THE JOB CYCLE
How does this job thing work, anyway? Once you've decided that you're
underpaid, overworked, or just plain fed up, what next?
DISSATISFACTION
It starts with your current environment. You're not being paid
enough. You aren't getting the training you want. Your skills are not as
sharp as you'd like them to be. Your company just cut benefits back to
the bone. Your co-worker just got a huge raise - by jumping ship to
another company. Moreover, the person they just brought in as a
replacement is making a whole lot more than you are. Your boss promised
you a variety of duties that are not materializing. Newer staff are
getting the plum assignments. You've gone out to salary survey sites and
don't even recognize the technologies that are being rated. Your skills
are good, but you keep being passed over for promotions. The work was
challenging when you first started, but now you've completely mastered
the environment and your job is boring and routine. If any of these
things have happened, that's OK. They've happened before and will happen
again. If it's time to move on, accept that and know that you will do
what you must. It benefits no one to force a bad situation.
DECIDING (NEW) JOB DIRECTION
If you wish to be elsewhere, then have a rough idea of what it is you
are looking for. "Something different" is probably not enough. Do you
want to be at a company that offers greater stability? More money?
Better benefits? More training? Can climb the corporate ladder? Make
sure that you have a clear idea of the kind of boss you can't stand, and
the kind of group that you do want to work with. Personalities are
important. It is also important to start looking long before you think
you will need to. It takes a considerable amount of time to land that
"right" opportunity, when you take into account the lead time to
update/rewrite the resume, get it distributed, interview, negotiate
salary, etc. You never have better leverage than when you don't need the
job. So you should try to avoid waiting until you are downsized, fired,
laid off, etc. to look for that new opportunity. If you smell something
on the horizon, even the faintest of rumors, it never hurts to post your
resume to job sites (discreetly) and start looking in a low-key manner.
If the rumors do not turn out to be true, you can simply deactivate or
delete your resume from their systems. However, getting a head start of
even a month on your competition can make all the difference in an
environment of heavy downsizing. Have your mind made up, and be serious
that you are looking for better employment.
DEFINING SKILL SET (RESUME, KEYWORDS)
First, you assemble your resume. If you don't already have one, you
go through the steps outlined in the
Resume Help section. You can use the template included to organize
your information. Next, you need to assemble a keywords list. This is a
whole lot easier than the resume. You just go through the resume, and
find the most important skills. For instance, if you were looking for
work as a project manager, you would want to put the words, "project,
manage, organize, supervis, work, break, down, struct, estim, cost",
etc. Notice that some of the words are truncated. That's OK. A job
description can contain many variations of the key word, like
"supervisor, supervise, supervised, supervision". You want to make sure
that all potential jobs come up under such a system. This can be in text
format, using Notepad. Keep it in the same directory as your resume, for
frequent reference when you're either looking for jobs or noting on the
job boards what your key skills are.
LEADS DEVELOPMENT
Now that you're ready to advertise yourself, where should you do
this? JobFairy.com provides pages of links on the
Job Sites page. But it's not enough to simply provide you the links
and tell you to get going. How? To start with you should have your own
Internet connection, and own e-mail. Surfing job sites from work, or
using your work account for personal e-mails, especially job hunting, is
a big no-no. It can be traced - and will be. Once you have the basics
established, like a free e-mail account from Hotmail or Yahoo, you will
go to job hunting websites. You will provide them a name, contact
information, your job skills, etc. They will probably ask you for a Word
copy of your resume, or you'll have an opportunity to copy a plain text
(ASCII) version into a text window. You may also want to select the
confidential setting, so that your current employer cannot see that
you're looking for work. It is also a good idea to have a pager, a cell
phone, or both. Employers can contact you more quickly this way. You
must have either voice mail or a reliable answering machine. However,
since some answering machines don't have the ability for you to check
your messages remotely, they're worthless and should be scrapped in
favor of voice mail. If you can't think of a professional (i.e. boring)
message for your machine - nothing cute or risqué, then you should leave
the standard message on your voice mail that came with the service,
stating that you have reached 555-1234, please leave your message after
the tone. You never want to give a potential employer a reason not to
call you back or screen you out.
INTERVIEWS, SALARY NEGOTIATION
You should be following the steps outlined under the
Job Search section. That's why
it's so important to get a head start on your job search, at the first
stirrings in your gut that there may be trouble. The first week, you may
not hear from anyone. By the second or third week, you should. Mondays
generally have the least calls; Tuesday is when most recruiters tend to
call if you've re-edited/re-activated your resume on Sunday. Never
renew, always make a modification and then reactivate. Here's a quote
about salary negotiation, "Don't be the one to name the first figure.
Unfortunately, almost all companies play a nasty little game -- they
innocently ask you how much you want. Time and time again, job
candidates fall face first into that trap. They say and/or write on the
job application "$9.00 an hour." In 1.3 seconds, they have sabotaged
themselves because the company will almost always try to get away with
paying less. And who knows? Maybe they were planning to offer $10.00 per
hour! The way to steer around that land mine is to GET THE INTERVIEWER
TO TOSS THE FIRST FIGURE. A truism in the game of negotiating is this:
the first person to name a figure puts himself at a distinct
disadvantage. Don't let it be you." - Deborah McGeorge. For more
information, see the Salary, Negotiating
and Interviews section.
RESIGNATION, ASSESSMENT OF SKILL GAPS
In the Salary section, or under All
the Articles, (I & II), there are several suggested letters of
resignation. Whatever you do, never accept a counter-offer. Why do
companies even bother? All they do is search for your replacement, find
one as quickly as possible, and then fire you. Does every company have
dysfunctional control issues? They must... If you've gone to all the
trouble of finding another job, take it. As long as you give appropriate
notice, you will probably be eligible for re-employment with your old
company later on. But chances are greatest that you will never work for
them again, so don't sweat it. Now that you're at the new job, take a
look at your skill set. Are there things they want you to do at the new
job that might require training? Make sure to ask for it right up front.
Were there skills you noticed during your job search that companies
seemed to be asking for frequently? Are there software packages or
hardware platforms that used to be exotic but now everyone expects you
to have them? Even if your company doesn't help you obtain training on
those skills, pay for it yourself if you have to, but take those classes
as soon as you can! For more information, visit the
Training and Career Path Planning
pages.
WATCHING MARKET, ACQUISITION OF SKILLS
Even though you have a job, you should look at five or so major job
boards every week or two in order to see what skills are most in demand.
You should subscribe to newsletters like Information Week's, or read the
tech news on cnet.com. Visit several salary information sites on a
monthly basis - these boards can tell you what skills are worth what
amount of money. In order for you to obtain the best compensation for
your skills, you should be taking an average of one training per
quarter. That's four technical classes a year. You can substitute
three free vendor seminars plus two - four user group meetings for one
technical class, if strapped for money. Unfortunately, taking into
consideration Moore's Law, you practically have to run just to stay in
place! Make sure you add all these classes and seminars to your resume
as soon as they're completed.
PERIODIC REASSESSMENT OF JOB COMFORT LEVEL AND COMPENSATION
By the time you've been on the job three months, you should have a
good handle on your job duties. By six months, you should be
comfortable. At nine months, you should have acquired new skills by
then. At this point, you check the salary sites to see what others with
your skills are making. If there's a 10% differential or more, start
looking (but not seriously, unless you hate your job). At twelve months,
you should have your first full review and raise. If that raise is 5% or
less, you're losing money by staying in place. Start looking for real,
unless you are receiving or about to get costly technical training. If,
after a year on the job, you have not received any technical training or
gotten a formal review, or even the promise of a formal review, start
looking ASAP. You'll never get anywhere with them. By the time you've
been on the job eighteen months, you should have greater job
responsibility (not necessarily supervising others though), such as
projects with more challenge, an increase in the scope of your work, or
opportunities to train and mentor others. You might have had an
opportunity for promotion by now. If these things are not happening for
you... you're back to where you started on the roller coaster - with
dissatisfaction! |