My last post was on getting that job. What an interesting topic. An expert in this field had a great post on a study of university grads, talking about how “recent grads found the job hunt to be long, arduos and stressful…” Duh. If they find it to be so hard, why is it going to be any easier to anyone else? I know plenty of folks from all kind of backgrounds, with all kinds of skills that find the same thing. In fact, on Monday I met a guy who had been in special ops, speaks five languages, has worked in a lot of anti-American places, and is finding it VERY difficult to get a job. He thinks that it is because people are afraid of his background - I found this to be really quite interesting considering his broad and deep skillset.

But enough about “getting the job.” The truth is there are jobs, and lots of them. You may need to learn some job-search techniques, and it would be helpful to understand that you’ll need to incorporate them throughout the rest of your career… what? Just remember, the average worker changes jobs every 2.8 years, or 3-5 years or whatever. If this is the case make sure that you are doing things that ensure your time between jobs is as short as possible. All of my job transitions happened because of people I knew… I think some experts call that networking (even though I didn’t know that is what I was doing).

So, why do these transitions happen every 2.8 years? Well, there are a bunch of reasons. I’m sure you’ve read about Intel’s 10,000-person layoff. And that is just one wave of many in a move to reduce expenses. And this has been followed up with Ford’s announcements to cut a bunch of jobs. Of course you know that many jobs are moving overseas. So, one reason is that the jobs are disappearing - this is something that you can’t really change or avoid - it is out of your control.

Another factor for the job changes is that people outgrow their position. I’ve talked to a number of veterans coming back from war that have had life changing experiences that make them rethink their careers. Many are opting to leave what they previously did and put their new skills into practice. That happens all the time, where workers feel that they have reached the top of their game, there are no promotion opportunities, and they choose to look somewhere else. This might be with another company and a different career path or starting their own business.

The bottom line is that the awesome pension and heavy-benefit jobs of yesteryear are just that - history. Today’s worker is more mobile, changing more frequently, and the career we’ll have looks a lot different than the career our fathers had. Here is another Secrets of the Job Hunt post that I think is a great read: what the new job market is.

What do I think about all this? Well, instead of steaming over these stats, I figure we just have to get used to it and figure out how the play the game. Learn how to navigate the job transitions, and figure out how to get the most out of it. There really is quite a bit of opportunity for the person that “gets it.” But make sure you get it!

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