How to Find Work in the 21st Century. Ron McGowan
these things, but they won’t lead you to the majority of the employment opportunities that exist in today’s workplace. You need to significantly expand your approach to include:
• Monitoring the websites of companies that you would like to work for and you feel are likely to be adding to their staff. Most company websites these days have a section where they list current employment opportunities. In the IT sector, this is the main way in which many companies advertise their jobs or contract opportunities. There’s even an attitude on the part of some of these companies that if you can’t find these opportunities on your own, they’re not interested in you. In other words, they want people who are “with it” and who know how to find employment in their industry.
• Most professional associations have a job-search service which they provide to their members. Companies who want to hire members deal directly with the association, which in turn lists the information on its website. Some industry associations do this as well, and you can sometimes access this information even if you’re not a member.
• While most of the major newspapers still include a career or employment section, you may find more opportunities listed online on an electronic employment service, which more and more companies are using instead of listing their requirements in print. Most of these services allow you to post your résumé on their site for free, and some of them will automatically notify you when an opportunity comes up that matches your job specifications. Some of these sites are also a very effective way to monitor what is going on in the workplace and to learn from the experience of others who are actively seeking employment.
• There are lots of online job sites available today; some that are generic and others that specialize in particular professions or geographical areas. One of the biggest is www.monster.com. Other sites are excellent resources for monitoring workplace activity, trends and news, www.rileyguide.com being one of the best of these.
We’ve already learned that the vast majority of employment opportunities are generated by small businesses. These businesses may not have a website at this point and if they do, it may not have a section on employment. In order to flush out these opportunities, you need to access every possible tool.
Finding employment opportunities
Most of the opportunities that exist today never hit the mainstream media or get posted on a website. The ways to find them include:
• Becoming a newshound and staying on top of trends in the workplace and in society. If you find that you are constantly being surprised by events when they are reported in the mainstream media, you’re not doing as good a job as you need to of monitoring what’s going on.
• Creating your own database of news sites and job sites and monitoring them regularly. Indiscriminate web surfing is not the answer. You need to approach this area in a diligent, intelligent, and creative way to ensure that you know more about what is going on in the workplace than the average person does. Many websites offer free newsletters filled with current news, and you can have them sent to you automatically on a regular basis. For example, if you want to keep abreast of events in the IT sector, www.wired.com is a good site to be connected to.
• Attending seminars, meetings, conventions, trade shows, and courses in your community. You need to be monitoring these to make sure you don’t miss out on an event that could be important to you in your search for work opportunities. They also help to keep you informed about what is going on.
• Networking effectively. There’s a whole section devoted to this later in the book, but let’s recognize at this point that you must be constantly networking in a creative and effective way. Word of mouth is a pretty low-tech way to advertise in today’s world, and many employment opportunities are still filled this way.
• Using your imagination and being creative. Maybe the employment opportunity that you’re looking for hasn’t hatched yet in the mind of the employer who could benefit from your set of skills. Look for unmet needs, and the better you’re connected to what is going on in the workplace and the world, the more likely you are to identify these. Maybe you need to create your own work opportunity by going directly to an employer with an idea whose time has come. Smart contractors and job seekers are doing this all the time.
• Getting involved with professional and business organizations. That means volunteering and being active on the executive level, not casually showing up for an occasional monthly meeting. Also monitoring the websites of professional and business organizations both within and outside of your community is a good way to keep up with what’s going on. Most chambers of commerce have a website today, and you may pick up some useful news items by monitoring them. Some of them also list their members and the companies with which the members are affiliated. You could pick up some useful contact names. As long as you approach these people professionally and you are polite, they will probably be willing to give you some information.
• Notwithstanding all of the preceding references to the Internet, do not discount the print media, particularly trade magazines and professional publications. You will find useful information in these that you won’t find on the Internet. Most cities have one or two primary publications that focus on business and industry, and if you don’t subscribe to these, you should at least monitor them regularly. To get an overview of all of the main business and industry publications, including international publications, look at www.ceoexpress.com on a regular basis.
• Your local library is still a very useful resource for keeping in touch with what is going on, and accessing their services can save you a lot of time. Many libraries offer courses on how to use the library and the Internet as research tools.
Obviously, looking for work today is radically different from what it used to be. Key differences between people who are regularly employed and those who are struggling is how well they are informed about what is going on and how systematically they monitor workplace issues and trends.
Why Contracting Makes Sense
Myths about contracting
As noted earlier, one of the most ironic perceptions about working as a contractor is that if you choose to go in this direction, you are cutting yourself off from the possibility of finding a permanent job. Nothing could be further from the truth. By being active as a contractor, you’re adding to your experience and expanding your network of contacts. You’ll feel better about yourself since you’re actively employed as opposed to sitting on the sidelines waiting for a permanent job to come up, and if one does come up, you can take it.
The basis for this attitude is psychological: If you have earned your living for years by being employed in one or more permanent jobs and that’s how your parents and grandparents earned their living, it’s a challenge to accept the fact that you can earn a living as a contractor, given the unpredictability of such work versus a permanent job. If you’ve lived with the security of a paycheck being deposited to your bank account every two weeks throughout your career, it’s not easy to make the adjustment to contracting, where your earnings are far less predictable. Some people are so addicted to this stable way of living they have difficulty accepting the fact that you can earn a living any other way.
There tends to be a generation gap on this issue too. Younger people who are entering the workforce are more likely to adapt to contracting than their parents are. Since they haven’t had the experience of years of getting a steady paycheck, they adapt more readily. They’re also less likely to be carrying around the emotional baggage that their parents are as they try to adjust to the significant changes that are taking place in the workplace.
It would be wrong to assume, however, that young people are not challenged by the prospect of earning their living as contractors. They are influenced by their parents’ attitudes and society’s addiction to jobs as the only way to earn a living. Our education system doesn’t prepare them well for the entrepreneurial option. They may also want the material benefits that come from having a permanent job: a house, a nice car, and a comfortable lifestyle.
Because the concept of earning a living from a permanent job is