SKILLS ASSESSMENT
Start by opening an Excel or Google Docs spreadsheet and simply list as many of your skills as possible – everything from knowing how to operate a mimeograph to programming a CAD machine and everything in between. Then compile your skills into common groups for your industry. Review your results, noting what you believe are your strengths and what needs to be refreshed or improved upon.
ABILITIES ASSESSMENT
Abilities are a bit harder to quantify than skills, so open a new tab on your spreadsheet and brainstorm what you’re good at. Are you engaging on the phone? Do you think quickly on your feet? Are you calm under pressure because you’ve seen it all before? Flesh out the concepts and try to provide detailed examples as well. They’ll come in handy when it’s time for an interview.
When in doubt, ask your spouse or a trusted colleague to tell you what they think are your strong suits. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by their answers.
POSSIBILITIES
We’ll use this list as your treasure map for your job search.
Action Steps
Think of this process as baking a career cake. The steps above are the same as shopping for the ingredients. Now, it’s time to bake it to perfection.
1. Revise your resume
We live in an ever-increasingly digital world, but the resume remains the basis upon which the hiring process begins. You’ll want a digital version soon enough, but by putting in the work now to create a well-crafted resume on paper — well, on Word or Google Docs, that is – you’ll save countless hours creating your online hiring profiles on sites like Zip Recruiter and Indeed.
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2. Craft your LinkedIn profile
Other than a resume, LinkedIn is the most important weapon in every job seeker’s arsenal. It’s where recruiters recruit, it’s where prospective employers quickly judge their candidates, and it’s where job hunters can show they know how to compete in the contemporary landscape of employment. Let’s make this clear: Regardless of your track record and employment history, regardless of your modern jobsite skills (elaborate or limited as they may be) LinkedIn gives you the finest chance to put your best digital foot forward. It’s a crucial way to overcome whatever limitations you may have on paper (literally, when it comes to your resume).
3. Add a new skill
4. Assess your finances
By cataloging your expenditures, you’ll be able to know immediately which of your monthly costs you can trim or eliminate. Like many of these exercises, your financial assessment will help you in the short and long term, regardless of what happens in the near future with your career.
Once you know where the money goes, you’ll want to shift funds to insure that as much as possible is going into your emergency fund. You’ve heard the suggestions a hundred times: You need to have in your savings at least three full months of income, but six is preferred. For many Americans, that’s simply not realistic; however, now that you are in career protection mode and you know at a glance where you’re spending too much money on wanta-haves (Amazon Prime + Netflix + Cable, really???) and not just gotta-haves (wifi and learnings). Pay close attention to the subscriptions and memberships that are on hold during the pandemic – most businesses are allowing memberships to be placed on hold for the time being.
5. Protect your mental and physical well-being
Put the Effort to Use
In subsequent essays, we’ll give you tips on how to make your double-down, job-keeping work pay off, but for now let’s assume you’re pushing your current job over to side-gig status and you’re going to work to secure your future by joining a new employer. Maybe in an entirely new field. Perhaps even one that’s full of younger, more digitally-aware employees. No worries, Horizon Hire is designed specifically to provide workers like you with the help you need to compete in any job market.
Once you have laid the groundwork for your resume, LinkedIn and the like as shown above, you’ll then want to start planning on where to target your hunt.
You’ve heard the cliche “It’s not what you know, but who you know?” When it comes to job hunting that’s certainly often true. So after assessing yourself, you next need to assess your connections. Open a spreadsheet and list out everyone in your known universe who can give you a recommendation, referral or of course a job. Do a deep dive here, listing:
Throw a wide net. When it comes to landing a job, everyone’s done it, everyone is fearful of losing theirs and everyone wants to help if for no other reason than they hope that what comes around goes around. So don’t be shy about listing names of people now who you may need to reach out to later with a specific ask; for now, though, contact them through social media or email just to touch base, say hello, see how they are during these turbulent times – then be sure to ask if there’s anything you can do for them. Most likely they’ll just say no but will be appreciative of the request. A pleasant social side-effect of the COVID-19 clampdown is that people are reaching out to one another, so your suddenly showing up in a former colleague’s inbox won’t strike them as odd.
Perhaps your next job is within your current company? If it’s large enough and successful enough that you think it’s going to do well enough to withstand the coming economic downturn, then you may want to consider surreptitiously job searching within it. One way to do that during normal times is to get noticed by attending afterwork functions, internal training sessions, corporate events and seminars. Sadly, a vast majority of those options are on hold now, but at the same time individual companies and industry-wide organizations are hosting online events that you should be sure to attend. When there, get yourself noticed by logging in using your real name, turn your camera on and ask questions. Don’t hesitate to brag about yourself, your skills and your accomplishments. Introduce yourself to as many colleagues and especially hiring-level managers as possible. At the very worst, you’ll be polishing your personal elevator pitch but maybe you’ll land on the radar of the executive who will rescue from your current job uncertainty.
Outside of your company, do the same. LinkedIn and Facebook are both great entry points, so join as many groups in your industry that you can. Once in the group, be sure to be active. Take a few minutes each day, if only to like or share or comment on other people’s work.
Once you have your assessment complete, your resume refreshed, your contacts contacted and your mindset geared for the work ahead, you’ll be ready to deploy your job search in an efficient and effective way. All of us at Horizon Hire are looking forward to being there to help you.
Your Turn
Recapping, we’ve showed you:
How to Invest in yourself by spending time to:
- Assess your skills, abilities and possibilities
- Revise your resume
- Create or Revise your LinkedIN profile
- Add a new skill
Why you should assess your finances
The need for mental and physical well-being.
And how to network prep, laying the groundwork for your job hunt.
We invite you to become a founding member of our new, online Horizon Hire community. It’s free to join, and by doing so you’ll be guaranteed to be the first to receive our latest trainings, advice and action steps that will help put you at the front of the line of job-seekers as the economy heals. Plus, you’ll get exclusive, free access to Horizon Hire resources normally reserved for paid subscription members, including detailed webinars and how-to-guides that will prepare you for job applications, employment interviews and salary negotiations.