Keep Your Job!
The Secrets to Being Indispensable
X420 Discussion Session # 42
Five Key Elements of Keeping Your Job
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Analyze Company
Assess Job Risk
360 Degrees of Evaluation
How to Keep Your Job
Contingency Plans
Analyzing Your Company
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Know your company
Read annual report
Consult Internet and library
Read newspapers and magazines
Make contacts
Key Performance Indicators
of the Company
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Financial statement
Revenue growth
Earnings growth
Profit margins
Research and development spending
Early Warning Signals
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Lose a major company’s business?
Company getting bad press?
Industry-wide tremors?
Company dependent on one supplier?
Major product losing market share?
Prices dropping?
Inventories building up?
Talk of mergers?
Riskiest Industries
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Banking
Media/Entertainment
Retailing
Telecommunications
Utilities
Assessing Your Vulnerability
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View business as investor
Would you hire you?
Keep up skills
How to read your boss
Be a mensch
Do best job you can
Are You Next?
Take this quiz to size up your chances of being fired. Add up the
points for each question, then use the table at the end to see how
vulnerable you are.
1. Are you keeping up your career skills? (+ 10 )
2. Are you in the loop? (+10)
3. How many steps removed are you from the people with power?
(+5)
4. Do you have champions other than your boss? (+15)
5. Has it been more than a year since your last performance review?
(-5)
6. Do you ask anyone other than your boss how you’re doing? (+10 )
7. Have you gotten any negative feedback recently? (+5)
8. Have you made a suggestion recently that saved money or
improved a product? (+5)
9. Do you add value? (+10)
10. Are you listened to? (+5 )If someone else has sought you out as a
mentor in the past year, (+5)
11. Have you had trouble catching anyone’s eye recently? (-10)
12. Do you earn more money than people who do the same work you
do? (-5)
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Over 40? (-5 )
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Are you busy? (+20
Scoring:
20 and below: You’re lucky you have a job
21 – 40: Dust off the resume
41 – 60: Still on the fence
61 – 80: Nice work
81 – 100: Lifetime employment
Secrets of Survival
• Who’s vulnerable if layoffs hit?
• Enough if boss pleads your case?
• Pick right people as champions?
• Have right skills?
Seeing Yourself:
How to Get the Full Picture
Self-Evaluation Checklist:
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Your work in company’s long-range strategy?
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Making money for company?
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Providing more?
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Articulate your value?
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Other people know you add value?
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Consulting firm been called in?
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New management?
How Others See You – 360 Degree
Feedback
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Talk with co-workers
Talk with variety of people
Ask for negative feedback
Ask manager how you can improve
360-degree feedback
How to Keep Your Job – Becoming
Indispensable
Really Important Things You Need to Know:
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Finance
Accounting
Computers
Marketing
Communications
Outsourcing
Team Building
Diversity
Nine Steps to Job Security
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Be known in positive way
Be vocal about accomplishments
Be linked to fast tracker – “sausage theory”
Be involved in high-growth areas
Be a mentor
Be ahead of learning curve
Be able to articulate your “Value Add”
Be versatile
Be brave
How to be Safe
Carole Hyatt, author of Lifetime Employability, uses this
acronym:
S:
A:
F:
E:
Safety Net
Attitude
Fit
Entrepreneurial
Networking
• Inside the company
• Outside the company
• Mentoring
Mentoring
Internal Board of Mentors:
• The Higher-Up
• The Peer
• The Subordinate
“Formal mentoring” –
pairing younger
managers with
seasoned mentors.
Contingency Plans
Nine Ways to Make Yourself More Financially Secure:
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Pay off credit card
Six months’ income for emergencies
Refinance house
Home-equity line
Flexible spending
Restructure insurance
Automate saving
Tax-deferred savings plans
Invest in education
What to Do if You Think
You May Get Fired
• Employability
• Benefits
• 401K and Savings
Eight Keys to Career Self-Reliance
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Overarching principle
Define your product or service
Know target market
Why customer buys from you
Quality and customer satisfaction
Know your profession
Invest in your growth
Change business or start new one
Resources
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The Internet
The Advantage, Inc. www.inmind.com/advantage
All Business Network www.all-biz.com/job.html
Exec-U-Net www.clickit.com/touch/execunet.mediahi.html
Kennedy Information LLC www.kennedypub.com/kp.html
Stybel, Peabody, Lincolnshire www.careerlinc.com
Directory of Executive Recruiters
Executive Recruiter News
National Ad Search
National Business Employment Weekly
Evaluation Questions
Use:
Strongly agree
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
Don’t know
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I found the presentation of material easy to understand.
This discussion session increased my knowledge on the subject
presented.
I will be able to use some of the information from this discussion
session in the future.
The presenter was well prepared for this discussion session.
This presentation should be repeated in future semesters.