Sunday, February 15, 2009

When your brass ring turns green: Part 2 – Denial is not a river…

Rumors of cuts are flying – what should you do?

If conversations at the coffee pot or in the restroom are about rumored head-count reductions, chances are that one is coming - at some point - but that is all you should count on. The office grapevine can be a valuable source of information – if it is used appropriately. Consider rumor of head-counts as an early warning alert but don’t treat it as gospel, and don’t stick your head in the sand because you don’t want to think it could happen to you. Truth is – every single employee is at risk. Think you are safe because you have a folder full of glowing performance evaluations? Displacement is going to hit you harder from an emotional standpoint than the person with a less sparkling performance history. Don’t become a victim of denial.

What you should do is:
1. Follow the advice your mother gave you as a child: keep your ears open and your mouth shut. Listen to the information and try to separate the fact from the fiction.

2. Do some introspective thinking. Now is the time to think about your career. Are you really happy working for this company? It seems like a no-brainer. You work there, ergo, you want to. Not necessarily. You may just be in a rut. Same goes for your job. Is this what you want to be doing?

3. Start a skills inventory. The goal is to understand what you like to do, what you are good at doing, and what you might want to learn how to do. There are books you can borrow from your local library, or purchase at the bookstore, that can help you work through the process. If you can afford it, there are life and career coaches who you can hire to guide you in developing an inventory and administering standardized tests to identify your interests and personality type.

4. Get that professional certification, degree, or continuing education courses that you have been putting off. This is especially true if your employer has an education reimbursement program. You want your skills to be as up to date as possible before the company starts doing its internal skills assessments in anticipation of restructuring or downsizing. Even though you may not be able to finish a degree before the downsizing begins, the fact that you are enrolled may be a mark in your favor or give you a leg up on the competition.

5. Start looking at your family finances. Get a realistic picture of what you have coming in and going out each month. Don’t forget to include things that occur once a year like taxes or membership dues. If you can start eliminating the non-essentials from your budget, setting aside a cushion and/or paying off outstanding debt before you are faced with a loss of income it will minimize the stress of losing your job.

6. Build or strengthen your professional network. If you are not on a networking site like LinkedIn.com, join one and begin to build your network by inviting your co-workers, former classmates, friends, and acquaintances. Join on-line groups for your profession as well as any face-to-face professional associations.

7. Update your resume. If you can afford it, hire a professional to help you re-vamp your resume. If you can’t afford it, talk to people in your network about giving you advice.

8. Check the job boards on-line. While a small percentage of positions are actually found in this manner, it doesn’t hurt to look even though you may be only passively searching for work at this stage. Get a feel for what is out there and who the companies are in your area with openings. This will also help with item 4. By looking at job openings, you will also get a feel for how your qualifications stack up.

9. Define what the perfect job and working environment for you would be. Write down everything no matter how silly or unrealistic. Set it aside for a day or two, or three, then come back and take another look. Refine this list into the “must-have” and “nice to have” criteria. Then start researching companies to find those that match or come close to the criteria and offer the types of work you are interested in.

10. Continue to do your job to the best of your ability.

Stay tuned – next time I’ll talk about what to do when you know you are out of a job.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

When your brass ring turns green: Tips and thoughts on being downsized.

Part 1 – Introduction

This is part 1 in a series of blogs on dealing with displacement. While I can’t lay claim to having the answers or even any degrees or formal training in life coaching, career counseling, or the like, what I do have is experience in the trenches. With the economic situation what it is, we all need to share our tricks and tips for getting through the rough times.

In my hometown there was one employer that everyone aspired to work for. Rumor had it a job with this company was a job for life even into the 1990’s when corporate downsizing was starting to become a normal tool for reducing operation expenses. I landed a job with this company as a fluke in the late 90s and I truly thought I had died and gone to corporate heaven. In my opinion, I had snagged the brass ring and was going to stick with the company until it was time to retire thirty-something years down the road.

Like most things that seem too good to be true, it was.

At the start of last summer, the department I worked in was eliminated and I found myself one of the displaced. Or as I preferred to think of it – I got voted off the island in a game of Survivor: Corporate Edition. There was a difficult six month transition where I still worked for the company (I called it being on Exile Island looking for that hidden immunity idol) but in reality I felt a bit like a plague carrier. People avoided talking to you for fear that displacement was a disease that could be caught from being in the same breathing space. Where before I was always busy, now I was begging for work to do and searching for a new position both internally and externally. Watching this last bastion of the old way of corporate life erode has been painful; in particular because the company truly was unique in its culture and in part because I truly believed in the ability of the company to overcome the challenges it faced.

I have been gone from the company for approximately five months now and sadly, still unemployed. Or, as my husband likes to say, gainfully un-employed since there was a nice severance package that included benefits.

Like many companies that have gone down this road, my former employer is continuing to cut its head-count and re-organize so I hear from friends still at, or recently displaced from, the company on a regular basis. Some are hoping that the economic situation isn’t as grim as the news media is painting it and that I will tell them of the largesse of job offers I am fielding. Some are looking for reassurance that there is a life after leaving the company. Some want a shoulder to cry on or an ally to commiserate with as they bemoan the unfairness of the situation.

Truth?
* The economic situation stinks and the job market is not good. I have gotten more rejection letters or e-mails than I care to dwell on.
* Yes, there is life outside of the company and frankly, it is pretty darn nice to take a break from clutching onto that corporate ladder to really consider what is or is not important in life.
* I am more than willing to listen and offer encouragement to those who are going through this.

What I will not do is engage in negative criticism of the company’s treatment of me. It does nothing and frankly – compared with some of the other stories of downsizing out on the street – I and every other employee displaced have received more consideration than the majority of companies offer these days. So this blog article is not about the evils of corporate downsizing or a swipe at my former employer. What it is intended to do is share some things I have learned and some coping techniques.

If you are interested – stay tuned. Next time I'll write about what to do when rumors are flying.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Why is reading a “romance” considered a negative by some?

I took a break from reviewing and writing the other day to read a WWII thriller that a friend recommended. “It’s not a romance like ‘that stuff’ you’ve been reading lately,” she said, handing the book to me. (Yes, there was more than a hint of snootiness in her tone on the words “that stuff.”) Truth be known, I will read just about anything and were one to try to categorize my personality by the books that grace my shelves, one would conclude I am either extremely well rounded or suffering from some degree of multiple personality disorder. (Oh, and toss in some OCD since I tend to like them organized alphabetically by author’s last name.) But I digress.

Becoming engrossed in the novel, I discovered that the underlying story was, in fact, a very sweet but tragic love story; a love story about a romance that could never end in a happily ever after with a fairly graphic – as in bordering on erotic – scene between the lovers before they went their separate ways. It was a very good story and I enjoyed reading it. When I returned the book my friend made a remark to the effect that if I was ready for some more serious reading, she had other books by this author.

I would not have classified this book as “serious reading” though. In terms of the caliber of the dialogue, depth of character development, craft of scene setting as well as action – it wasn’t any better than 85% of the romance novels I have read. Frankly, I have seen historical romances that were better researched and much more skillful in incorporating the language and flavor of the time period. So, why is it that this sort of story is deemed more “acceptable” reading or perceived as more “serious” for some than a romance?

My friend is by no means the only person in my circle of friends and family who is surprised, or even amused, by my love of a good romance novel and my having written one. I find this rather perplexing. Never mind that a significant percentage of book sales are of romance titles and the genre has exploded into a number of sub-genres since the 1980s. The romance genre includes authors considered part of the “classics” such as Jane Austen as well as virtual unknowns like – er, me. There literally is a sub-genre for everyone within this broad category. There are quite a few romance novelists who could be considered “cross-over” writers into a variety of other genres like J.R. Ward, whose Black Dagger Brotherhoodcan be found in some bookstores in the both the romance and sci-fi/fantasy aisle, or Christine Feehan’s Ghostwalkers series, which I have seen in the fiction/literature section as well as romance.

Reading, for me, is less about the story’s classification into a genre or style – it is about the sensorial experience. Granted, one has to rely on one’s imagination to conjure the sight, feel, scent, sound and taste of the settings, people, and action but isn’t that the beauty of imagination?
I wonder if people like my friend would be so quick to dismiss a romance, if they put aside their preconceived notions to actually read one. Maybe next time she asks me for a recommendation I will hand her J. R. Ward’s first novel and tell her it is something I picked up in the sci-fi/fantasy section.