preparing for change

In Much of Life, Safety Isn’t Safe (VIDEO)

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWaHtTOw4ps[/svp]
Jeff speaks about the problems of playing it safe, offers two suggestions and closes with a quote from Confucius.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is an executive job search and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I on function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn http://bit.ly/thebiggamehunter

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Change is Coming | No BS Job Search Advice Radio

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter encourages you to anticipate change and get support now.

 

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This is going to be a quirky podcasts for me and an important one for you.  Most of the time, I talked about how you can tactically deal with job hunting – – I help you with resumes, I talked with you about how to handle interview questions and negotiate salary, a whole host of things related to job. On this show, I want to go “bigger picture.”

The bigger picture is that, when you find a job now, most of you make the mistake of thinking it’s all over. I’ve got my job. Yippee! I’m done.

What you need is someone to work with you over the course of your career who is someone you can bounce ideas off of.  Someone who can give you advice about how to handle professional situations.

You know.  A coach.  You may think you have that person place, but you really don’t.  That’s because you never call upon them.  You never reach out to them for advice.  That’s what I want to talk with you candidly right now.

If you think your professional circumstances are safe now, you are mistaken.  Change is clearly a part of our life landscape. Let me give you perspective for my career.

I started off in recruiting in 1972.  At that time, you deliver the resume by US mail. Then, he progressed to the messenger delivering resumes in your local city.  He used the messenger service.  Then you hired your own messenger. Then, this great thing happened – – the fax machine.  The fax machine is limiting the job of the messenger, just like the messenger cost jobs at the post office.  Now, obviously, we use email.

Now, we do recruiting, not by waiting for resumes to arrive in our inbox through the mail, not by waiting for fax, waiting for it to be emailed.  Now, we are finding people aggressively online using a variety of different tools where we can research people online and find them.

When push comes to shove, in that simple illustration, I probably talked about 9 or 10 different changes, all of which cost jobs.  In doing the research, you are impacting jobs at job boards.  When job boards came around, did anyone use a fax machine anymore? No.  It’s built into the software or PCs and we never use it anyway

the point I’m trying to make is that, in your career, you’re going to need to anticipate the changes in your career.  You will need to be proactive in order to position yourself in a way that allows you to stand out from others.  This isn’t simply about branding because branding is only one aspect of it.  You have to anticipate that the firm you are working for. Could go out of business tomorrow. With the change.

Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, “That can’t happen to me.  I work for Megalopolysis, the biggest and most important firm in the field.” 

Didn’t the recession teach you anything about safety, at firms?  Lord knows, there were millions and millions of people throughout the world who thought their jobs were safe and their careers were well positioned because they work for good firms.  These people all went up out on their butts.  People at Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns before that… We can go through all sorts of firms where people did great work and, through no fault of theirs. The sand shifted under their feet and they wound up being out of a job.  Painfully out of a job.

My encouragement for you is to get someone to sit and talk with.

I’m available and, yes, I do charge for the service but we can do it through LivePerson.com we are a 10 minute session may cost you less than $50.  We can get a quote acquainted and set up something quarterly where we talk.  You need someone to bounce ideas off of you has the experience that I have, is a subject matter expert around job search, who does career coaching for many many years. I want to help you.

You need a trusted advisor to work with to ensure that you don’t wind up losing going forward.  Reach out to me through LivePerson.com where I am a job search and career coaching expert. I’ll be happy to answer your questions. Happy to set up a schedule where we can work together for many years so that you are well-positioned going forward in your career and you don’t get caught short.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

The Change It Had To Come – Job Search Radio

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I learned something a long time ago– you can swim with the flow of the river or swim against it. If you decide to swim against it, the likelihood is that you will drown.

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I want to talk to you older workers for a second about something that I know you know on one level is happening but on other levels you deny how it’s going to affect you and it winds up costing you your career. That is the notion of change. Let me use my career as an example.

When I started recruiting in the 1970s, the hot technology was COBOL. Ultimately, what happens is that things changed “in different technologies became the “hot technology.” Those technologies changed and new things replace them. This is an about the hot technology and what is hot in the market; it is about the need to adapt.

I remember when COBOL was becoming passé and people were starting to use minicomputers, programming languages are completely irrelevant now. They were recruiters who were saying, “there are no COBOL jobs and I have these great COBOL people,” and they didn’t adapt.

If you look at your field, the one that you’re working in now, and the changes that you’ve seen over your proof career or long career, you’ll see that things have changed.

You can argue with them and say to yourself, “I don’t want to have to learn this stuff,” and concede the fact that your career will come to an end because there are people who will want to learn that stuff, who do want to become involved with those things that are new, and desirable. It’s not like you’re going to be the best and that new thing, but you need to get some experience with whatever that thing is that is the new thing in your field.

You need to keep attending conferences. You need to keep paying attention. Reading trade publications, understanding what the change is how to adapt with it, and making the change, as well.

For you, unless you do this, let’s skip ahead a few years. There will be some version of recession. When firms start evaluating who to cut, unless you have adapted, you are an expensive item to. That’s true especially knowing the old stuff.

You always have to learn “new.” You always have to adapt, or else, otherwise, I’m going to start calling you “Dino,” for the dinosaur – – a legacy in your division. An old timer. The person who they tell stories about or jokes about at the office as the person who missed the opportunity to be on the cutting edge. Who missed out and made the decision that cost them their career.

There are so many instances I have seen of people who made this mistake, who hang on for dear life. The truth is if you learn the new stuff,, even if they do cut you (after all, there’s no guarantee that they won’t), you can find another position or contract work during the down times because you know the new stuff and you have experience with the new stuff.

Stay up-to-date with your field. Make sure your current and, if there are so many things that make it hard, to the best! Just don’t get stuck in the mindset that says, “Something else.Ugh,” and started to whine about it. No one likes a whiner, no matter what the subject is. Don’t become the office complainer.

Adapt. Spearhead the change. Encourage other people to adapt as well. You will wind up being a survivor.

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On this show, I offer career advice, rather than pure job search advice is designed to help you have a long and prosperous career

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