Work After 50

After watching the winter Olympics and marveling at the level of athletic excellence displayed by the athletes over the past few weeks, I got to thinking about what job seekers can learn from these amazing athletes. Time after time the difference between earning a metal or not ranking came down to superb coaching, practice and finely honed technique.

In today’s highly competitive job market the same holds true for job seekers. It is not enough to be good, you need to be great to get placed with an employer. Let’s take a closer look what that means for your job search strategy.

Olympic athletes leave nothing to chance. They have a clearly defined winning strategy. They choreograph every stage of their event. By that I mean they have a clear sense of how they will begin, how they will proceed and how they will finish their performance. They have a clear and strong winning strategy in place. How solid are you in all the elements of your career search strategy? Do you have a clear sense of every step of your job search process? If you don’t, you are going to be passed by other job seekers who know what they are doing.

Olympians use coaches to mentor and correct potentially costly mistakes. Are you using a career expert to advise you in your career search strategy? If not you are not getting vital help to give you a competitive advantage.

Olympians rely on cutting edge methodology and technology to give themselves every advantage in their performance. You are relying on yesterday’s career methodologies to compete in today’s job search? Are you hanging on old ways of doing a job search because it is comfortable instead of stretching and pushing yourself to be more up to date? If you want to be noticed and get interviews you need to adopt new methods for doing an effective job search.

And finally, are you practicing like an Olympian? Are you fully engaged and committed to investing the time and energy it takes to place? Good enough will not cut it. It takes hours and hours to come up with clear and compelling SAR (Situation-Action-Result) stories that will showcase your strengths and achievements.

I hope you enjoyed watching the winter Olympics as much as I did.  Now it’s time to remember the lessons from the athletes for top performance and apply them to your career strategy job search.

Gary Prehn is a Career Management Solutions Career Advisor in Southern California.

When you go through a grocery line today the bagger asks you how you want your items packed. “Paper or plastic?”  Many stores do not even offer us an option. They hand us our items bagged in plastic. There was a time when all groceries were packed into paper bags. Plastic bags were uncommon but not anymore. Today plastic bags are the norm.

Last week I stated that traditional jobs were going away. I recommended that it was time to change your career strategy and stop looking for jobs and start looking for work. The insight I want to share with you this week is that work used to be packed in paper bags but today it is being packed into plastic bags. There is work to be found but more and more companies are offering it in unconventional ways.

We are used to looking for work packed into job positions with clear cut duties. The jobs were offered in a paper bag called full-time, or permanent work. Today many employers are packaging work into plastic bags called projects, temporary work or contract work.

What is happening?  Companies are finding that they have to be flexible and nimble in order to compete in today’s market. They need to enlarge their workforce on short notice in order to produce a product or service. Once they have achieved their objectives they need to reduce their workforce rather than pay out wages to idle employees.

Think about the difference between paper bags and plastic bags.  A big paper grocery sack could hold a lot of groceries. You could pack many items neatly into one bag. The bags had a rigid shape and fairly predictable volume of room. Traditional jobs were like paper bags, sturdy and dependable.

But today employers are packing much of their work into plastic bags. Work today is much more flexible, odd shaped and comes in smaller units. Plastic bags are a better container for holding or assigning work.

Be careful that you do not overlook, ignore, or turn down work because it is being offering in “plastic” as contract work, temporary work or as a consulting assignment and not offered as “paper,” a full-time job. Plastic not paper is the new norm for work today.

So, which is it for you?  Paper or plastic?

People are pursuing jobs today like fisherman going after fish at a popular lake with a local reputation for lots of big fish. The trouble is that the fishing today at this lake isn’t what it used to be. In the past everyone was confident of getting plenty of strikes and landing at least one or two decent keepers. Those days are gone, yet fisherman keep hoping it will get better again.

Today the lake shore is crowded with fisherman (job seekers) desperately waiting for a bite. They are flailing the water with different lures and baits trying to find a tactic that will produce fish — a job, any job.

The problem is that most of the fish are gone and the few that are still in the lake are small. So what are the fisherman doing? They try harder and long. They change tactics. They move around to different spots on the lake hoping to get a hit. Just changing up your resume or improving your interviewing techniques isn’t going to make much difference in the outcome. Those methods will only work if there are fish to be caught.

Some job seekers are even demanding that the government should do something to create new jobs. That is like saying the fisheries department should stock more hatchery raised fish in the lake. Think about it, stocked fish are usually minimum catchable size, translate that into “low paying jobs.” There is a limited quantity dumped into the lake, people rush to catch them and they are soon fished out. Are more government created jobs what we are really fishing for?

It’s time to rethink your strategy. What is it that you are after? Is it a job or is it rewarding work? There is a shortage of jobs today but there is not a shortage of work. To find work you need to change your strategy and stop wasting time where the jobs and the crowds of fisherman are. It’s time to stop chasing after small number of minimum size jobs that are being pursued by the crowds.

Finding meaningful work in today’s climate will take a new strategy. It means turning away from the overfished lake and seeking out the less accessible but better populated ponds and streams. A new strategy means risking and trying a whole new approach that focuses on targeting rewarding work and not a job. There is meaningful work out there, it looks different than a job but it will take a new strategy to find it and catch it.

Next Tuesday I will go into more detail about the difference between a “job” and “meaningful work” and will focus on the strategy to use for landing the latter.

Gary Prehn is a career management professional living and working in Southern California.  His specialty is in helping people over 50 find meaningful work.  He writes this column every Tuesday.

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