Several years ago, I had a brand-new client who told me he would only be considering opportunities in Atlanta or Florida. A few days later he bounded into my office to say he’d accepted a position in St. Louis. Huh?
Hopefully things worked out okay for him and his family despite the hasty decision.
☑ One bird or two? Sometimes a bird in the hand isn’t worth two in the bush. I’ve had several new clients tell me they knew they’d made a mistake before they even started their most recent position. Yet here they are, terminated less than a year after they began their ill-fated job.
Don’t panic. Don’t jump at the first thing that comes along.
Stick to your guns and find an opportunity that is a good match for you.
☑ Trade-offs? When you get right down to it, you probably will have to make some trade-offs. Your finances, the length and difficulty of your search, and other factors might indicate pragmatism over an ideal job.
Separate the things you “have to have” from things that would be “nice to have.” If all the essential elements are present, then it may be advisable to move forward.
☑ How much am I worth? One question that comes up for nearly every job seeker concerns #compensation. Although base #salary is what everyone seems to key in on, compensation entails a lot more than that.
One reliable site is www.salary.com. View this screen snip of the rich data you get about the comp and #benefits.
Basically, this shows you earn $7K per month in comp and $3K per month in benefits.
☑ It’s the benefits, baby. Oh my goodness, there’s never been a time when benefits from one company to another were so disparate. Healthcare costs might range from $40 to $400 every two weeks. And commuting expenses have never been higher, so #WFH saves boatloads of money.
– – – – – This is just a tiny excerpt from my book Market-Ready in Minimum Time™. BIG NEWS… I’ll be releasing an eBook version of MRMT™ in the next few weeks! So keep your eyes peeled. I’ll be announcing the eBook’s availability via email and LinkedIn (as well as Facebook).
Dave O’Farrell helps his clients shorten their search, earn more money, and get better results. He helps employers soften the blow when they have to let employees go by offering the very best outplacement service on the planet. Reach out to Dave through his LinkedIn page.
A recent article from IndustryWeek indicates that the U.S. added 390,000 jobs to the economy in May. And the pay rate for these new jobs is 5.2% higher than it was in May 2021.
What that pay increase statistic does not take into consideration however is how that increase compares to the rate of inflation. And according to the U.S. Inflation Rate Calculator, the inflation rate for the 12 months ending May of 2022 is 8.6%.
Number of long-term unemployed down.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of long-term unemployed accounted for 23.2 percent of all unemployed persons in May 2022. In March 2021, the long-term unemployed were 43.2 percent of total unemployment. Long-term unemployed is defined as those who are jobless for 27 weeks or more.
Leisure and hospitality are still going strong.
Not surprising, the leisure and hospitality industries—which are still rebounding from closures and high unemployment in 2020—provided a healthy percentage of the surge in new jobs in May 2022. According to the BLS, 84,000—or about 21% of the total jobs added—belonged to this industry.
Professional and business services gained 75,000 jobs in May. Within the industry, “job gains occurred in accounting and bookkeeping services (+16,000), computer systems design and related services (+13,000), and scientific research and development services (+6,000).” And get this: Employment in professional and business services is 821,000 higher than in February 2020.
Healthcare, manufacturing, and wholesale trade also continue to be strong industries in the job growth area, combining for 60,000 jobs added last month.
Teleworking actually continues to go down.
While it’s true that the number of companies that offer remote working and work from home is up from the period pre-pandemic, the actual number of teleworkers is down from 7.7% to 7.4%. Please note this number represents those who telework because of the coronavirus pandemic. That does not represent the number of companies who decided to shift their workforce, shrink their office real estate, and encourage work-from-home for other reasons.
What will June bring? With the recent economic news, what trends do you expect in terms of employment, new jobs, industry, and remote working?
Dave O’Farrell helps his clients shorten their search, earn more money, and get better results. He helps employers soften the blow when they have to let employees go by offering the very best outplacement service on the planet. Reach out to Dave through his LinkedIn page.
A recent Forbes article on workplace trends examined an increasingly recognized need for employers … staffing for resilience. Before the pandemic hit, the focus of organizations was to hire workers who create “efficient organizations.”
Think about the power of efficiency when the world is turned upside down, businesses are forced to close, and the masses are working from home. It’s hard to be efficient when, what you’re efficient at, has changed drastically or is no longer a reality.
As the Forbes article states…
“Ensuring a workforce is healthy enough to keep a business running is clearly a critical element of resilience, but it also covers the implementation of processes that are more flexible, with built-in redundancies to provide cover when disaster strikes, resulting in operational efficiency becoming compromised.”
This is why companies appear to be, according to uschamber.com, focusing on soft skills and knowing the right questions to ask while interviewing. These are just a couple ways they look to hire employees that are easily adaptable and open to change.
Now more than ever, job seekers need to be able to answer the “flexibility” questions in interviews.
Please describe how you led your team during COVID.
Tell us about a task or project that you took on in the past couple of years that was outside of your scope of work.
Give us an example of how you were especially creative in solving a problem that was unique to the pandemic.
Tell us about a time when you made a sacrifice to achieve an important goal during the lockdown.
Now tell us about a time when you were unwilling or unable to make the necessary sacrifice to achieve a goal. No business wants to become obsolete, nor do they want to hire staff that will help them get to that obsolescence more quickly.
How have you become more flexible, and more adaptable, in the last couple years? What have you done to make yourself more personally resilient?
How can you demonstrate your flexibility and resilience to prospective employers?
Dave O’Farrell helps his clients shorten their search, earn more money, and get better results. He helps employers soften the blow when they have to let employees go by offering the very best outplacement service on the planet. Reach out to Dave through his LinkedIn page.
