task is handled by someone whose expertise is in another area, and hiring is only one of several hats they wear.
You will often be applying to companies on speculation that they may need your skills rather than responding to a specific ad you saw in a newspaper or on the Internet. Under these circumstances, the applications that will get attention are those that are very focused, where the applicant has done some research on the company and his or her résumé is effectively designed to highlight personal strengths and how those can benefit the company.
Communication skills are far more important than they used to be, especially when looking for work. The workplace is a more fast-paced and busy environment than it used to be, and it is more difficult to get an employer’s attention. The focus of the communication must be clearly on what you can do for them and not the other way around, and it must be specific and geared to their needs and not be a general description of your past career.
If you are soliciting companies for contract work, maybe you should replace your résumé with a simple brochure, or one of the electronic marketing tools described in Chapter 3 of this book that, again, have as the main focus your strengths and how they can benefit the company.
Managing your own career
Here is another requirement for succeeding in today’s workplace to which people don’t pay enough attention. You need to be far more cognizant about who you are, what you’re good at, and what type of people and companies you want to work with. If you’re currently working on a contract, you should have a plan of action for finding your next contract. It’s always a juggling act for today’s contract worker.
Unless you’re one of the lucky ones who still has a stable job and works for a company that provides some help in mapping out a career strategy, you’ll have to take ownership of this issue yourself. Even if you’re in a stable job, you should have some kind of plan in place in case you lose it.
You are responsible for managing your own career, and the only security you have is tied directly to how marketable your skills are, how creative you are in finding work, how well you communicate, and how good you are at recognizing opportunities where you can apply your skills.
The first step in managing your own career is to be very clear on what skills you have to sell to potential employers. Most people are weak in this area. Chapter 2 will eliminate that weakness by getting you to go through a series of exercises to determine exactly what it is you have to sell to potential employers. This will set the stage for Chapter 3, which focuses on how to market yourself. You can’t sell yourself effectively unless you’re crystal clear on what you have to sell. The better the job you do in Chapter 2, the more comfortable you will be with marketing yourself.
Summary
The objective of this chapter was to make you aware of the changes that have occurred in the workplace. You won’t be successful in finding work unless you understand these changes and their impact on you. Most people don’t understand them and there are consequences if they lose their job, they feel lost, or if they decide to become a contract worker, and they don’t know how to go about it.
To be successful, you need to understand the workplace and the changes going on in it at a level far beyond that of the average person. If you don’t understand it, you’ll make the same mistakes that most people make; i.e., using an obsolete approach and set of tools to find work, and you’ll also be caught off guard when the changes occur. Here’s a recap of what has been covered:
• You need to understand the difference between looking for work and applying for a job. There’s a lot of work available today; it’s just not packaged in the form of a job, as most people understand the term.
• You need to understand that some of the tangible and non-tangible features that were part of a traditional job are often not included in contract work.
• You must understand that most of the work opportunities that exist today are found in small companies, and if you’ve spent your career in a large company, you’ll have to change your perception as to your role in the small company and what is expected of you.
• Since most of the work opportunities that exist today are hidden, you need to know how to find them.
• You need to know how employers make their hiring decisions and what they are looking for in contract workers.
• You must understand that your success in today’s workplace is tied directly to how effective you are at self-promotion and what self-promotion means in the context of looking for work.
A Note About The Quizzes
There are three quizzes in the book. The point of the quizzes is for you to test, on your own, your knowledge of the material you’ve read in the section preceding the quiz. To determine what you’ve learned, you must answer the questions in a comprehensive way rather than with short answers. If the question asks for a true or false answer, for example, the question is not merely whether you think the statement is true or false. Ask yourself why you feel it is true or false, and list all of the reasons you can think of to support your answer.
In the Appendix and on the CD included with this book are answers to the questions so you can compare your responses. Do not be tempted to look at the answers before you have answered the questions as completely as you can. You’ll only be short-changing yourself if you do. If you’re not sure about the answer, take a stab at it anyway. You’re trying to determine what you know and don’t know.
If all of your answers are wrong, as unlikely as that may be, that’s not a bad thing. You will find out what you don’t know and the areas you have to brush up on. That will make your search for work far more effective and increase your chances of making a good impression in an interview.
Quiz 1: The Workplace
1. Name some medium-to-large organizations that potentially could use your skill set and explain why you chose them.
2. Name some small (less than ten employees) organizations that you would like to work with and explain why you chose them.
3. Name some projects that are either underway or will soon be started that might provide employment opportunities for you.
4. Your chances of finding work will be directly related to the number of want ads you respond to, the number of recruiting agencies you register with, and the number of résumés or CVs you send out. True or false?
5. Name the three most active sectors in the economies of the cities or regions in which you want to work.
6. What are the key trends in the sectors in which you want to work?
7. Name some influential people in the sectors in which you want to work.
8. Where do the “players” in the sector you want to work in hang out? What associations do they belong to? What networking events are they likely to attend? Identify the trade shows and conferences coming up in the next six months that they are likely to attend.
9. What are the best media sources for keeping you abreast of new developments in the workplace and in particular the areas you’re interested in?
10. Name some websites that will keep you informed
