Planning Career in Job changing Market

Remember good old days. The streets were safe. Goods were cheap. Jobs were aplenty. You got promoted every few years. You had an income for life. But the world has changed. Neither your city nor your job is safe anymore. Hiring intentions are at a 12-year low in India as a Manpower Group Report. Businesses are evolving rapidly. Whatever you do now will transform in three years or your employer will get it done cheaper and faster either through technology or by a younger placement.

Dying Assets

Skills – Sticking to your current skill set is a sure shot way to becoming redundant. Are you an accountant who knows how to keep books? This single skill earlier could get you a job and keep you there for a lifetime? Just a few years back, this skill became useless if you could not use accounting software. Similarly, a single change called GST meant that your contribution to your employer dropped dramatically unless you were willing to learn new skills.

Knowledge – The knowledge that you held today and spent years in acquiring and polishing is worth far lesser if you take a single year sabbatical from continuous learning. With Internet penetration, knowledge is incredibly cheap and even the youngest patient and legal client questions and double checks the service he is getting versus the price he is paying. Similarly, companies are learning that it is noncompetitive to pay senior professionals more than their knowledge alone. A youngster with less than half the experience can acquire that knowledge at a substantially lower salary.

Labor – Work hard and you will succeed is terrible standalone advice in the current job market. For every job that requires human hours, someone somewhere is working on technology to reduce time required to do a task to make you either more productive or redundant. From manufacturing to services to knowledge work, your labor hours are being replaced by technology solutions that help your company reduce costs and increase productivity.

Technology – Massive changes in the technology that you used 2-3 years back forced you to head back to the classroom to upgrade or become irrelevant. Relying on your comfort with current technology in your job is the fastest route to losing your job to the next savvy professional who comes along. Artificial Intelligence in language/data, robotics/3D printing, Internet of Things in goods/manufacturing/labor and Internet/computing in knowledge/education are rapidly evolving technology spaces where your comfort levels in using them needs to keep pace to stay professionally relevant.

Growth Assets

Sales – The Primary difference between being merely skilled being successful lies in how you work with others. To achieve this, you require the ability to communicate and sell your ideas to others. Work on your negotiation skills to master the art of reaching agreement on common goals and process.

Learning – Stay curious and stay hungry. If your current skills and knowledge are redundant, the only thing that you will ever require is the ability to learn. This is an acquired skill. The first step is to be intensely curious. Observe children who have the steepest learning curves simply because they are constantly curious about the world around them. No learning will ever go waste and no employer will ever let go of someone who can connect the dots across business and solve problems.

Creating – You will do well to set aside at least two hours every weekend to just pause and think. Ask yourself what happened in the previous week or month, what new knowledge you acquired and how you can improve your plan for the future.

How to Survive

Be Paranoid – What could go wrong in your job? How will you find your next source of income?

Double Up – Get a second career, work a second shift, sell to a second client or acquire a second skill.

Stay fit – Investing in achieving high fitness levels increases ability and time required for learning and growth.

Stay Sharp – To stay alive and kicking in your career, keep your mind ticking by constantly challenging and feeding it.

Grow People – The way to attract and lead people is to teach them, help them solve problems and unlock their potential.