Managing Your Employability

It sucks when you have the horrid realization that you've not been managing your own employability. Unfortunately that happened twice this week for clients with whom I've been working as a career and executive coach.

Not managing their "own" employability. What does that mean?  

It means that means is that they let their organizations take the lead and basically determine their professional paths. One client was in tears as she related how although she thought it was a good path at the time, now that she's stopped to assess her strengths, skills, and passions, she realizes that hers is a different calling.

Managing our employability doesn't have to be emotional or scary or even lead us in a different direction. It simply means that we have to pay attention to and manage our own careers!

I'll give you a great example. This past year I worked with a client who was impacted by a lay-off from a major corporation. He was a mainframe operator who was charged with leading the conversion of the mainframe to a server based system. Now I'll spare us all the details and the risk of embarrassing myself by getting the technical jargon wrong and simply skip to the end of the story. He was surprised when he got laid off.

Frankly, I was a more than a little that he hadn't considered the fact that once the mainframe was gone, he might lose his job. His mistake: trusting that the employer for whom he'd worked for 19 years would ‘take care of him.' They didn't.

The problem was further exacerbated by the fact that he hadn't bothered – EVER – to check to see if any other organization was hiring someone with mainframe experience. (They weren't and he found himself in the position of having to reinvent himself.)

If you're going to MANAGE YOUR EMPLOYABILTY, it means that you have to pay attention to the job market and ask yourself the following questions:

• What are my skills, strengths, and passions and am I getting to use them in my job?
• Am I competitive in my field? (Check that by periodically looking at ads to see if you would qualify as a candidate for the job you currently hold.)
• What knowledge, skills, expertise, and or training/certifications do I need to be competitive in my field? Are these being provided by my employer? If not, can I get my employer to pay for / support them? If my employer won't help, do I need to ‘bite the bullet' and do it anyway in order to be competitive? (The answer to the last question should always be YES!)
• What is happening in my industry and with my role / position? For example: are positions being shipped off shore? If so, is there another role/position that would allow me to use my skills, strengths, and passions that is more stable and likely to stay local?
• Do I have a good strong BRAND as a professional and am I managing it online?

Bottom-line, the reality in today's job market is this: "If you're not managing your employability, ain't nobody doing it for ya!" It's time to take the reins, partner.