Transfer Your Skills

Quite some time ago I suggested that some of you might want to redirect your careers. It is becoming more and more obvious that the market for traditional computer programmers, financial analysts, research chemists, manufacturing plant managers, banking managers, etc. might never return to where it once was. Does this mean you are out of luck and destined to working minimum wage jobs? I don't think so!

Take some time to look around you paying special attention to jobs that might be able to take advantage of some of your skills. Chat with people in fields that interest you to learn about their backgrounds and those of their colleagues. Find a career coach to sound you out and see if they could help identify some new paths. Wander around your local area and dig deep online. Find something that interests you and figure out how to transfer your own personal skills inventory into that field!

Simple Logic

Simple logic says that if someone is unemployed, and has been for an extended time, that the prospects of a contract opportunity, no matter what the pay rate, would be worth considering. This past week has given me the chance to have this conversation repeatedly and the results have underwhelmed me. Of course, a few realistic folks have jumped at the chance to be considered but more than half have declined because they are insisting on making the same salary they were laid off at perhaps 3 years ago. Wouldn't we all wish the world had not changed? Sadly, that is not reality and it is time to get real about prospects for the near future.

A potential candidate called me yesterday about a posting I had placed which gave a range of $25-37 hour for a supply chain professional from the manufacturing sector. She was a displaced CPA from the financial world who had some related experience going back over 10 years ago. The first thing she told me was she expected to earn over $100 an hour for the posted job and my rate must have been incorrect! After explaining the current facts of life and ascertaining she had been out of work for well over a year, it became apparent she was inflexible and the conversation stopped.

There is not a professional recruiter out there who likes paying people less than market value but the truth is that there is no market value right now. Whatever the employer feels they could afford has become today's market value.