photo credit: michelhrv

As much as we might like to look for a silver lining, sometimes we get stuck in jobs that, let’s face it, we hate. But in the face of certain circumstances like oh, I don’t know, a down economy and a tough job market, we may feel we must persevere. But how?

Luckily, CAREEREALISM has your back. In a feature called 6 Strategies for Surviving in a Job You HATE, they call attention to some techniques to help you muddle through somehow. Some of their advice is:

• Time For One’s Self: [...]  It is vital to set some time aside each day, particularly before heading into work.

[...]

• Decompression: Failing to “blow off steam” and letting frustrations build up can be dangerous not only to yourself but to others as well.

[...]

• Keep On Keepin’ On: Anything worth doing at all is worth doing well – even if it’s something you hate. Not only will this give you a sense of accomplishment and pride in yourself, it can also help you down the road should you need a reference.

Been there? Got advice? Sound off in the comments.

photo credit: sunsets_for_you

Last night, my wife and I received our first baby blanket for our daughter who arrives in January. It immediately got me thinking about an old, colorful blanket I had as a child. It had a picture of Snoopy on it, and while I did not need it to fall asleep every night, it was a must-have for Saturday morning cartoons or story time in the middle of the afternoon.

Whether it’s a pacifier, a stuffed animal, or a blanket, kids have security devices that help normalize their rapidly changing worlds. Adults have networks, expensive items they own, or careers. Or not.

In a conversation I had this week with a freelancer, he told me that he believes he’s more secure on his own than he is with a salaried corporate gig. I see his point – he’s at the mercy of his own skills and his ability to find new business rather than depend on someone or something else to make sure he still has enough work to do.

Then, I read this beauty by the very talented Carlos Miceli. He reminds us:

Job security may be the worst goal you can set for yourself.

The concept is outdated. If it ever existed, it was way too long ago.

Too much randomness rules our lives to aim for any kind of perpetuity.

He’s got a point. But so do those people who find a job they love working for someone else, reaping the best possible scenario of security or stability.

So the issue isn’t whether you should start a company or go work for one. The issue is what makes you feel most secure. Is it a salaried job somewhere you can climb the ladder? Is it hanging out your own shingle? Is it in teaching others how to make that decision?

Where do you feel most safe and sound when it comes to work?

The big news on the career/tech front this week was that Brazen Careerist transformed itself in “an all-out social network focused on flipping the conventional wisdom surrounding the resume by focusing on “idea feeds.””

While Brazen Careerist has been a great place for Gen Y bloggers to find one another, its renewed focus this week could change the game for employers and employees alike.

The main frustration I hear with recent graduates is that no one will hire them because they don’t have any experience. And they can’t get any experience unless someone hires them. This is the awful Twilight Zone paradox of trying to land a job in our world. After all, how can you really demonstrate that you will do a good job, even if you just haven’t had the chance to do a good job yet?

I hope that Brazen can change the career game by showcasing the great ideas of its community members. Then, I hope this trend will catch on and allow all of us to showcase our great ideas when looking for work. And ultimately, I hope that companies and organizations the world over will begin to find ways to measure the potential of new employees, and not just the past.

Tell us: when looking for work, how do you draw attention to your ideas?

photo credit: tm_lv

My dad worked 38 years with the same employer. I know there were times he thought about going elsewhere, but since he didn’t have a college degree, he always felt limited by what he thought wouldn’t be available to him.

I, on the other hand, have held a lot of jobs, and most of them were for less than a full year. Some were even 6 months or less. (A few have even been 3 or 4 weeks, but those were generally contracts or really bad fits.) In the earlier years of my professional life, my dad regarded my “job-hopping” with some anxiety and counseled me to stick it out longer with each employer. After a while, though, he began to recognize that I was doing good work and not leaving my employers in a lurch,  that I had a different role in most of these companies than the one he had with his, and that I was more comfortable with change than most people seem to be.

I bring this up to ask this question: do you know what your role is at your workplace? Are you a long-term fit, or are you there to fulfill a more short-term mission?

It’s an important question to ask yourself occasionally, as it may change from time to time. Company cultures do evolve as their leadership and the markets they serve evolve. Subtle changes in management two or three levels up can have ripple effects on your surroundings. And what might have started out seeming like a perfect long-term fit can, over time, become ill-suited to your goals and ideals.

In much of the marketplace, moving from job to job after a year or more is rarely considered suspect anymore. Under a year in each job, though, and you’re at risk of being labeled a “job-hopper.” If you don’t think that’s a weird bias for corporate America to have, ask yourself this: do we have even a quasi-derogative term in corporate parlance for someone who stays in an ill-fitting work environment far longer than they should? Why not?

It’s certainly true that hiring employees can be an expensive process, and training them even more costly. Some estimates put the cost at 1.5x to 3x the cost of the employee’s salary. So when employees leave after only a short tenure, it can adversely affect a company’s bottom line. But employees who make themselves too comfortable after years of service, consider themselves too senior to downsize, and become locked into an outdated view of “the way things are done” come with a cost as well. (It’s a cost that’s more difficult to quantify, and more difficult to find studies about, but the discussion is out there.)

Recently, I’ve had a series of phone interviews as a job candidate. I hadn’t been pursuing a new job (I’d already started a company of my own doing web marketing strategy and services) but I was gladly entertaining the conversations because it’s a company I really respect and, truly, you just never know. But I was struck by the fact that every interviewer asked me about why I had a history of “job hopping.”

As I explained to the folks I was interviewing with, my role in most of my previous jobs was, whether explicitly or implicitly, that of a change agent. And a change agent, by nature, doesn’t generally hold a long-term role inside a company. And in most cases, by the time I left each company, even after some of the shortest tenures, I felt that I had achieved what I was there to do. (By the way, as a side interviewing tip: the tie-in with the job I was interviewing for was that it was a consultant position, and my frequent role as change agent makes pretty good sense in that context. I wasn’t lying or rationalizing at all, but having a way to align your story with the story of the job you’re interviewing for really helps overcome anti-job-hopper biases.)

Could I have articulated at the outset of each of those jobs what I was there to do? Probably not. But that doesn’t change the fact that those companies and I each met at times when we needed each other. And I have, as a result, developed a skill for sizing up a company’s situation and helping it improve.

We each have a purpose in our professional lives, and our roles at work should reflect that, even if it becomes inconvenient to explain to future employers. As Penelope Trunk pointed out when she wrote about job hopping a few years ago:

A resume is not a laundry list of job and duties. It’s a document about a story. Your resume needs to show the story of a person who contributes in large ways wherever you go.

No one chooses at the outset to take on a role as a mindless cog in a machine, yet some of the compromises we are asked to make in the name of seniority require selectively ignoring parts of our life goals or ideals. We all owe it to ourselves to perform periodic checks of how well our roles suit us, and answer ourselves honestly.

What are your thoughts on knowing your role within your company? Thoughts on job-hopping or on seniority? Leave them in the comments.

In the interest of fairness, Fog Creek’s compensation policy is open, public, simple, and accountable. Many companies try to obfuscate the rules they use for determining compensation in hopes that they won’t get caught paying some people too much and others too little. Some companies actually consider it a firing offense to reveal your salary!

We feel that in the long run, this can only hurt us through negative morale, high turnover, and destructive office politics. Therefore, the policy in this document is publicly available. People have a right to know what the levels are and what they mean. Everybody has a right to know what their colleagues’ levels are.

It made me wonder what the Corporate Idealist crowd has to say about that approach. Your thoughts? Please share in the comments.

photo credit: Witt Istanbul Suites

Raise your hand if you’ve been affected by layoffs – meaning you either had to accept one or dole them out – due to the downturn in the economy. Yeah. We thought so.

Now raise your hand if you think more layoffs are in store.

That’s likely the truth, and another likely truth is that a good many companies are probably hurting themselves and their customers by approaching layoffs poorly. Yes, layoffs stink. No one wants to get one; no one wants to give them.

That said, when they’re handled with care and caution, layoffs can definitely help a company survive the downturn. Jimmy Guterman, writing over at HarvardBusiness.org, lays out some thoughtful advice about reducing the pain of ill-considered cuts:

Thinking strategically about both groups and treating them respectfully ensures that the virtuous circle — the vital link between engaged employees and satisfied customers — remains unbroken. And it positions your company for greater success when the economy turns around.

Layoffs are going to happen. It’s a non-idealist situation, that’s for sure, but if you’re the one doing the laying off, there are idealist ways to handle the situation. You can approach the decision of which employees to let go from a customer experience standpoint, as well as from the perspective of the remaining employees.

(Of course, if you’re the one being laid off, there’s not a lot you can do to control the outcome of the immediate situation and you have our sympathies. We sincerely wish everyone the best of luck in finding even more meaningful work the next time around.)

Lastly, and this can’t be said enough, although layoffs are depressing and in some cases inevitable, that doesn’t mean they can’t be approached with respect and a forward-looking attitude:

For those who must go, the best procedure is to “lay off people as if they were future customers,” he says. “When you let someone go, try to put together a safety net, do the best you can do, provide relocation support. Treat these people as potential future customers and potential future employees — as if they will one day be in a position to send business to your company.”

The whole article is a great read.

[via HarvardBusiness.org]