Q. I’ve been in my field for 25 years, and it is going the way of the dinosaurs. With the economy as it is, there is no way I can retire. Do you have ideas about how to stay employable when your industry is dying?
A. Yes, your old industry might be dying, but your skills are still useful. We all get accustomed to thinking of ourselves as “insert job description.” When the door on our old job description closes, we need to separate the skills we have from our job title and look at the work world with creative eyes.
For instance, in the last years, I’ve helped my clients in technology, health care, insurance, government, law and pharmaceuticals reinvent themselves based on their talents, not their last job title.
From their résumés to what they say in an interview, my clients learn to talk about their accomplishments, contributions to their companies and knowledge base without restricting themselves to members of a dying profession.
Basic psychology and business marketing make it clear that you have to think like your customers. Your first customer, when you are looking for a new profession, is an organization that is limping along without your skills.
Some of my clients feel quite shy and inadequate when approaching a new employer who is hiring for a job title they haven’t previously held. I remind my clients that if they can sidestep their embarrassment and focus instead on the service their future employer would enjoy and needs – they may well get the job.
Like teenagers who think the world is constantly judging them, we find that being forced to do something new in the workplace guarantees our self-consciousness. If we succumb to focusing only on our self-consciousness, our insecurity will be so obvious that no one will employ us.
If you concentrate instead on the business world needing and wanting your skills, experience and work ethic, you’ll feel and come across as confident.
A standard trick that public speakers use to overcome anxiety is to imagine an audience in their underwear. The reason this trick works is it puts a nervous speaker in touch with the vulnerability we share.
Since you know what it is like to need help from others, you don’t need to imagine your interviewers in their underwear. But it will help you to imagine them as desperately seeking an employee who can help them be successful in their business. Wouldn’t you like to help them out by doing that job?
Q. I have a co-worker who is an idiot. Every day I go to work, I bite my tongue so I don’t point out how stupid he is. Is there a tool to bring up a better idea?
A. Yes, unless you want your good ideas to drown in a pool of conflict, simply repeat back your co-worker’s idea as Option A. Now mention your idea as Option B and include pluses and minuses of both ideas.
Your co-worker will save face, and you will save the day!
