Amongst the three major social networks:

- 76% used Facebook

- 53% used Twitter

- 48% used LinkedIn

The breakdown may seem a bit surprising at first. Intuitively you may think that LinkedIn would be used the most, but Facebook has a much higher adoption rate and is likely to show a bit more of what you’re really about (LinkedIn essentially serves as an online resume with network connections).

Recruiters and hiring managers are looking for dirt on you! 69% of survey respondents have rejected candidates based on what they found in your profile. Reasons cited include inappropriate photos or comments, lying about your qualifications, drinking/drug comments, negative comments about your previous employers, and confidential information shared.

Why are Recruiters Using Social Media Profiles?

This may come as a shock to you that employers are using your “authentic” musings against you, but it shouldn’t! Employee loyalty is fairly non-existent these days:

• For ages 23-27, 75% of workers were with their employer for less than 2 years, and 88% less than 5 years.
• For ages 28-32, 68% of workers were with their employer for less than 2 years, and 84% less than 5 years.

At the same time, the average cost of replacing an employing can be staggering – easily over 6 figures in many high-skill professions.

Is it any wonder that hiring managers are doing a little bit of digging online on the information that YOU put out there for them to see to help ensure that you would be a good fit for them?

How Can you Manage your Online Reputation?

You don’t want to fall victim to photos you posted from your drunken stupor that senior year of college or for some hate filled rant on Justin Bieber. Before you apply for any job, it would be wise to do a little bit of online reputation management.

Here are a few of the very least things you should be doing to protect your reputation on each network:

LinkedIn:

Click the drop-down on your name and ‘settings’ to go through each of the profile privacy controls. Turn off your activity broadcasts. Select ‘only you’ to see your connections (otherwise recruiters may reach out to your connections to ask about you). Finally, clean up your profile itself, and make sure it matches what is on your resume.

Twitter:

Click the drop-down on your name and ‘settings’ and under ‘account’, click ‘protect my tweets’. This won’t protect you from what others are saying to or about you, unfortunately, so you have to be EXTREMELY careful about the activity trail that you leave on Twitter. Next, click on ‘profile’ and make sure you don’t have any incriminating statements about yourself.

Facebook:

There is a lot of work to be done here and Facebook changes their privacy settings often. Click the arrow drop-down in the top right and then ‘privacy settings’. Start by changing your default privacy setting to ‘friends’ if it is set to ‘public’.

Next, go to ‘how you connect’ and start by changing who can look you up to ‘friends’. THIS IS KEY. Then change ‘who can post on your wall’ and ‘who can see wall posts on your profile’ to ‘Only me’.

Not done yet. Go to ‘how tags work’ and turn on manual tag review. Then change your maximum visibility to ‘friends’.

Next, go to ‘apps, games, and websites’ and click on ‘public search’. De-select others from being able to find you in search engines.

Now go to ‘limit the audience for past posts’ and limit past posts from being seen by others. VERY IMPORTANT.

You should be done. To be extra safe, go back and delete any posts or photos that may be used against you.

Google Plus:

The best way to protect yourself on Google+ is to make yourself invisible in searches for you. Go to ‘about’, click on ‘profile discovery’ and de-select. There doesn’t seem to be a one-size fits all fix to being able to limit who can see what about you in Google+. Therefore, be very careful about what you post and with photos added.

Online Reputation Discussion:

• To your knowledge, has a social media profile ever prevented you from getting hired?
• If you’re on the hiring side, how have you secretly used social media profiles for screening candidates?
• Have you protected your social profiles?
• What tips do you have for others on how to protect your online reputation?

Related Posts:

• Using Speed Interning to Get Hired
• Extreme Job Hunting Strategies
• Best Interview Tips from an Interviewer

Social Media Profiles May be Preventing you From Getting Hired is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

Have some self-respect! You can be creative and stand out from the crowd without whoring yourself out.

One idea that I caught wind of the other day that I really liked and did not reek of desperation was “speed interning”.

What is Speed Interning?

Speed interning rapid succession of internships with as many employers as possible – kind of like speed dating, but with less of the after-guilt (I would imagine).

Maeghan Smulders, a recent grad in Calgary, tried speed interning at 10 employers who gave her a job offer upon graduation. She actually received 29 job offers (not sure how she pulled off this feat) before interning and used that as an opportunity to give her favorites a test run with a series of short (as short as a week) internships during the summer.

Whether you get 29 job offers or just two, this is a great way to give your potential employer (and other future employers) a test run to see what the culture is like and shadow those who are doing a similar job to the one you have been offered.

This strategy really got my creative juices flowing. I think it could serve an alternate, but equally effective purpose.

Using Speed Interning to Get Job Offers

Why not use speed interning as a differentiator to get job offers?

As I highlighted the other day in my best interview tips post, as an interviewer, employers want to know that you are adaptable and that you push yourself. Additionally, I often find that it is really difficult to separate yourself in a pool of competitive applicants. What better way to do that than through a series of rapid internships? Particularly for entry level positions, that person is going to stand out in a crowd of grads with zero, one, or ambitiously two relevant internship experiences.

Most employers would LOVE the no-risk opportunity to give you a try without bringing you on board as an official employee. It is very expensive to do the paperwork, set up with benefits, train you, and give you an income only to find out in 3 or 6 months that it’s not a good fit.

If you get in the door, they have a chance to get to know you and they feel vested in your endeavor. You’re more than a few steps ahead of the competition at that point.

Keys to this Strategy Working

I think there are a few things that are key to making this work:

1. Fore-go Compensation: You must be willing to do it for free – and I’d encourage you to proactively volunteer that with a statement like, “I know that this may be a little unconventional so I would like to assume the responsibility by being willing to fore-go compensation for the internship.”
2. Set Expectations: You must stipulate what you hope you and they can both get out of the experience. If you just go in for a week, sit at a desk, and run a few copies, you will not get much from the experience and it might actually hurt your chances of getting an offer. Set yourself up for success.
3. Follow-Through: At the end of the internship, present what you have learned from the experience and your next steps, whether they be outlining your internship timeline and next steps, or whether you are convinced you’d like to work for them and why.

Other Positives from this Strategy:

Another thing I like about this is that if the employer really likes you and knows that you’re not desperate and have other options, it is very likely that it could lead to a higher salary offer from them than what you would otherwise be offered because you could go elsewhere – giving you the leverage.

This strategy also gives you an opportunity to see who you would be working with and if it will be a good culture fit for you. This is VERY important! You can’t really figure this out in an interview or two – as everyone is putting on their best face. It’s much harder for everyone to put on their best face for you for a week or two. They will eventually have to let down their guard.

Speed Interning Discussion:

• Do you think this strategy could work? Why or why not?
• Do you have other ideas that could increase your likelihood of getting a job offer? Please share!

Related Posts:

• Winning Job Interviews Review
• How to Write a Winning Resume that Stands Out
• 5 Part-Time Jobs with Health Insurance & Benefits

Speed Interning: Unconventionally Brilliant! is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

It’s been an eye opening experience, to say the least. I would approach interviews in a completely different way than I would have previously. And I have 10 tips I want to offer to help you knock it out of the park in your next interview.

Before I give my advice and observations, note that I work at a desk job for a Fortune 500 company – for a frame of reference. I do think that most of these tips will work for any job field, but the importance of each will vary. If it sounds relevant, use it. If it doesn’t, don’t. With that, here are my 10 best interview tips, given my experience:

1. Your Personality is FAR More Important than your Resume

Your resume might get you through the recruiters, but once you get to the interview stage, it takes a back seat to how you actually bond with each individual interviewer. Don’t bring a fake extroverted persona to an interview if it is not your personality – it will be apparent. Be genuine. That’s what an interviewer wants to see – the real you.

The thing is, if the real you is not good enough to get the job, then maybe that job wasn’t a good fit for you to start with. If you have to fake your way into a job, odds are you won’t be in that job for long. Do yourself and the company a service by being genuine.

Highlight experiences that show the real you – whether it highlights a positive trait or a big mistake that you learned from.

The thing is, half an hour is never enough time to get to know someone. What you want to be able to do is leave the interviewer feeling like they know YOU better than the other candidates. Us interviewers are all human – we want to bond with, connect, and like those we are interviewing because we want to have that same feeling if we were to start working with you.

2. The Detail in your Answers is Secondary to how you Answer

It’s impossible for an interviewer to recall every detail of how you answered a question, particularly when they’ve interviewed a number of different candidates. What is more important is that you:

• make a strong effort to answer the question vs. throwing in the towel or being too short and blunt.
• ask intelligent questions if you are not sure exactly what the interviewer would like to know.
• take time and jot down notes, particularly when asked a cognitive question. Talk the interviewer through your thoughts (unless they are about you wanting to pee your pants). I have asked really tough cognitive questions that require math, and after giving the answer a number of people will ask me “was I close?” or “did I get it right?”, to which my reply is always “there is no right or wrong answer” and theirs is “really? Oh….”.
• be confident in your answer. No second guessing, no filler words. Just answer without rambling – there is seldom times a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer.

3. You Are Genuinely Enthusiastic About the Job – but Not Desperate

You’ve got to want the job. If you don’t, you’re not interviewing for the right job. It’s easy to spot fake enthusiasm.

One word of caution: don’t drool over the job and rain praise on the company itself. You don’t want to make it sound like you don’t deserve the job or would feel very lucky to get it. Desperation is never a defining characteristic that you want tied to you. For example:

• bad enthusiasm: “Thank you so much for giving me the chance to interview. Company XYZ is obviously well respected and I’d really love the opportunity to work here.”
• good enthusiasm: “I really like that this job would give me the opportunity to…”

4. Ask Smart Questions that Aren’t Scripted

Whether it’s during the interview or at the end, ask smart questions. NEVER ask about salary/benefits. The trick here is that your answers are not scripted. If they are, you you have missed a great opportunity to show off your personality and bond with the interviewer.

“What do you like/dislike the most about this job?” is amateur-league and 75% of interviewees ask it. Come up with something a little more interesting and unique than that. And if you can make it specific to the interviewer, you get bonus points for trying to connect. For example, “if you left your job tomorrow, what is the one experience at company XYZ that you will have the fondest memory of?”. Now that’s a great question!

5. Show your Adaptability

In today’s corporate world, there is perhaps no other characteristic that is more desired by employers than adaptability. Change is a constant in today’s fast paced economy. For example, I’d much rather see someone who went from one role to another role in 4 years at the same company vs. someone who was in the same role the entire time. That shows me you are adaptable to change and want to learn new things. If you’ve shifted roles, highlight it and explain why if it’s to your advantage.

6. Highlight Relevant Personal Extra-Curriculars

Even if it didn’t make the resume cut, bring up personal non-work activities that make you stand out. For example, one interviewee told me that he does open mic night at a local comedy club to push himself to become a better public speaker and to explore his creative side. Boom! Winner! That one little sentence tells me that this guy:

a. understands where he can improve on his skills

b. is not afraid of a scary challenge

c. is probably a better public speaker than most

d. will be able to crack a good joke or two!

Little defining moments like that in an interview stick with the interviewee. If you volunteer with a non-profit, by all means, bring it up! If you’ve created some sort of side business or web venture, bring it up! Interviewees want to know that you are more than a soul-less corporate minion. They want to know you are human!

7. Push Yourself

This advice is more relevant for interviews down the road. Experience is King, when competition is fierce. A new college grad who had a breadth of different challenging internships each summer is always going to win out over a grad with zero internships or internships with the same employer each year – all else being equal.

Challenge yourself to take on new experiences with your current employer. This is closely tied to adaptability, but slightly different in that it tells me you have a breadth of knowledge and experience and aren’t afraid to take on a new challenge.

8. The Interviewer is Not Out to Get You – Remember That!

There may be exceptions to this rule – big egos on a power trip – but personally speaking, I am not out to get you. I walk into every interview wanting the person to knock it out of the park. That makes my job easy. I don’t like to see someone fail at an interview and I REALLY don’t like to walk out of an interview with a feeling of indifference. I am sure many interviewers feel the same way. Take that little bit of optimism and confidence into your next interview.

9. Eye Contact & Smile Throughout

These things are a pre-requisite for me. If you can’t look me in the eye when you talk or smile periodically at appropriate moments, I’m not going to walk out of the interview feeling too positive about you. I want to feel comfortable with you, and in order to feel that, you have to be comfortable with me.

10. Stand Up and Handshake at the Start & End of the Interview

When I enter the room, I want to see eye contact and a warm smile, and I also want you to get up out of your seat and a firm handshake. I want the same thing at the end of the interview too. That may sound old-school, or like tired advice, but it’s very important. It’s a sign of warmth and respect and if you can’t do it with me, how can I expect you would do it with a key client or my boss?

Good luck – and let me know how it goes!

If you are also an interviewer, which of these tips do you agree with and do you have additional advice to share?

Related Posts:

• Winning Job Interviews Review
• How to Write a Winning Resume that Stands Out
• 5 Part-Time Jobs with Health Insurance & Benefits

The 10 Best Interview Tips (from a Real Interviewer) is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

If you dig back through the BLS unemployment archives you’ll notice that there were very few months where that number exceeded 20 weeks.

A recession, of course, will result in higher lengths of unemployment. But I think this is different. I think we’ve entered a new era of hardcore job cutting and hesitation to hire at the slightest sign of economic trouble, in the name of profitability. Job security is fairly non-existent.

Consider this for a moment – would there have been such a deep recession if employers hadn’t laid off so many people right away? It’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy: employers see murky economic indicators and want to keep profits the same despite lower revenue -> they lay people off -> others see their peers getting laid off and spend less -> leads to deep revenue declines. Sure, corporate profits may have slightly stung for a quarter or two, but could the economy have bounced right back? One has to wonder… but I digress.

How Much Emergency Savings is Enough?

The point I wanted to make is this: the traditional advice is that 6 months of living expenses in emergency savings is enough. However, with the average unemployment duration at 40.4 weeks, 6 months (or 26 weeks) is no longer enough, particularly when you take into account the possibility of medical emergency, pet operations, or other unforeseen circumstances.

What is a good length these days?

1 year, at a minimum.

Right at the beginning of the recession, my wife was laid off for a few months. Having received unemployment, I can tell you that it’s enough to maybe cover your food expenses – but housing, transportation, and everything else? Forget about it. If you’re in a one income scenario, you will really be put in a tough situation if you are unemployed.

If you have a mortgage, even in a two-income household, you are going to feel it. When you’ve been there, you understand the importance of the stability and peace of mind an emergency savings fund can offer. And they are really quite simple…

How to Prepare an Emergency Fund

1. Figure out how much you need: use a budgeting spreadsheet and go back and look at what your actual expenses were over the last 12 months. Total up how much it would take to cover your living expenses over 12 months based on your findings.
2. Start saving: if you have savings already built, move it to a separate emergency savings account that you won’t dip in to.
3. Let it sit! the goal is to not get this money tied up in things where you cannot access it. Traditional advice has been to let it sit in a savings account or money market account, which are both highly liquid. The problem with this is the earnings are pitiful. A good would be to keep 3 months in an interest-bearing savings account and keep the remainder in a CD like the Ally Raise your Rate CD, which offers 1.8% right now and it can be raised if rates go higher. This allows you to avoid some of the erosion impact of inflation. The early withdrawal penalty is only 2 months of interest earned if you need to access the funds before the term is up.

Emergency Savings Discussion:

How much do you have or want to have in emergency savings?

Emergency Savings: is 6 Months Still Enough? is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

There can’t be many better ways to find out which jobs are the most and least secure than to look at the unemployment rate of each profession over the past year.

That’s why I was so geeked to see the Wall Street Journal’s unemployment charts, which pulled in data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for each profession in 2010. I’m a bit of a data whore, if you haven’t noticed.

Job Security, Revisited

In my opinion, there are four pillars to job security:

• Locale: some jobs will never get outsourced because warm bodies are needed on site.
• Communication: if you are an ‘expert’ in your niche who can connect & drive business, you’re hard to let go.
• Scarce Skill Set: think doctors, lawyers, brain surgeons, rocket scientists. It’s hard to find these skills.
• Trends & Economic Forces: the U.S. has an aging population, health care professionals are in high demand. On the flip side, manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas because there is cheaper labor abroad.

Jobs with the Lowest Unemployment Rate

With the 4 pillars in mind, it was interesting to see a list of the top 20 professions in terms of the lowest unemployment rate in 2010 and how the pillars apply to each (employment rates for 2010 in parentheses):

1. Appraisers & Assessors of Real-Estate (0.4%): I couldn’t believe this at first. 0.4%? Completely counter-intuitive with as few people buying homes as there are. But when you think about it, when are appraisers needed? Not only when homes are being passed from one family to another, but when they are being passed from one family to a bank. Foreclosures! This is an example of where locale and economic trends are a huge driving force.

2. Therapists (0.4%): This is the first of  in the health care field. With all of the depressed people out there who are struggling financially, it’s no surprise that therapists are doing well.

3. Managers of Police & Detectives (0.4%): I’m a little surprised on this one with the cutbacks in police force that we’ve been reading about in the news.

4. Locomotive Engineers & Education (0.4%): These guys (or gals) definitely have the ‘locale’ pillar going for them, as well as economic trends, and a scarce skill set. Trains will probably be run by computers at some point, but until then, it will take people. With gas prices so high, the rail business has made a strong comeback.

5. Directors, Religious Activities & Education (0.8%): When the going gets tough, people get all spiritual. They have to, in order to keep their minds.

6. Dentists (0.8%): Definitely have locale and a scarce skill set going for them.

7. Speech-Language Pathologists (0.8%): Health-related field.

8. Detectives & Criminal Investigators (0.8%): Unemployment inversely proportional to the # of crimes committed?

9. Physicians & Surgeons (0.9%): Aging population trend, locale, and scarce skill set.

10. Occupational Therapists (1.0%): Occupational therapists treat those who are mentally, physically, developmentally, or emotionally disabled. I wonder if all of the vets coming back from their tours has anything to do with this? It would make sense.

11. Farmers & Ranchers (1.2%): Yes, there is the economic trend of rising food prices, which has helped make farming a profitable profession again. However, I think the low unemployment rate here is simply from the fact that if you are a farmer or rancher, you are self-employed and you own land. And as long as you are both, why would you be “unemployed”?

12. Pharmacists (1.2%): Like most medical professions, pharmacists have 3 of the 4 pillars going for them right now: locale, scarce skill set, and economic forces/trends.

13. Dental Hygienists (1.2%): Throw dentists and hygienists in with the medical professionals.

14. Clergy (1.4%): Pretty hard to lose your job when god is on your side  (or lose football games).

15. Veterinarians (1.4%): A bit surprising in that many families who have been foreclosed upon have given up their pets. Of course, many of those were lower income families who didn’t take their animals to the vet in the first place.

16. Lawyers (1.5%): There’s always going to be bullshit lawsuits out there. And how many lawyers are going to admit they are ‘unemployed’ in the first place?

17. Police & Sheriff’s Patrol Officers (1.7%): Third ‘criminal justice’ occupation to make the list.

18. Operations Research Analysts (2.0%): You think it’d be easy to fire someone who you don’t even know what the heck it is they due. Apparently not.

19. Judges, Magistrates, & Other Judicial Workers (2.0%): 4th criminal justice occupation to make the top 20 list. I need to look into this trend more, because it’s not very intuitive other than crime rates being up due to more people falling on hard economic times.

19. Physical Therapists (2.0%): Medical. Again.

20. Psychologists (2.1%): Medical. Yet Again.

21. Registered Nurses (2.1%): I had to add nurses, even though they were just outside of the top 20. Why? At 2.84 million, there are more than 2.5 X employed nurses out there than any other occupation on this list (lawyers came in second at 1.04 million). Why is that important? It’s one thing to have an unemployment rate of 2.0% when there are only 71,000 jobs out there (judicial workers), but it’s an entirely different thing when there is 2.8 million. That signals a true strong demand for that occupation. And this is one that is not going away anytime soon.

10 of the top 21 were in the medical field (11 if you factor in veterinarians). Four were in the criminal justice field (5 if you throw in lawyers). And 2 were in religious works. That’s a total of 18 out of 21 in medical, law enforcement, and religion.

Top 10 Jobs with the Highest Unemployment Rate

I’ll cover the top 10 jobs with the highest unemployment rates, but only a few comments need to be made, since 8 of the top 10 are in the construction/build trades, and are as follows:

1. Helpers, construction trades (36%)

3. structural & steel workers (28.4%)

4. roofers (27.1%), 5. millwrights (25.5%)

6. cement masons/concrete (25.3%)

7. brick/stone masons (25.1%)

8. construction laborers (25.0%)

9. drywall installers (23.9%).

When the economy shrinks, credit is hard to come by, and real-estate value is plummeting, it’s no surprise that people in these occupations are going to suffer greatly. It’s unfortunate, because they are some of the hardest working people in the world. But this recession is about as strong of a negative economic trend as you will come across.

The other two to make the top 10 with the highest unemployment rate were:

2. Telemarketers (34.8%): Telemarketers are usually below the college graduate level and don’t have highly valued skill sets. In other words, they are easy to fire when times get tough and rehire when they get better. At the same time, more and more are going overseas. Communication skills are important, but highly undervalued in the telemarketer field.

10. Interviewers (23.4%): Nobody was hiring! And because of that nobody was hiring interviewers.

Unemployment Rate by Job Discussion:

If you’re thinking of changing professions, trying to absorb some of these trends is a good place to start. The Wall Street Journal list is sortable by number of jobs, unemployment rate, and % increase or decrease from 2009 to 2010. Occupations with high unemployment rates now are going to take time to turnaround because the market is flooded with workers looking to get back in. But those with very low ones at the tail end of a recession might be a pretty safe bet. I wouldn’t jump to be a real estate appraiser though.

Was your job on the list?

Related Posts:

• 5 Part-Time Jobs with Health Insurance
• Corporate Profits at All Time High. Unemployment at 9%. What does this mean?
• 5 Ways to Recession Proof Yourself
• Unemployed? Many Hiring Employers won’t Even Give you a Look

Looking for a Secure Job? Start with these 20 Occupations with the Lowest Unemployment Rate is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

Corporate profits in Q3 of 2010 reached an all-time high at an annually adjusted rate of $1.659 trillion. Try telling that to the unemployed.

The U.S. unemployment rate was at 9.0% in the month of October of this year. This is down from a recent high of 10.6% in January of this year, but still significantly higher than the lowest point in the last decade – October of 2006.

Why is October of 2006 a significant month?

It was the month following the last time we saw corporate profits at this level – $1.655 trillion in Q3 of 2006, to be exact.

What was the unemployment rate in October of 2006?

4.1%

If you’re unemployed and that does not scare you, I don’t know what will.

Productivity at Work

In my ‘Americans are Overworked‘ post, I talked a lot about productivity gains. Specifically,

Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased 400% since 1950. One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not. Someone is profiting, it’s just not the average American worker.

The obvious that I didn’t state was that the ‘someone’ is corporations.

You can’t blame them. By nature, corporate America is designed to make money as efficiently as possible. If they can shed a full 5% of the workforce and still squeeze the same amount of money out of what is left, why wouldn’t they? Capitalism at work, baby. Given the choice to make as much money with fewer expenses, would you not choose the same if you were running your own business?

Why is this so Scary for the Unemployed?

Getting back to previous levels of profitability has proven not to be enough incentive for corporate America to bring on enough new workers to significantly impact the unemployment rate. For that to happen, the U.S. would have to see unexpectedly explosive growth. And that doesn’t appear to be happening any time in the near future.

If you were sitting around thinking it was only a matter of time before the economy improved and employers would start flooding you with offers, think again.

This is further sign that you’re going to have to be scrappier than ever to find or create new opportunities for yourself. And it might take a little re-inventing in the process.

What’s your take?

Related Posts:

• 5 Ways to Recession Proof Yourself
• Unemployed? Many Hiring Employers Won’t Give you a Look
• Job Security: How to Get it
• Should you Tell your Employer you are Changing Careers?
• I Hate my Job!

Corporate Profits at All-Time High. Unemployment at 9%. What does this Mean? is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

‘Hate’ might be a strong word, but you get the point: Americans no likey their jobs. Reasons cited in the survey for contributing to unhappiness included:

• Only 43% of workers feel that they have job security.
• The average employee contribution for single-coverage medical care benefits rose from $48 a month to $76 a month between 1999 and 2006.
• Only 51% find their jobs interesting (down from 70% in 1987). Wait, weren’t we supposed to be transitioning to the ‘creative’ economy?
• Our commutes are longer.
• We like our co-workers less.
• And we like our bosses less.

The survey didn’t look into how overworked we are and how that has eroded our work/life balance, but I have a sneaking suspicion that is a major component as well.

Some of these things we can control. Others we cannot (barring taking a new job). Having been there myself, I’ve found that the best way to deal with it is to take a rational approach to help regroup, restore clarity, and give you some much needed perspective. I’ll show you how.

5 Steps to Take when you Absolutely Hate your Job

Step 1: Be Honest with Yourself. Why Do you Hate your Job?

Before you get in to a deep analysis, you first need to ask yourself, “why do I hate my job?”, “is this job for me?”, or even “is this career for me?”. And this is something you probably should not make a snap judgment on. Not liking your job could be due to a number of factors, and before you get up and quit, you need to find out why you really don’t like it. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• “Do I not like this particular job, this particular employer, or this particular career?” (this is an important distinction to make)
• “Am I under-challenged?”
• “Am I under-paid?”
• “Do I fit in to the culture?”
• “Am I ultimately on the path to self-employment?”

Step 2: Will Solving the Reasons for your Unhappiness Make you Happier?

If the answer to this question is yes and you think that solving the problems will result in more job satisfaction, move on to the next step and try to address them head on. If the answer is no, or that you’ll only moderately be less miserable, then maybe you are in the wrong job.

Step 3: Separate the things you can Control and the things you Cannot

This may be the most important step. Creating a list of things you can control keeps this exercise solutions-focused. It gives you hope and something to constructively work on. Make a list and spend some time contemplating how you can address each problem. Then address them. Have a winner’s mentality. You might just find that you were unhappy because you hadn’t addressed the problems in the first place.

Step 4: Do you Need an Attitude Adjustment?

If you have an honest list of problems that are out of your control that are leading to a lot of job dissatisfaction, are these things truly worthy of the power to make you miserable, or is an attitude adjustment necessary? A very smart philosopher once said “life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it”. Is your cynicism getting the best of you and are the things leading to you being miserable really worth it? Maybe it’s just time to get over something and move on.

Whether your attitude is the problem or not, the next (and final) step should help add perspective and tell you what to do next.

Step 5: Look Around and Complete the ‘Grass is Greener Exercise’

When I have felt like I’ve been stuck in a rut at my job, the best thing I’ve done for myself is to look for other jobs and network. When you find that you have other options it does two important things:

• takes the weight off your shoulders.
• let’s you make honest comparisons.

As for the former, job dissatisfaction can result when you think that you are backed into a corner and have absolutely no other options. When you realize that is not true, it takes so much weight off of your current situation. Suddenly, you might feel free to take more risks at work, enjoy the people around you more, and try to make the best of the time you have left there.

For the latter, you now know that you have options and you can explore them. This is what I like to call the ‘Grass is Greener Exercise’. Finding other jobs allows you to create a list of pros and cons and compare them to your existing job and ultimately answer the following questions to determine if indeed the grass is really greener.

• how does ‘real wage‘ aka ‘total compensation’ compare between jobs?
• would a new job require me to move? Can I afford the cost of living increase?
• have I learned 95% of what I can in my job? Would I learn more if I moved in to this other job?
• is the prospective job more in line with what I want my career to be?
• would I fit in to the culture better?

Answering these questions will give you the knowledge you need to determine whether or not it is time to move on. If you decide not to, odds are that you will have a new-found appreciation for your existing job. Either way, you will likely be happier as a result.

Hating your Job Discussion:

• Do you currently ‘hate’ your job? What have you done or will you do to address it?
• Why do you hate your job?
• What has helped you the most when you’ve been stuck in a rut at your job?

I Hate My Job! 55% of Americans Agree. Try These 5 Steps to Fix it is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

What Job Performance CAN Do

Job performance can help you ascend in your career faster, all else being equal, and potentially earn you a higher income. And everyone needs to hit a low bar level of performance to keep a job. Additionally, when apples are compared to apples and a business downsizes, but doesn’t cut all jobs, a high performer stands a better chance of sticking around than a poor performer. However, on its own, performance guarantees very little when it comes to job security versus the other pillars of job security. It is an island unto itself. I’ll explain.

Why Performance Means (almost) Nothing to Job Security

Locale:

If you have a job that is not location dependent, job performance will not protect you. As an example, let’s say you work in an office in San Francisco as a software developer. Management is looking to cut costs and they have found a team in India that can do the same work as your team, but at one-tenth of the cost. It doesn’t matter if you are twice the performer as your U.S. based colleagues, your job was not location dependent (meaning it could have been performed anywhere in the world). You lost your job (and all of your colleagues did too), while somewhere an average performing policeman or firefighter kept theirs. Locale dependence trumps performance.

Communication:

I have worked with a number of people that are great at their jobs, but you could never see them ascending to an elite level of leadership (aka ‘the protected business class’). At the same time, I have seen lower to moderate performers with great communications skills quickly climb up the corporate ladder. The ability to communicate, be liked, and inspire will always trump core job performance.

Scarce Skill Set:

Do you know of any average electricians, doctors, dentists, or plumbers that have been ‘laid off’? I can’t think of any. But we all know a super sales rep., accountant, or general business manager that has. Scarcity trumps performance.

Trends and Economic Forces:

If you’re an average performing nurse, it would be hard for you to lose or not find a job over the next few years. If you’re a high-performing manufacturing factory line worker, I can’t tell you the same. Performance can only go far in saving your job from a sinking sector. Being an average performer in the right place at the right time trumps being the right person in the wrong place every time.

Don’t Get the Wrong Idea

Don’t use my opinion here as a permission slip to slack off at work! Obviously, you need to do your job and do it well. And you should take pride in a job well done. Performing well never hurts your employability. If members of your team are on the chopping block, I’d rather be considered as a strong performer than a poor one, all else being equal. At the same time, performance is never a guaranteed ticket to job security, and if you really want to guarantee it for yourself, you need to consider the true pillars of job security.

Job Performance Discussion:

• Where do you think job performance ranks compared to the other ‘pillars’?
• Have you seen any examples that validate or refute my points?

Related Posts:

• The Top 10 Cities for Young Professionals
• The U.S. is the Most Overworked Developed Nation in the World
• 70% of Americans want to be Self Employed
• 5 Ways to Recession Proof Yourself

Why Job Performance is Mostly Unrelated to Job Security is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

In 2008, the Bureau of Labor Service released comprehensive data regarding duration of employment over the past 30 years. The results show how short our working lifespan is at one particular employer.

- For ages 23-27, 75% of workers were with their employer for less than 2 years, and 88% less than 5 years.
- For ages 28-32, 68% of workers were with their employer for less than 2 years, and 84% less than 5 years.

Those numbers drop, but not significantly, as you age. And the average number of jobs held by those born between 1957-1964 (up to age 44) was at 11. Generations X and Y are too young to do a study like this, but I fully anticipate that number to skyrocket.

Damn, we are disloyal!

At-Will Employment

At the same time, we live in an age of at-will employment. And employers have not exactly been the most loyal in return. At will employment states that:

…Any hiring is presumed to be “at will”; that is, the employer is free to discharge individuals “for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all,” and the employee is equally free to quit, strike, or otherwise cease work.

This law has been touted as a measure of protection on both sides, but with the decreasing number of contracts offered and erosion of unions over the years, employers have been very liberal in their willingness to exercise this doctrine. Case in point: the last two years.

The result: For better or worse, loyalty in the workplace is dead.

Should you Tell your Employer you are Changing Careers?

Of course, these days, it seems like workers are just as likely to change careers as they are jobs (no official study has been done on the subject yet). With all of this disloyalty and change, it creates some interesting dilemmas in the workplace. Here are a few examples.

Case #1: The Employee who is Afraid of Losing their Job

A close friend has recently run into a dilemma around whether or not she should tell her employer that she is changing careers. It’s an interesting situation because she is working for an employer that is not thriving in this tough economy, she wouldn’t change careers for another year or two, and she doesn’t want to jeopardize the current income that she needs to live on.

At the same time, she is taking evening classes and needs to leave work by a certain time on nights that she has classes. And it has already put her in some awkward situations where she’s had to make an excuse of not being able to stay late to work on a project.

Layoffs in this industry are everyday occurrences and if it’s known that she is changing careers, she might jump to the front of the line (in spite of good performance).

• Is she under obligation to tell her employer she is changing careers when it might result in her termination?

Case #2: The Expendable Employee

I work for a big company that hires a number of spring chickens right out of school. It’s pretty common that in less than 2 years, most of them realize work is actually work and they go back to a school or transfer to greener pastures. In a culture where this is expected, it’s fairly common that the employees are up front about their impending departures. Do they need to be? There is almost a factory line of even fresher chickens coming through right after them to gladly fill in, and the company is certainly not dependent on any one employee. Everyone is replaceable.

• Are these expendable employees under obligation to tell management that they are changing careers?

Case #3: The Essential Employee

In some small organizations, out of sheer lack of numbers, many employees are a one-person show for their given specialty. Any time one of them leaves, it has the potential to be a huge loss for the employer. And anyone coming in after them could surely benefit from mentoring of their predecessor. However, this very same organization could have let employees go without notice. In fact, they probably have. And it could have been a close friend of yours. At-will employment, remember?

• Is the essential, at-will employee under obligation to tell the employer they are leaving?

Career Change Discussion:

• What do you think in each of the three cases mentioned?
• Have you always told your employer you were changing jobs or careers?
• When is it acceptable to not tell your employer about your career change?

Related Posts:

• 5 Ways to Recession Proof Yourself
• How to Calculate your Real Hourly Wage
• Unemployment Benefits Extended
• Extreme Job Hunting Strategies

The Age of Disloyalty & Career Change: Should you Tell your Employer you are Changing Careers? is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

On my recent economy rant post, I went into some uncertainty about the stock market and economy as a whole and concluded with three recommendations on things that you can control:

1. Live frugally within your means

2. Save your money and have a big position in cash for emergencies and tough times

3. Build your skills and career to be economy-proof

The last recommendation prompted a 20somethingfinance reader, Jesse, to ask the following question:

“I would like to hear more about how you think one should economy proof your skills and career. I’m currently in a turbulent field, (marketing communications) and thinking about how to either make my job economy proof or changing careers. What are your suggestions?”

It’s a great question, and one that definitely deserves some focus. It’s true, you can’t control the economy as a whole, but what you can do is control how you economy-proof you are. So I put together 5 recommendations. What you’ll find in these recommendations is that many of them feed into each other. If you’re strong in all five areas, your fears about the economy should drift away and you’ll find yourself to be a much more well-rounded employee and human being.

1. Find a Career that is Indispensable, Even in Recessions

This will undoubtedly be the hardest one to come to grips with and take action on, but some professions are much harder hit in recessions than others. And your profession might just be one of them.

Looking for a recession-proof career? Find a profession that is indispensable to the public. If you’re an auto mechanic, a plumber, or a nurse – a recession should have little to no impact on you. People will always need your services, and demand in a recession might actually go up for people with these skills. If you’re in finance, retail, or home construction, the demand for your services will plummet in a recession. It doesn’t matter if you’re an all-star performer or not, in many cases. If your job is easy to replace by cheaper labor or when the economy rebounds, you will be one of the first to go and you will also have a harder time finding a new job.

As a real-life example that hits close to home, my wife is a landscape architect, and back in January of 2009, right after the beginning of the financial sector collapse, she and a good number of her co-workers were immediately laid off. Why? For starters, in a recession, nobody is building anything. Her second problem was the way engineering firms bill hours. If they have people on payroll whose hours can’t be billed towards a project, that worker becomes red ink. Her profession is the first to let people go in a recession. And that’s not a fun place to be.

2. Start Getting Paid to do the Things you Love Outside of Work

This suggestion is much easier to implement than the last, and the two combined will leave you in great shape.

There are lots of things that you love doing (I hope). And the odds are that there are a lot of people out there willing to pay you for doing those exact same things for them – just remember that prostitution is only legal in Nevada. I kid, I kid.

Here’s a list of 55 marketable hobbies that you can get paid for. What does getting paid to do things outside of work do for you?

• Multiple Income Streams: It goes without saying (but I will anyway), that added income streams outside of your day job are going to help as a safeguard in the event that you lose that day job. Huge benefit.
• When you have that added cushion and know that you can get paid for doing things you like doing, it starts to shift your perspective. Odds are that you won’t be as stressed out about losing your day job, and if things go really well, you might even voluntarily leave your day job, regardless of the economy.
• You start growing skills in areas that are in demand, which could lead you into your next career.
• It helps you build a network in those same areas.

3. Network Like Crazy

If you don’t have a LinkedIn account, start one today. Find anyone and everyone that you’ve ever worked or been friends with, and connect to them. Keep your profile up-to-date and add new connections as you make them. You never know when your social network will come in handy and if you wait until you get laid off to start putting one together, you’re at a big disadvantage. Focus on having genuine, positive interactions with other professionals, connect with them, and don’t feel shy about reaching out to them when needed.

4. Volunteer

Whether you have a job at the moment or not, start volunteering. I used to work in non-profit and two of the volunteers I worked with while there are now full-time staff. If you believe in a particular cause and work hard, that will be noticed by the organization and it will also be noticed by other volunteers you encounter. You’ll also often find that these volunteers are a very well connected bunch who might just be able to help you get your next job.

5. Perform

If you love what you do, are passionate about it, and make calculated risks, you’re going to stand out amongst your peers as a top performer. You want to make it hard for your employer to let you go, not easy. As I mentioned earlier, some careers are indispensable. Some employees are considered indispensable as well, even if their role is easily filled by others. If you hate your job and are not passionate about it, you might be in the wrong career or working at the wrong employer.

And the last thing you can do is just relax and not stress out. Until something bad happens, nothing bad has happened. Do the 5 things I mentioned not out of fear, but because they will make you a more well-rounded, happier, connected, and relaxed person.

Recession-Proofing Discussion:

• What steps have you taken to recession-proof your career?
• What careers do you think are indispensable?

Related Posts:

• Stop Dreaming & Start Retiring
• I Hate my Job!
• Get Paid to do what you Love
• 7 Lessons Learned After One Week of Unemployment
• Job Security: 4 Ways to Guarantee it

5 Ways to Recession-Proof Yourself is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.