"Your only real security starts with your responsibility to your career," says Joanne Cini, author of "Kingmaker: Be the One Your Company Wants to Keep…On Your Terms." (Prentice Hall, $22.95) "Excellence is the first ingredient to keeping your job, gaining free agency and moving forward with your career."
Protect Yourself
A series of massive, highly-publicized and sometimes unexpected layoffs have made job security seem like a thing of the past. "Even if a person is doing a job that seems completely secure - a job that they really like, they should still do some preventative networking." says Marky Stein, a career coach in San Jose, Calif. "They should interview for at least two other jobs per year, even if their job seems fine. That way, the day the company lays you off; you have people to call whom you've met before."
Stein says that interviewing with other companies gives a job seeker leverage when negotiating a salary. "You can tell your employer that you got an offer for a higher salary," Stein says. "Let them respond to that and see what happens."
Employees have also learned to investigate all aspects of a potential job. "Employees have to rethink the whole idea of moving up within their company because in some cases, the position they're considering may be slated for elimination," says Kenneth McGhee, author of "Eleven Leadership Tips for Supervisors" (Imprint, $9.99). "Employees should ask themselves whether the position is critical to the core mission of the organization.
Follow the Leader
What's one of the most desired traits employers seek in rough economic times?
Leadership
"All companies are hungry for leaders. The trouble is that most employees don't recognize this, or if they do, they misunderstand what leadership is all about," says Brent Filson founder and president of the Filson Leadership Group in Williamstown, Mass. "Leaders do one thing. They do it well and they do it consistently. You have to be able to build and motivate teams that get results."
Along with leadership, Filson says employers are looking for workers with transferable skills. "They're looking for someone who can be taken out of one project they may have to downsize and put them into another project," says Stein. "Rather than looking for loyalty, they're looking for resiliency. Some bright spots emerge from those in job market."
Could this year be "the Year of the Worker?"
Employees hope so, since job and economic forecasters predict good things for the year ahead. "When this economy does turn, and we feel it will start to strengthen in 2005, we might just see some demand that we have not seen years across the board," says Allen Salikof, past president and CEO of Management Recruiters International, an executive search firm headquartered in Philadelphia. "What we are seeing is because of downsizing, many managers and workers are doing the job of two people rather than one. When this market turns, that will put a burden on those workers. With that type of demand, you will see an overall demand of new employees."
Better Days
Experts are predicting an employees' market in 2006, with employees getting to be choosy for the first time in several years, especially for worker looking for opportunities in health care and information technology. According to research by Chicago-based out-placement consulting firm Challenger, Cray and Christmas, the financial services insurance, preventive health care and pharmaceutical industries are among the most promising for 2006, along with security, agriculture and energy.
"The job market is starting to look tougher for employers," says Mike Barbee, president of WAM!NET Government Services, a Bloomington, Minn.-based company that doubled its staff last year and is looking to hire about 150 more Information Technology professionals in 2006. "We are starting to see the economy looking up. We have seen a slight up tick in attrition; which means it is looking better for employees. It is getting a little together to recruit and people are starting to have more alternatives."
IT is Back
According to David Dunkel, president and CEO of Kforce Inc., a staffing firm based in Tampa Fla., companies will reinvent in information technology in 2006.
"IT is coming back. It's a misperception that companies have completed all the upgrades they need to avoid obsolescence," Dunkel says. "It's not a technology industry recovery. It's a more diversified, cross-industry recovery that is relatively consistent across the country, primarily for development and infrastructure positions."
Good Health
Dunkel also predicts a continued steady increase in the demand for health care professionals. "Allied health fields such as occupational and physical therapy should be strong, as is physical therapy, should be strong, as is consistent with an aging population," he says.David Carpe is the principal and founder of Clu LLC, a Boston-based research and analysis firm with a core practice focused on human resources. He says that although the demand for health care professionals will continue to be high in 2005, the need will not be just for practitioners, but for all workers in the industry, especially in health care that services the growing aging population.
"There is a lot going on around geriatrics medicine," Carpe says. "In everything from finance to assisted living facilities to nursing. There is also of operational management need in this industry."
Salikof predicts an increase in the need for workers in the pharmaceutical industry. “Many companies are trying to introduce new drugs so we are seeing an increase in sales positions for pharmaceutical companies," Salikof says. "There seem to be renewed interest in bringing on sales people right now across the board. Companies laid-off some of these folks, and they are seeing they need these folks back to sell their products."
Service Center
The service industries - including public relations, advertising and marketing, finance and banking - will see an increased demand in 2005, too, especially in the area of consulting, Carpe says. "The growth in the consulting market spans the industries - anything from health care and IT to media and entertainment," he says.
First job
Job prospects for new college graduates should also be brighter this year. According to research by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, employers predict they will hire 12.7 percent more new college graduates from the class of 2006 than they did from the class of 2005.
The survey found the outlook to be best among employers from the service industry. Other industries, including food and beverage processing manufacturers, public accounting firms, retail and wholesale organizations, were found to rate the upcoming job market as "good."
