What Happened?!?!
by Jay Markunas, Career Consultant
You may be asking yourself ”what happened to the Great Occupations blog yesterday?” Where were those informative words? Those humorous stories? The information I need so badly? You may have noticed the site was down this weekend. Our platform did an upgrade, and let me tell ya….wait a few days (or weeks) before you upgrade your platform. Today’s blog post has nothing to do with job search - unless I can tie it in somewhere. Today is about having a backup (plan — hooray…I can tie it it!).
I’m pretty tech savvy, and coding web pages is not a mystery to me. Honestly, I do it every day at a large Fortune 50 company where I run projects that deal with internal human resources web sites and systems. My error in this particular situation with the Great Occupations site was not having a backup. If I had planned out my strategy better - rather than hitting a button that said “upgrade” on our site, then I would have some peace of mind. I needed a “backup plan”. Lesson learned!
Normally, in our fast-paced world there isn’t time for a backup plan. We see a lot of employees without a backup plan. I, of course, am an advocate of finding companies you’d be proud to work for. Companies — plural. I am not an advocate of finding a single company and putting all the eggs in one basket. Always….ALWAYS have a backup plan. Whether you are looking for a new career, a new job, or you have a pretty good job right now. ALWAYS have a short-list of companies you’d be proud to work with.
You don’t have to write that list down - although it helps, but you DO need to make contacts into your short-list of companies even when you are employed. There will come a day when you decide to leave your company (or the company decides to leave you). It will be far easier to get a new job if you’ve been making contact with your target company.
Start today. Think of those companies you’d be proud to work for because of their ethics, environmental awareness, products/services, etc. Get on LinkedIn, and research the company. Then make some connections in those company. Does a friend or family member work there? Do you have a former co-worker that is there? Are you in a LinkedIn Group with someone from that company? Find a way to make a connection, and just reach out. You’ll be glad you did — when the time comes.