Five Tips to Save Your Job and Advance Your Career During the Lousy Economy

The economy is in the toilet and will likely stay there. That’s not really news. What IS interesting is that you can save your job and enhance your career with these five tips. The tips circle around marketing and communications but the concepts are the same for everyone. So read on and apply them to your own situation.

1. Don’t Identify Problems. That’s right don’t simply identify problems, SOLVE them. It’s great if you point out what’s wrong but figuring out the solution, presenting it to the chief and then implementing it – now, that sets you apart.  Worse, if all you do is identify problems you may be seen as a complainer or someone with a bad attitude. If you were the boss with limited budget you’d probably get rid of the complainer with the bad attitude first. Don’t be that person! If you solve problems you’ll be more valuable now (when others are loosing their jobs) and then you’ll be higher up the food chain when hiring begins again.

2. It’s Not My Job. Yes it is! Everything is your job. With dwindling resources your company and your clients are looking to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of everyone. If you want to succeed and progress you have to do things you’ve never done before. So do stuff that isn’t your job. You can stretch this all the way to picking up that scrap of paper on the office floor everyone else walks by. Why would you pick it up? Because it’s the right thing to do. It shows respect for your work environment and that you care how your office it looks. It helps other people because they see a clean workplace and have a more positive view. At the very least, ad guys need to do some PR work, PR folks need to do some production work, media folks need to help with copy, everyone needs to do some Social Media work. That leads into my next tip.

3. Never Stop Learning. Learn new programs. Experiment with Social Media. Practice your writing. Take a class. Join a networking group. The more you know the more secure you are. The stronger your ties to the industry the better off you are. Now’s the time to be a Jack of All Trades. Don’t put yourself, your knowledge and your career into one small bucket – diversify! The more you know the more valuable you are. “Knowledge is power” is not a phrase to be taken lightly. Now is really a time to be a Jack of All Trades.  These are exponential times. The world is changing faster than many can adapt. Don’t be a dinosaur.

4. Be a Rainmaker. Read the book How to Be a Rainmaker. It’s about being a sales person. We all need to be salespeople right now. We really need to be sales people all the time…. I know, it’s not your job (see tip 3 above). Look for opportunities. They will be hard to find but find some. Work with your boss to contact prospects, develop a mailing, work on business via LinkedIn, help with proposals. If your company isn’t getting new biz then you aren’t going to have a job. Clients eventually move on. It’s a fact of life. You need to help keep the new biz pipeline full so that you’ll have a job in the future. And, as an integral part of the new biz pipeline, you are more secure in your position.

5. Market Yourself! Market yourself in the company, with your clients and to your peers and networks. First, they’ll all see (if you follow these 5 simple tips) that you are a proactive, problem solver, who is eager to learn and has a stong network. There’s job security. And in the unfortunate event that you find yourself unemployed you’ll have a lot of contacts who know you and your strengths and are likely to help you find your next endeavor. Second, your marketing of yourself will help you with Tip #4 above. So, do you have a marketing plan for yourself?

Just like the old marketing advice that says “now (when the economy is at its worst) is the time to advertise” now is the time to pull out your career stops.  The logic there of couse is that in advertising your competitors are pulling back their ad spending making your investment even stronger and more valuable. Likewise, when your collegues and competitors are getting disgruntled and out-dated, you’ll be increasing your knowlege and influence.

So, get out there and work on your career.  Solve problems, accept that everything is your job, learn all the new stuff you can, be a rain maker and market yourself!

Took a little ride recently out Route 46 through Budd Lake, Hackettstown, Independence and to Buttzville. (Yes, Buttzville, New Jersey.  There is such a place.)

Before Route 80 sliced a concrete line across the belly of New Jersey, Route 46 was the main east/west artery.  Heading down that particular stretch of road is a lot like riding on portions of the old Route 66. Historical and nostalgic if you look in just the right way…. You can almost see families in old Plymouths cruising on their way to/from the Delware or Poconos.

Hackettstown, with it’s traditional main street, is home to an especially nice HESS station circa 1960. Being so close to NYC, my hunch is that it must have appeared in a few movies.

In many places, NJ Rte 46 also runs paralel to old train tracks that brought goods from the Western Jersey country side into the city. Some nice old train stations, many barns, farm houses and numerous churches along the drive. Unfortunately, much of it is in disrepair and the history of the area is slowly rotting away. 

But back to Buttzville.  Besides its name, Buttzville has the distinct honor of being home of Hot Dog Johnny’s – a true hot dog stand in the tradition of old Route 46.  Mulit-colored neon hot dog sign. Birch beer in real glass mugs. Dogs any way you want them. Fresh buttermilk. Home made fries. Chocolate shakes made with real ice cream. Giant pickles.

We arrived at Hot Dog Johnny’s just before noon on a Sunday to feast on shakes, dogs, pickles and fries.  According to Johnny’s website, they’ve been in business since 1944.  One measure of their success came in a comment I overheard from one young customer. The boy about ten or so noted that “2 out of 3 cars coming down the road turn into Hot Dog Johnny’s.”

“Michael, Michael, Michael.” Mom’s all over the world are saying it. “What kind of example are you? Don’t you know you aren’t supposed to do that?”

Now, if it were performance enhancing drugs, that’d be a totally different thing. Everyone could understand taking drugs to swim faster. Football, Baseball, Cycling, Weight Lifting, Fighting. We understand competitive cheating. Race car drivers and their crews “bend the rules” to win too!

So, it’s ok to cheat and take drugs to win, but taking drugs for fun!  Tisk. Tisk. Shame on you! Next time have a martini and a cigar. (Or maybe you should be an Olympic snowboarder instead…)

USA Swimming has suspended him for three months - much to the joy of his competition no doubt because now they have a chance to win.  His competitors are also likely over joyed that he’d try to clog up a part of those super-human-lungs. Bring him down to a mortals lung capacity.

I mean, let’s level the competition here a bit. Shall we? Maybe with Kelloggs dropping of his sponsor roster he can pick up KOOL or Camel. I’m envisioning a new ciggy ad right now…. “I’d swim a hundred meters for a Camel.”

Are we setting too high a standard for Michael? After years of unbelieveable sacrafice swimming in the pool and working out (you saw the story numerous times in the pre-Olympic hype) the young man wins multiple gold medals in the Olympics – for USa. Then the media circus begins. 

Not defending anyone here but can you imagine what this guys life has been like? Being a pro athelete is demanding, being Michael Phelps – I mean, can you even begin to imagine??

The dude was a monk in a Speedo for how many years? His fingers and toes are probably still prune-d from all that pool time. He probably dyes his hair brown after several hours spent in the chlorine every day. Then at a party in November he hits the bong.

Oh, he was naked with Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears and the video was on You-Tube? No. Oh, he shot one of his friends by accident with an expensive, unregistered hand gun? No. Oh, he was drunk driving, got pulled over and started yelling racial slurs at the cops? No. Oh, he broke into someone’s hotel room to retrieve his own stuff and was carrying heat? No. Exactly what did he do again?

Michael will certainly loose sleep and some income over this whole episode.  But, what does “the law” have to say about all this? According to a NY Daily News article, “A sheriff in South Carolina said this week he was investigating whether the athlete broke any laws.” 

Investigating? And we are worried about what Phelps did… the cops are ‘investigating.’ Sheesh, a tween knows from that photo that Phelps broke the law. But the sheriff is ‘investigating.” Nice.

Maybe Phelps’ worse offense is a photo I saw of him (on Gawker). I mean, what kind of example does this set for the little ones?

One thing WE ALL need to realize now is that EVERYTHING you do or say or sing could end up on the internet. Most people these days walk around with devices that take photos, shoot video, record sound and connect to the Internet. In seconds anything you say or do can be avaialble for the WORLD to see!

At least when Michael was confronted with the issue he stood up and did the right thing. He admitted his wrong doing and apologized. He didn’t admit that he took a hit but didn’t know what it was. He didn’t blame anyone or the pressures of being a superstar. He made no excuses and acted like a man. Now, that’d make any momma proud.

We have an interesting client; an internal group that works on Information Systems for a global company. It’s not a liquor account or Caribbean destination but I gotta say I am enjoying on working on this business.

These folks are looking at new technologies that will likely become mainstream in the near or short term future and applying them as demos at the company. We are lucky enough to help them communicate the benefits of these developing technologies.

A couple of the things we’ve been looking at, learning about and explaining in the last couple of months are Microsoft Surface, 3D barcodes, enterprise digital signage.

Enterprise digital signage allows you to communicate with your employees or customers across multiple locations with video, images, text, sound and feeds from news or weather. The system is set in place by an administrator and then employees can update content areas for which they are responsible.  The employees update their areas via custom made templates that allow them access to specified portions of the digital sign. Here’s one company that explains it rather well (better than me).

Imagine you are in a store about to buy a food product but wonder, “Does this have that recalled peanut butter in it?” Or, “I have Diabetes, how much sugar is in this product.” With 3D Bar Codes, you can take a photo of the fancy bar code on the pacakge with your cell phone. Send the code back to the company and you will receive information back such as recall and nutritional information. That’s another way you can tell if that cheap-o food at the dollar store really is the Brand food you are looking at or a cheap-o immitation with melamine or something nasty in it.

Ahh, Microsoft. What’s not to love? Check out the Surface. This table looking touch screen computing device actualy has cameras in it that sense your hand movements so you move digital assets with your hands instead of a mouse or keyboard.  Want to put that file in the recycle bin? Just grab it and move it over. These interactive tables can be used by several people at once – now that could really be social networking!  Microsoft is bringing touch screen navigation to desktop computers in the near future.

Mind expanding. These are not technoligies our kids will be using in a decade. These are exponential times.