Opportunity in Recent Unemployment Figures

CNNmoney published the latest unemployment numbers and they're up 44% from the same time last year. Leading the way with layoffs this past week were Merck, Yahoo, and Chrysler. The unemployment rate now stands at 6.1% nationally, and the economy appears to be headed into a recession that will last through 2009.

They're alarming numbers, and until year end we'll see the results of massive layoffs hit the economy in a big way, in a way not seen since the end of the tech bubble in terms of unemployment.

Of course, a recession doesn't mean that companies aren't hiring - far from it. In fact, even as companies lay workers off, they hire workers on some scale to fill key open positions. And there are always successful companies that grow during hard times (such as Google in the aftermath of the dot com bust). The key is to keep your eyes open, make sure you're open to new opportunities and take nothing for granted.

Read the article here.

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Changing Jobs in a Recession

With the stock markets down again this week, more bankruptcies, and layoffs happening across industries, a rewarding job that provides a steady source of income is your best friend. So why would someone even consider moving jobs in this economy? CIO Magazine investigated and came to the conclusion that conventional wisdom be damned, changing jobs during a downturn can actually be a good idea.

Their rationale? Companies tend to hire more for "critical" positions during a downturn, since every opening is scrutinized more carefully. Basically, the roles that are being filled are ones that offer the potential to both make a huge impact and advance your career.

Firms that are recruiting in a downturn are doing so because the roles they have to fill have a major importance to their organizations

They also point out that staying put during a recession can create a bad perception of you at your current company. Whether or not you agree with their take, it certainly makes compelling reading. Click here to read it.

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September Unemployment Rises

The latest employment figures are in, and they're discouraging to say the least. The US lost 159,000 jobs in September. This marks nine straight months of job losses for the American economy with a grand total of over 750,000 jobs lost in 2008. September job losses were double those of previous months, as they included jobs lost during the Wall Street meltdown that began two weeks ago.

“The economy is clearly going to get worse before it gets better, with or without the rescue plan,” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh. “The rescue plan prevents it from getting much worse, but it’s too late to prevent a recession.”

Even though things are grim, this isn't the 1930's and we aren't in another Great Depression. That being said, if you haven't given any thought to your career and what your plan B is should the worst happen to your job, this would be a good time to start passively managing (at the very least) your career. The recent bank collapses show how your job be can be lost due to circumstances completely outside your control, meaning it's always good to be on the lookout for promising opportunities.

Five Things Your Recruiter Won't Tell You

1. "You're one of 200 people I'm cold calling."

It might seem flattering to receive a cold call or email from a recruiter about a position they're trying to fill. However in order to get a few candidates into an interview pipeline the typical recruiter had to start by contacting 200 or more people with the right keywords on their bio. While it may seem you were one of a chosen few that had just the right background of what their client is looking for, you're actually one of hundreds that had the right keywords their recruiter searched for to start their interview funnel.

2. "You're being interviewed to make my other candidates look better."

If you've ever purchased a house you might have noticed that the house you wound up purchasing wasn't the first house your real estate agent showed you. It was probably the third or fourth. That was no accident. The first few houses you were shown were carefully staged in order for the house the agent thought you may like look that much better. Recruiters often use the same technique.

Hiring managers rarely have a detailed understanding of what their ideal interview candidate is and generally do not want to make an offer to the first person in the interview process. Recruiters know this and therefore insert into the interview process "calibration candidates". These are interview candidates that the recruiter doesn't believe are the best fit for the job, but will help make their chosen candidate look that much better when they are interviewed by their client.

3. "I get measured by how quickly I fill a job opening."

Larger companies often employ a staff of in-house recruiters, many as temporary contractors, to fill their open positions. The metric most often used to measure an in-house recruiter's performance is the average number of days to fill an open position. The quality of the people hired is not easily measured until long after the newly recruited individual is on the job. So the recruiter is motivated to bring in the lowest caliber interview candidates that are just above the bar for hiring over spending the much greater effort to find truly exceptional candidates.

4. "I'm using your confidential resume to market my firm to new companies."

Contingency recruiting firms market themselves to new corporate customers by showing them a select group of resumes of people they "represent". However they might not actually be representing them at all. The next time you agree to send your resume to a recruiting firm they might be turning it around and using it to market themselves to new clients. I initially learned of this technique after agreeing to give my resume to a recruiting firm and later discovering they were using it as a sales tool to prospective clients. In no way was this firm "representing me".

5. "Last month I was selling subprime mortgages."

Recruiters are sales people. They sell candidates to hiring managers and new companies/positions to candidates. While the top retained search firms employ highly skilled and experienced professionals, many contingency recruiters jumped into the field from some other sales domain - timeshares in Florida, brokering subprime mortages, .....

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Finding a Job in Finance

This morning, the government bailout plan failed to pass and the Dow was down 770 points, or as the New York Times succinctly put it: "BAILOUT FAILS; STOCKS PLUNGE." With the markets suffering their biggest one day loss in two decades, what effect will a declining stock market have on the job market?

From our perspective it's still too early to tell what, how the turmoil on Wall Street is going to filter down to the broader job market, but there's one sector of the job market that has unsurprisingly taken a hit: finance. MSNBC's Career section published an article today titled "Job Hunting on Wall Street. The article points out that while tens of thousands of Investment Bankers have been laid off, top professionals are still in demand:

Indeed, in the past 12 months Alpha Search’s Olman says, “seasoned investment professions have been in a higher demand than we’ve seen in a long, long time. It used to be the life of a trader was like a baseball player’s career. Now that 20-year veteran is in more demand than the rising young Turk.

The bottom line is that if you're working in the Finance industry, make sure you're keeping your options open and always on the lookout for opportunities.

Read the article here.

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Career Tips in a Recession

The New York Times published an interesting article the other day on keeping your career options open during a recession. While the US economy may or may not technically be in recession, it's not an exaggeration to say that the turmoil in the financial markets has spilled over into other sectors and is making people jittery about their job and financial prospects. The best thing you can do in a time like this is to keep all your options open and maneuver yourself in a position to receive multiple opportunities.

The bottom line is that should your job status come into jeopardy due to macroeconomic factors, you want to make sure you have options beforehand, not be scrambling to find a new job along with everyone else who's been affected by the same job cuts as you. This means filling out online profiles and putting yourself in a position to catch the eye of hiring managers; i.e. passively seeking a job.

You can read the article here.

Forbes Article on NotchUp

The September 29, 2008 issue of Forbes has a great article on NotchUp. You can read the online version here.