Ways to distinguish yourself – #30 Watch the shelf-life of your skills

By Rajesh Setty on Sat 23 Jul 2005, 8:19 AM - 1 Comment

The era of job security is over.

There are very few organizations that can actually guarantee your job over a long period of time. Most people know this but very few people really do something about this. I would like to say that this is not a trend or a fad. The circumstances in the job scene have changed forever. In the last four days, I have seen at least ten companies announcing job cuts – some in the range of 100s and some in the range of 1000s of jobs.

One of my acquaintances called me and said that his company is closing their engineering division and all the people in the division were asked to leave by the end of the day. He told me that none of the team members that he was working with had a clue that this was coming – ok, that this was coming on that particular day. A person who was gainfully employed until yesterday was a job seeker today.

The million dollar question is NOT

what should you do in order to be employed?

but

what should you to in order to remain employable?

[Inspiration - Jim Rohn]

Here is a gut check for you. “If in the next one hour you are supposed to give a talk to a group of people, what are the three topics that you will pick where you think you are most comfortable?” Remember that there is only one hour between now and the time you will be on stage. Once you identify these topics think for a few minutes about the shelf-life of these topics. If the shelf-life is less than a few months you know that you are in trouble.

Here is a real-life example: When I asked this question to a person recently, without a second of hesitation he said his favorite topic would be “Performance tuning”. When I asked him to elaborate, he said “Topic 1 – Performance Tuning for <software package 1>, Topic 2 – Performance Tuning for <software package 2>, Topic 3 – Performance Tuning for <software package 3>” It was very clear that he loved to troubleshoot performance issues but the shelf-life for the topics that he chose was very slim. When we talked about the “shelf-life” concept, the person understood where the problem was and he is working towards getting out of the shell.

Working in the tech industry has its rewards but the shelf-life of many skills that you acquire and use is very small. While you these “short term” may be absolutely necessary, they are not sufficient.

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Anonymous on August 24th, 2005

Many times when the subject of employability comes up, the notion is that it’s all up to the candidate. If it were only up to him, then the candidate could do the ultimate — hire himself!
However, just like candidates have certain faults that need correcting, so do employers. What paralyzes employers galore today is their overblown fear of making a hiring mistake.
Along with job security disappearing, there is this massive push by employers that a person has to know everything about the latest and greatest right here right now. A person is not expected to stay long term, so there is no tolerance for learning curves whatsoever. With product cycles becoming shorter, employers feel they cannot take a chance on someone unproven. This is very pronounced in high-tech fields, where hiring managers are as obsessed with keywords as are dispassionate electronic resume readers.
Many candidates are employable as is. They do everything right in terms of staying current in their fields. They’ve been into the concept of “lifelong learning” long before that appeared on any employers’ screens and job postings. If they don’t know a certain kind of information by heart, they know where to look it up and who to call.
However, to state at a job interview that one is willing to learn and come up to speed is to eliminate oneself from further consideration. The employer reasons they can’t take a chance, yet a position remains open for months when somebody could have jumped in, contributed, and become the new expert for that employer.
Employers have to get over their fear of making a hiring mistake. Employers have to also become more welcoming of the notion of “transferrable skills.” Despite technology changing so fast, certain core concepts persist over time. If you have those basic skills down, picking up any form of knowledge, including the cherished ones employers crave is easy.
Worse than making a hiring mistake, it’s a bigger error to let the right candidate slip by to a competitor who’s more of a risk taker.