Michael's Career Corner  

In  1985 I graduated from Rutgers University, and thought I was going to set Wall St. on fire. Much to my surprise I landed a clerks position at a brokerage firm. Not the position from which you rule the financial markets as the next titan of industry. What I didn’t realize was this was the beginning of a journey. For the next few years I let the boat I called my career float with the current.
In 1996 I was laid off for the first time in my working career. The first time in 21 years (I include my paper route when I was 12 years old) I was terminated from a job.
At that time I lived in the old paradigm of job searching. You write a bunch of cover letters and resumes and mail them blindly to companies in your industry. I bought a book called the US Job bank, which contained names of executive officers and corporate addresses. My goal was to type and send out 50 resumes a day.
The shotgun approach was all I knew. No one every told me about networking, planning or cultivating a job search. No one every explained to me that a career, not a job, is a journey.
I got lucky; a vendor I knew from my previous job contacted me and clued me in about a company that was hiring human resource professionals. I was out of work only 3 months.
Over the next decade I was laid off four times. The longest I was out of work was 18 months. You may be thinking, gee this guy can’t hold a job. Well the circumstances varied from down turns in a particular market place, reorganization and bankruptcy. The point being I have experience on both sides of the equation. As a Human Resources professional, I’ve had the dismal duty to release employees, and I myself (as I’ve stated) have been released as well.
What I learned the hard way was that I never really was out of work. I was working all the time. Either I was contracting in my profession or working a temporary job to supplement cash flow. But I never really was out of work. I was constantly marketing my product and services; me!
We must realize that we never stop managing our career. If you are in a relationship you don’t stop working at being a good partner, unless you want to find yourself alone. If you are a parent, you don’t stop raising your children, unless you want the authorities knocking at your door.
Once you wrap your head around the fact career management is a continuous journey, then you must move on to the how, what when and where of your adventure.