As a lot of my work recently has been with people who are unemployed, I have a ton of articles coming through my feeds on job search, unemployment, etc. Most of them are about "personal branding" and "building your network," how to manage your social media presence, write a great LinkedIn profile and navigate ever-more confusing and time-consuming online applicant tracking systems.  This morning, I ran across one that lists 18 Reasons Why You're Still Unemployed. These include being pierced, tattooed, angry, depressed, interviewing poorly--the list goes on. All of this, of course, suggests that the reasons for your unemployment lie somewhere in YOU. YOU need to do something to fix all of these flaws and once you do, then (presumably) a new job will be waiting for you.  I have a secret for you though. You could fix every single flaw on this list--including re-training for another career and magically erasing the depression and anger that pretty much go with the territory of unemployment--and you could STILL be unemployed. Do you know why? Because there are 3.3 job seekers for every job opening.  I'm going to repeat that.  There are 3.3 job seekers for every job opening.  That's on average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Depending on where you're looking for work and the kind of work you're seeking, the numbers can be even worse.  It's kind of like playing musical chairs with three people walking around a single chair. When the music ends, only one of them will be able to sit down. And no matter how awesome the other two may be, through no fault of their own, they will still be sitting on the floor.  This is the elephant in the room we're not really discussing. We're all so busy looking at what we can personally control (like our "personal brand" and endlessly re-writing our resumes) that we've completely lost touch with a fundamental reality.  There are not enough jobs to go around.  Why does this matter?  Well if you're unemployed, it matters a lot. It gets old feeling like you've done everything you can and still you're having no luck landing a job. And then when you feel angry or depressed about it, people admonish you to "have a better attitude."  Worse, they will argue that it's your "bad attitude" that keeps you from finding something new! What about people who have a job? Well this should matter to you too, because this trend of fewer jobs for more people is going to continue, and probably accelerate. See this and this to get an idea of how technology is impacting jobs. Then read this Business Week article on the disposable worker to see how that dynamic is intersecting with technology. You may be safe for now, but that may not last forever. And if you're one of the lucky few who doesn't have to deal with this reality, you are still going to have a spouse, child, parent, or friend who does. At some point, we are all going to be dealing with unemployment, many of us more than once.  I think we're doing tons of damage to people by continuing to peddle this story that it's individual shortcomings and flaws that explain long-term and/or frequent unemployment. Yes, we can all do a better job of job searching. Yes, people still continue to find jobs in this economy.  But focusing on individual flaws keeps us all from discussing the bigger problem--that there aren't enough jobs for everyone who wants one.  So let's stop putting all of our energy into figuring out how to "brand" ourselves so that we can compete for the limited pool of jobs that are available. And let's stop acting like the unemployed are lepers who somehow deserve their fate because they didn't create a great LinkedIn profile or keep their skills updated.  Instead, let's turn to discussing what we're going to do about the fact that the pool of available jobs is shrinking and the real crisis is not about personal branding. It's about needing more jobs.  And let's quit telling the unemployed that it's their fault they can't find work. Believe me, if there were tons of jobs that needed doing, then employers would be a lot less picky. Your tattos and piercings and lack of a social media profile wouldn't get in the way of needing to get some work done.  It's simple math. So let's start dealing with that. 

  Charlie Kim, CEO of NextJump A few weeks ago I wrote a post on the "disposable worker" and the damage I think we're doing to ourselves and our economy with this approach. Yesterday in a comment on that post, Catherine Lombardozzi pointed me in the direction of an interview with NextJump CEO, Charlie Kim, whose company has adopted a "no fire" policy. Here's how that policy emerged:   I always thought we were a company with a strong focus on people, and it was for that reason that I advocated "fast firing" — if you knew someone wasn’t working out, don’t prolong the agony. Allowing bad behavior to perpetuate is one of the worst things you can do for team performance. . .  I was talking with Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller at Massive, a gathering organized by Simon Sinek, and Bob challenged me on this point and asked me how I’d like my son to be fired by someone in the future. That floored me. Being fired is a highly traumatic emotional event. It’s the equivalent of being told "you are no good."   Charlie is right, of course. It's difficult to not take a lay-off personally, even if it has nothing to do with our performance. We see it as a commentary on our worth, especially if others are staying behind. Why were WE selected to be laid off, when others were considered valuable enough to keep?  Charlie goes on to describe the impact of "no fire" on his company's operations: Once you realize that you are entering into a lifelong relationship, hiring starts to look a lot more like adoption, or dating. Multiple interactions over some time are required before our team would get comfortable with a prospective hire. Every hiring manager started hiring more carefully, something I’d been advocating for but couldn’t make happen in every manager. Without further direction, they started treating hiring like adoption: once we take someone into our family, they’re here for life, when things don’t work, they’re responsible for training them, helping them. Training also became much more comprehensive, touching subjects such as character, grit, and integrity in ways we had previously viewed as beyond the scope of company training. Almost immediately turnover went from 40% to 0%. Recruiters and other CEOs have told me that NxJumpers aren’t even taking their calls. The percentage of employees who said they "love," not like, not tolerate, but LOVE their jobs went from 20% to 90%. I told you about the formal deliberate changes we made to our training programs. There were powerful, self-organizing impacts as well. Peer counseling groups formed in every part of the company. Groups of 3 to 4 people meeting regularly to help each other grow, talk through hardships. Probably the biggest impact was the effectiveness of performance evaluations. Development discussions were usually wrought with skepticism from the employee standpoint — are you really trying to help me or just documenting material to potentially fire me? Since getting fired wasn’t an option, everyone became more open to talk about their real problems. Performance evaluations became what it was always intented for - development discussions, open, honest and often real and raw conversations on what people are struggling with. Since people could voice real concerns at work, they left those toxins there and didn’t take them home with them. Home life improved as well.   There are still times, of course, when a hire doesn't work out, but NextJump provides the support and encouragement for people to move to their next position: I reassigned a person to a job position and told them their new job was to look for a new job. We continued to pay them, provide office space, access to company resources, and promised positive evaluations as appropriate. This "no fire" policy seems like a huge win/win for both individuals and the companies they work for. When employees feel the deeper commitment from the company to their professional well-being, they can focus on what really matters, rather than on the protective behaviors a more uncertain work environment tends to engender. There's also time and space to deal with the deeper, more personal issues that inevitably impact company performance but that we currently address by discarding  a person and moving on to the next one.  What would happen if more companies took the "no fire" pledge? How could this change the experience of work and the quality of our workforce? 

  Last week I wrote about an elephant in the room of careers and employment that we aren't really acknowledging or discussing--the fact that there are 3.3 job seekers for every available job opening.  Today I want to acknowledge another elephant in the room that is the reality for both those who are unemployed and those who are currently working. It is this (and pardon my bluntness here): From a job seeker perspective, many, many jobs suck. On just about every measure you can imagine, job quality from a job seeker perspective is trending downward. Real wages for many jobs are declining. Adjusted for inflation, the average U.S household has lower income than it did in 1997.   To the extent that there is any job growth, most of it has been in low-wage industries. And healthcare benefits and retirement fund costs are being shifted onto workers, contributing to the erosion of their wages. Assuming, of course, that they have healthcare or retirement benefits available to them at all.  For many workers, full-time employment is a dream, especially in those industries where employers are using just-in-time scheduling to bring workers in for the busiest few hours, rather than for an entire shift. And in an effort to avoid the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, many companies are cutting hours even further, preferring to hire a number of part-time workers rather than fewer full-time employees. This forces workers to try to juggle multiple jobs with each employer demanding that their job be the first priority.  For salaried workers, hours are longer  and increasingly we are on call 24/7, afraid to not respond to an email or answer a client call because we could be seen as not being dedicated enough. No one wants to be the target in a layoff, so we do whatever we can to appear to be the most productive and "value-add," even if that means giving up the necessary down-time that actually helps people function.  Many, if not most workplaces are short-staffed and those workers "lucky" enough to have a job, find that they are expected to pick up the slack for those who have been laid off or not hired in the first place. Workplaces are engineered to wring every ounce of productivity from their workers and managers spend much of their time trying to make sure this happens. Unfortunately, workers aren't even the beneficiaries of these productivity gains.  We are also dealing with a great deal of uncertainty at work. Many jobs are now explicitly temporary or contingent work, so those workers know they are always on borrowed time.  But even "permanent" workers know there is no guarantee and that lay-offs can come at any moment.    On top of all of this, job duties change quickly, and requirements for doing those jobs change even more rapidly, often in ways we didn't anticipate. With a glut of workers in the market, it's easier for employers to demand more skills, education and specific work experiences largely because they can. But how do you keep yourself prepared for what is essentially a moving target? And how do you keep upgrading your skills when you're spending so much of your time just trying to keep your head above water at work? The reality is, that in addition to the sheer lack of available jobs, we are also dealing with a severe decline in the quality of those jobs that are available. All of the talk about "poorly prepared" workers obscures these facts and keeps us focused on job seeker deficiences, rather than on the deficiencies of the modern workplace. This is not to say that we don't need to find ways to continue to learn and grow as workers. We do. But at the same time, we need to push back on the notion that if we only fixed workers, then everything else would fall into place. This simply isn't true. We need to broaden the conversations we are having about work and the economy beyond the simplistic "pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you'll  be OK" discussions that currently dominate our national landscape. There is something much bigger going on that we need to address. But we have to start by acknowledging the realities of our situation. There aren't enough jobs for everyone who wants to work and the jobs we do have are of increasingly poor quality. 

  I wrote a couple of long posts in February on the two major factors most job seekers are dealing with in this economy. The first was on the reality that there aren't enough jobs for everyone who wants one. The second was on the poor quality of many of the jobs that do exist.  After writing these, though, I was left wondering what it is we can do to operate in this kind of environment. How do I advise people about career and professional development in a world that is so uncertain, risky and, frankly, negative?  Yesterday it hit me. There is only one thing we can do if we want to be successful when change is happening so rapidly and when so much of our work life is about dealing with stress and curve balls.  We have to develop our career resilience skills.  That's it. That's all we can do. We have to develop our resilience skills and use that resilience to meet the challenges that have become a regular part of our work lives.  Why Resilience? According to the American Psychological Association, resilience is your capacity to deal with stress, adversity and uncertainty. Resilience is about bouncing back, rolling with the punches, getting back up on the horse. It's our ability to take what life throws at us and use it to grow stronger.  Our careers are no longer a matter of making a decision about what we want to do with the rest of our lives, getting an education and then following a straight-line career path to that dream job. Those days are long gone.  Today's careers require us to be agile, flexible, and adaptable. To see opportunity in challenges and to develop our capacity to deal with constantly changing parameters and requirements.  When you build your resilience, you are in a better position to adapt to ongoing changes. You accept change as a part of life and see change as an opportunity, not as a series of insurmountable obstacles.  Resilience can also help you feel more in control. You're able to keep things in perspective and to see yourself as an actor in your life, rather than as a victim. High resilience also allows you to be more pro-active in responding to whatever gets thrown at you.  Four Patterns of Career Resilience In looking at resilience as it applies to our careers, I see four patterns we need to incorporate into our lives. I see these as patterns, because they are ongoing components of our behavior and thinking that we need to work on. Career resilience is not a once and done event. It is a way of being that you must focus on developing. The four patterns I see are: Patterns that support Clarifying Patterns that support Connecting Patterns that support Creating Patterns that support Coping Patterns for Clarifying Resilience needs clarity. We need to understand who we are, what we want, and how we bring value to the work that we do. What are our signature strengths? What do we want more of in our lives?  Clarity is also about knowing what's going on in the outside world. What occupational, industry and economic trends impact our careers? What is the likelihood that technology or outsourcing could eliminate or completely change our jobs? What credentials and skills are needed to be successful?  Most importantly, what goals and plans do we need to develop for ourselves, based on our awareness of ourselves and the changes that we see going on in the world? Clarity gives us a sense of purpose and control because it allows us to know where we stand and to see where we can fit in as new opportunities and challenges come our way.  Patterns for Connecting Resilience thrives on connections. Resilient people have a core group of individuals they know are always in their corner. They look for who is available, who's trustworthy and who's helpful and they go toward the light of these connections.  They aren't afraid to ask for and receive help and they offer their own services in return.  Connections and relationships are also at the heart of what it takes to be successful in a networked world. It is your relationships that bring you information, knowledge and opportunities. Your connections can help you bounce back and spring forward, even under the most adverse conditions. But connections don't just happen. We must be purposeful and intentional in developing those connections that will most support us in adapting to change.    Patterns for Creating Resilience is also about action. What steps are we taking to achieve our goals, to learn from our misakes, to engage in new experiences that can grow our skills and networks? Resilient people have a plan and they work that plan.  We also have to ask ourselves what patterns do we have in place that provide the best structures for creating and experimenting? How do we spend our time? What rituals are part of our work lives? How do we move from insight into action?  Flow needs a framework. If you want your career to flow more easily, you must create frameworks for that to happen.  Patterns for Coping Ultimately, resilience is about how we cope with life's ups and downs. How do we manage our emotional responses and maintain an optimistic outlook, even under dire circumstances? How do we nurture and take care of ourselves on a regular basis so that we can bring our best selves to our lives? What stories do we tell ourselves about our work, our strengths and weaknesses and about how people relate to us? How do these stories impact our ability to meet challenges head on?  Resilient people have a generally positive outlook on life and have learned to persevere in the face of challenges. They feel their emotions, but they don't allow their emotions to overwhelm their ability to act. Effective coping mechanisms are a critical component of developing career resilience.   Additional Thoughts on Resilience I see the four patterns of career resilience working together synergistically, each connected to and reinforcing the others. All of them are critically important, although at different times we may find ourselves more focused on a particular pattern. When we're confused or uncertain about where to go next, we may pay more attention to Clarifying. When we're overly stressed and anxious, we may need to spend time on our Coping patterns. If we're trying to expand into something new, we'd be well-served to focus on the Connecting and Creating patterns. And if we've lost our jobs, we need to spend time working on all four patterns.  There are two things that feel most important to me about developing career resilience. The first is that resilience should be our goal. We cannot control the people and events that surround us, but we can control our capacity to meet the challenges that inevitably arise at work. By focusing on resilience as our goal, rather than on trying to control what is uncontrollable, we put ourselves into a much healthier position for moving forward.  I also see the idea of patterns of behavior being critically important. Resilience is not something we summon at will. It is something we must build and work on every day. Believe me, we know it when we haven't paid attention to one or more of the career resilience patterns in our lives. I see this all the time when I'm working with people who lose their jobs. They've done little to develop these patterns in their lives, so they are less equipped to move on to their next opportunity.  For me, working on career resilience is a worthy goal. It's a way to respond to all that is negative and challenging at work and to focus our attention where it's most needed--on our capacity to creatively and effectively respond to a new normal.  What are your thoughts on this? Does the idea of career resilience resonate with you? What do you do to build your own career reslience? 

  Last week I wrote about career resilience and the need for us to develop four patterns in our work lives: Clarifying Connecting Creating Coping One thing that I've observed about resilient people is that they persist. Even when things are at their worst or it seems like they are going nowhere, resilient people are persistent people. As Steve Pavlina puts it, "they press on, even when they feel like quitting." Persistence is one of the major Coping patterns we need to develop in our lives if we ever hope to be truly resilient. Without persistence, we won't be able to work on any of the other patterns we need to grow in ourselves, because honestly, developing career resilience isn't always easy work.  The problem with persistence is that it's not terribly sexy. It's the daily, weekly, monthly grind of self-discipline, of slogging through mud when we feel like just giving up. Believe me, I struggle with persistence all the time, so I know it's not an easy thing to do.  But resilience requires persistence. It takes diligence to forge new habits and self discipline to bring our vision into reality. The essence of reslience is not giving up. Persistence is what makes sure that we don't.  Where do we need to show persistence? I think in two ways--persistence of vision and persistence of action.  Persistence of vision is having a clear image of where we want to go--direction, not necessarily destination. Persistence of vision is what drives us to create, to the actions that we need to take to move forward.  Persistence of action is even more important, though, because this is often where we fall down. We may have a persistent vision of where we want to go, but we fail to take the steps to actually get there.---especially if we encounter obstacles or challenges along the way that make us want to give up.  So how to develop our persistence muscles? Probably the best advice I've seen on this comes from this post by Todd Warren (quoting Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich). We need to have: 1. "A definite purpose backed by burning desire for its fulfillment" 2. "A definite plan backed by continuous action."  3.  "A mind closed tightly against all negative and discouraging influences, including negative suggestions of relatives, friends and acquaintances." 4.  "A friendly alliance with one or more persons who will encourage one to follow through with both plan and purpose."   A purpose, motivation to achieve that purpose, a plan that turns into action, a positive mind and supportive people--that's what we need to practice persistence. And these are the tools of career resilience, too. 

I'm currently facilitating an 8-month long leadership course that meets monthly. Yesterday's topic was networking and connecting. As part of our work, I had them go through some exercises to look at their networks and diagnose where they had gaps and needed to do some more work.  What started to emerge as we went throught the exercise was how many of the participants network and connect on behalf of their companies, but they pay little attention to building connections that support their own career resilience and professional development plans. Connecting, for them, is about connecting to benefit their companies, which may or may not actually benefit them.  When we think about building our networks, clearly we need to pay attention to developing the connections that allow us to be successful in our jobs. We need to connect with customers and clients and people in our industries so that we're able to be effective in our work.  However, we need to understand that the connections that we make on behalf of our companies or organizations are not necessarily the connections we need to make to increase our own career resilience. We should never confuse what our company needs us to do with with we need to do for ourselves.  Connecting to build your resilience means developing connections that energize, nurture and challenge you, connections that help you grow personally and professionally, regardless of whether or not those connections get your company more business.  You need mentors, communities of practice, and "way-showers"--people who can be role-models and supporters of your career and personal growth.  So here's your challenge for today. Go through your contacts and ask yourself if the people you're connected to are basically connections who benefit your company or organization, or are they connections that also help you grow and adapt to change? 

  A few weeks ago I had lunch with a friend who started a solo business last year. I was sharing with her my thinking about career resilience and the 4 patterns of success, describing each in more detail.  When we got to Connecting, she grew thoughtful. "I don't think I've been doing a lot with the Connecting pattern," she told me. "I've been focused on Clarifying and Creating and have let some of my connecting fall by the wayside." As we talked further, what became clear was while she'd been doing some connecting, she'd been missing a crucial group--people who are still in the trenches of the field where she is working. And she was missing their practical, day-to-day experiences in terms of challenges, aspirations, etc. This is important to her business as well as to her own personal/professional development.  From there, as the resilient busineess owner she is, she moved into what to do about it.  She decided that she was going to come up with a plan to reach out to some people and invite them for coffee, just to pick their brains and share ideas. A few days later, she sent me the draft of an email she wanted to send out and she has begun putting her plan into action.  My friend is a great example of how to work with the patterns of career resilience. She looked at the 4 patterns and how she was applying them in her work life. She saw that there was an area where she needed to do more work  and then came up with a plan to address it. If you look closely, you see that she was actually using the patterns of resilience to come up with a resilience action plan. She used Clarifying to identify where she needed to make some changes and then Creating to develop the plan to make the changes.  Another critical element of this story is that she followed up. The Creating pattern with its focus on action and follow-up is one of the most important patterns we can strengthen in developing our resilience. I see so many people (myself included) who recognize a need to take action, but who let that action fall by the wayside as other, competing priorities take precedence. But it's only in the Creating that we truly see change.  Career resilience is a process. It is not a once and done thing, but an ongoing strategy for approaching our career and professional development. My friend's experience with looking at how the patterns were playing out in her life currently clearly demonstrates how this works.  You can see as well that the patterns apply not only to employees and job seekers, they also apply to business owners. They too must develop and strengthen their resilience patterns in order to keep their businesses on track.  For me, it was gratifying to see how my friend worked with the patterns of resilience. She's someone I admire for her ongoing committment to development and it was interesting to see how the resilience framework gave her another way to think about what she needed to do for herself.  How are you applying the 4 patterns of resilience in your life? Which pattern do you need to work on some more? 

  Regular readers know that I'm a strong proponent of working for yourself. Even if you have a day-job, I think you should always be looking for ways to diversify your income streams as the next lay-off could be right around the corner, despite your best efforts.  Yesterday's post on career resilience in action got me thinking about how the 4 patterns of resilience apply to those who run their own business(es). These patterns are not just for people who work for someone else. They're patterns that support successful self-employment too.  Clarifying The Clarifying pattern when you work for yourself is something you must constantly be working on. What is going on with your customers and the industries you are working in?  How do your strengths and assets intersect with these trends?  What are the most important priorities for you and your business?  How do you want your business to reflect your values and the values of your customers?   Clarity of purpose, clarity of assets and clarity of goals are all critical to the healthy functioning of your business. As a small business owner myself, I find that I must be intentional about integrating patterns for finding clarity into my work life. It's easy to be so caught up in projects and business administration that I forget the need to periodically take a step back and get clear about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. This is where rituals and reflective practice become important. Clarity can also be found in making the right kinds of connections and creating mastermind groups for support and accountability.  Connecting Clearly the Connecting pattern is critical to small business owners--this is how we find our customers and connecting to others to market our products and services is like breathing for most successful entrepreneurs. We do it without thinking.  What may happen less often, but be equally important, is using the pattern of connecting to support other aspects of our work.  As small business people, particularly if we are solo entrepreneurs, we need to make connections that can reinforce our personal and professional growth and that feed our need for social contact. We need to find mentors, communities of practice and mastermind groups who can challenge our thinking and hold us accountable for achieving our goals. We also need connections that can help us cooperate to compete--people who may offer complementary (or even competitive) products and services with whom we can build new offerings that benefit both their businesses and our own.  Connections from diverse industries and occupations are also important. They feed us new information, new ideas and new possibilities. But we must seek them out because they won't necessarily come naturally to us.  We can use our clarifying activities to help us get clearer about where we need to build and strengthen our connections. Then we can be intentional about growing those connections as my friend is doing through her own career resilience work. This is an example of the next pattern we need to work on--Creating.  Creating Most successful small business people I know are pretty good at the Creating pattern. After all, without creating, you have nothing to sell.  But Creation is more than just daily doing and activity. It's also about risk-taking and experimenting. How are we stretching ourselves in the creative process to bring something truly great into the world?  How are we using what we learn through Clarifying and Connecting to create a business that plays to our strengths and that achieves the goals we've set for ourselves?  How are we dealing with and learning from failure?  The Creating pattern is also about making sure that we've put into place for ourselves the right structures and supports for getting our work done. Are we constantly putting out fires or do we have an infrastructure in place that allows us to be more deliberative and intentional in accomplishing our work?  Are things falling through the cracks and are we missing opportunities or have we created processes that allow the work to flow? Our patterns of creating should be structured around inspiration and purpose, not just around our daily to-do lists. For this to happen, though, we must be intentional in developing patterns that allow us to create from a place of inspiration, not desperation.  Coping In my dealings with other small business people, as well as in looking at my own life, I see that developing patterns for Coping is probably the area where we entrepreneurs can have the most holes.  There is a cult of entrepreneurship that drives us to believe that working for yourself means working 24/7, which makes taking care of your emotional, physical and spiritual needs a very low priority. This is true particularly when our businesses are new or if we've failed to put into place the right structures for Creating, Clarifying and Connecting.  But creating healthy Coping patterns is critical if we hope to run our businesses for the long-term. Making sure that we nurture and sustain those non-work parts of ourselves will prevent burnout. And healthy coping patterns also feed our capacity to engage with the other 3 patterns of resilience.  In particular I've found that healthy Coping mechanisms are about what I call "following the energy,"--that is, paying attention to how we're feeling throughout the day so that can see which activities and people feed and nurture us and which of these are a drain. Emotions are a powerful indicator of what is and isn't working, but we need to pay attention to them in order to address what they are telling us.  Coping is also about paying attention to our mental frames--the stories we are telling ourselves about our business and ourselves. Resilient business people need to focus on developing frames that support our business plans, while weeding out those thinking and behavior patterns that hinder us.  I find that as an entrepreneur myself, I'm constantly having to look at the 4 patterns of resilience and how I'm using/developing them in support of my business. When things don't seem to be going as smoothly, by examining what's happening with these patterns I can quickly see where I need to do some work.  Resilience is something we all need to develop, but for entrepreneurs, this is probably job one. How are you, as an entrepreneur developing your career and business resilience? Which areas of resilience are easy for you and which are harder for you to develop? 

This may be the one of the most important career posts I've ever written. I urge you to read it, even if you don't think it applies to you.  This morning I was tagged in a G+ conversation that linked to this article on the impact of technology in the workplace. It got me thinking, once again, about how technology is transforming the workplace.  One of the things I've been harping on for awhile now is that as individual workers, we need to be paying better attention to technological changes that are coming our way. This is a HUGE part of the clarifying pattern we need to be developing for career resilience.  Here's the thing. Clarifying is about looking at how your strengths and skills and passions intersect with what's happening in the job market. As technology continues to transform work and occupations, one area we need to be evaluating continuously is what technology is able to do and how that might impact what we currently do in our jobs. Stop Underestimating the Impact of Technology on Your Job If I've learned anything in the past 20 years, it's that the elimination of jobs due to technology keeps creeping up on us. We seem to consistently underestimate the consequences of technological change when it comes to our employment. One minute people are happily doing their jobs. The next, entire occupations are decimated by new software capabilities or robotics. How long did it take for travel agents to essentially disappear once you were able to book your own travel online? What about all the distribution center workers who are out of work because robots can manage with only 20 human workers?  Technology is disrupting entire INDUSTRIES--hello Blockbuster, Kodak and every newspaper on the planet--so of course it's going to change your job. You have to start anticipating the changes, though, rather than assuming that technology isn't going to impact you and then having your world turned upside down when it does.  A couple of examples. . . Right now, drivers of all stripes--cabbies, truck drivers--should be re-thinking their careers because within 5 years, I predict that Google's driverless car is going to put them out of business. Or, at a minimum, drastically reduce both their employment numbers and their wages.  And teachers, you should be concerned too. Work with robot teachers is showing that they can achieve the results of most human teachers in terms of learning gains and in some cases, the kids actually prefer the robots, as they are more patient and can explain the topic in multiple ways. As artificial intelligence continues to improve, this trend could (will) start to accelerate.  While we're speaking of teachers, we don't need robots to replace workers to completely disrupt an industry. Technology can impact in other ways. The rise of MOOCs (massive open online courses) could be just as devastating to the employment of teachers as any robot. If it works at the university level, it's only a matter of time before the same model works its way down to the secondary and elementary level--perhaps aided by robot TAs.  Technology WILL Change What You Do and How Much You're Paid to Do It and May Eliminate Your Job Altogether I say all of this because I think that as individual workers, we are terrible at thinking through how technology might impact our jobs. Unless the technological change is explicitly happening in our industry or occupation, we tend to ignore it. This is a huge mistake.  And don't be fooled into thinking that if an industry is growing, that means jobs are growing within that industry. Over the past few years, for example, we've heard about the resurgence of manufacturing in the U.S.. What isn't talked about as much is that this growth in the industry isn't translating into more jobs. That's because robotics and software are doing most of the heavy lifting. Just because an industry seems to be going gangbusters, doesn't mean that jobs are abundant.  For us to be truly resilient in our careers, we must start educating ourselves more consistently on general technology trends and how these could start disrupting the industries and occupations we work in.  Here's an example of what I mean. Read this from How the Internet Made Us Poor:  In a gleaming new warehouse in the old market town of Rugley, England, Amazon directs the actions of hundreds of "associates" wielding hand-held computers. These computers tell workers not only which shelf to walk to when they’re pulling goods to be shipped, but also the optimal route by which to get there. Each person’s performance is monitored, and they are given constant feedback about whether or not they are performing their job quickly enough. Their bosses can even send them text messages via their handheld computers, urging them to speed up. "You’re sort of like a robot, but in human form," one manager at Amazon’s warehouse told the Financial Times. "It’s human automation, if you like." Now let's apply this to nurses in a hospital. Imagine them walking around with hand-held computers that give them feedback on each patient hooked up to wireless monitors that track everything going on in the patient's body (smart pills will come into play here too). Nurses are able to administer medications, monitor vital signs, etc. on multiple patients through these devices. Bosses can monitor how efficiently they are carrying out their duties and send them messages urging them to speed things up. You may think this won't happen, but I promise you that it already is.  In general, when it comes to technology, you should assume that if your job involves routine processing of information aided by computer software, then either that job is virtually going to be eliminated (think travel agents and administrative assistants) or there is going to be HUGE downward pressure on wages--neither of which is good for you.  Don't assume that this applies only to "lower-level" jobs either. One of the reasons we're seeing massive reductions in employment for lawyers is because software can now more efficiently and effectively do the routine document reviews and filings once done by entry-level attorneys. By one estimate, one attorney can do the work of 500 lawyers now. Another way to think about it--If your job involves telling a computer what to do (think programmers), then you are in pretty good shape. If a computer is telling you what to do, start planning for something else.  The push for profits and productivity is going to continue to drive the spread of technology. We will not be putting the technology genie back in the bottle. The issue for you is to start thinking NOW about how you're going to respond. Do you need to start looking for another occupation, beginning the re-training process now, rather than when you get laid off?  Do you need to start developing additional skill sets that will help you adapt to changes that may be coming your way and that would make you more valuable in a technology-enhanced occupation?  Is self-employment an area you need to explore, recognizing that entrepreneurs and owners of capital will be the winners in a technology-enhanced future?  Technology is happening. How are you going to respond?  A Technology and Jobs Reading List If you want to dive more deeply into this topic, here are some resources to get you started: How the Internet Made Us Poor Job Fight: Haves vs. the Have Nots Better Than Human: Why Robots Will-And Must-Take Our Jobs Holy Hal!  A Robot Stole My Job! 60 Minutes: Are Robots Hurting Job Growth?  (answer--yes they are) The End of Labor: How to Protect Workers from the Rise of Robots The Age of Big Data Are You Prepared for the Internet of Things? UPDATE--Harold Jarche's bookmarks for "Automated and Outsourced" UPDATE--The Tech Debate Blasts Off: A Linkfest Also, I would highly recommend doing some google searches on technology and your industry. Try searching on: "robotics and (your industry)" "robots and (your industry)" "nanotechnology and (your industry)" "automation and (your industry)"   Technology-Proofing Yourself And here are some resources to help you keep yourself relevant and employed in a technology-enhanced world.  A Whole New Mind--Although Dan Pink's book is 7 years old now, it still has some important things to say about how to technology-proof yourself for work. Future-Proofing Your Career Managing Your Career When You Have More than One--Think multiple income streams and self-employment instead of full-time, permanent job.  Become Your Own Job Creator--How to take advantage of disruptive trends. Future Work Skills 2020 Build Your Career On Three Hopeful Trends   UPDATE--Here's another link to add to your reading list from Harold Jarche--The Post Job Economy.  Thanks to Marco Campana for the link.  A huge part of developing your career resilience is paying attention to what's going on in your external environment. Technology is one of the biggest trends likely to impact your career. You need to start thinking now about how you're going to respond.  And you need to put some structures into place that let you keep up with how technology could change what you're doing in the future. Otherwise, you're going to be caught in the technology squeeze that has left us with more job seekers than available jobs.  HERE'S THE LINK TO PART 2 IN THIS SERIES

Last Friday, I wrote about how technology is eating your job. Since then, I've been immersed in further exploring the extent to which this is true and finding more resources to convince you that this is one of the most critical trends impacting your career today.  First, if you care at all about the future of your job, I encourage you to watch Andrew McAfee's TEDXTalk in Boston above. It provides a compelling summary of how technology is impacting employment and will be the best 15 minutes you can invest in yourself today.  (Here's a link to a blog post about his February TEDTalk appearance, that builds on the video above.)  I want to pull from it an important chart that you need to pay attention to:  This is the projected number of people coming into the labor force contrasted with the number of projected jobs that will be available. As you can see, for the forseeable future, these lines do not meet. In fact, they get futher apart.  And McAfee argues that he's being optimistic in predicting the number of available jobs in the future because he's basing his predictions on the past. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that, in this case, the past is not a good predictor of the future.   We're on the leading edge of the technology revolution and just beginning to feel the real impacts.  I also want to point you to some other ways that software and robots are taking over the intellectual tasks we have traditionally considered to be the exclusive domain of humans (from The Rise of Our Robot Overlords). These are important because I think they give you a flavor for the breadth and scope of these changes. We now have:  Software grading essays (Teachers, pay attention)  Software that can spot trends in big data and write stories about it.  (Writers of all stripes, are you listening?) A robot scientist that can formulate and test hypotheses, doing the work of dozens of lab techs and assistants in the process. (Hello, STEM careers)  And this is just the beginning. As McAfee points out in his TEDTalk, imagine what we'll have when we're able to put together the technology of Siri with the technology of Watson. I don't think we can even begin to fathom the possibilities there.  What concerns me about all this is that I'm afraid we have "a failure of imagination," as Daniel Lemire describes it. It's hard for us to envision a future where machines do most of the work. Right now, I think this is partially because we are currently picturing robots taking over our jobs, in a future reminiscent of The Jetsons. Since we don't see too many robots in our daily life, it's easy for us to say "Oh, technology isn't going to impact MY job." But I'm not so sure it's the robot you need to worry about at this juncture (although that's coming.) I think it's the increasingly sophisticated software that is everywhere, including on that smartphone in your pocket.  And here's something else we rarely discuss, but that is very real and one of the reasons I think we need to be concerned here. Aside from their obvious abilities to perform the tasks,  machines don't have the messy complications of humans, like personal lives and responsiblities or the need to sleep, eat and re-charge. Machines don't want a vacation. They don't call off sick or come in late because their kid had croup.  They don't argue with co-workers. They aren't passive-aggressive, or jealous or lazy.  Then don't dress inappropriately, make rude comments or harass other workers.  They don't complain about their work load or about having to work on weekends They don't ask for a raise. In short, machines have that much touted "work ethic," that so many employers complain humans are lacking. Think about it. If you were a business owner and could buy a machine for $30k that could easily learn new tasks and work for you 24/7 without complaint, what would you do? Hire a person to do that work? I don't think so.  Finally, we need to pay attention to the fact that there has been a decline in overall demand for cognitive skills that has been going on since 2000. From a recent paper, The Great Reversal in the Demand for Skill and Cognitive Tasks: Many researchers have documented a strong, ongoing increase in the demand for skills in the decades leading up to 2000. In this paper, we document a decline in that demand in the years since 2000, even as the supply of high education workers continues to grow. We go on to show that, in response to this demand reversal, high-skilled workers have moved down the occupational ladder and have begun to perform jobs traditionally performed by lower-skilled workers. This de-skilling process, in turn, results in high-skilled workers pushing low-skilled workers even further down the occupational ladder and, to some degree, out of the labor force all together. This is partially why a B.A. is now a ticket to a job in a coffee house. Education isn't the panacea we're all claiming that it is.  In my work over the years as a career coach, I've found that the majority of people do little to really manage their careers until they are hit by some kind of bomb. Sometimes it's being laid off or fired that creates the impetus for change. Sometimes it's when the person can't take it anymore.  The reason I'm harping on technology so much is because for most of us, I believe this is a ticking time bomb we are trying to ignore. Most of us want to keep our heads down and just keep working, hoping that we aren't going to be the ones displaced by a piece of software or some other form of automation. This will be a mistake. And it will blow up in your face. You need to start thinking now about how to future-proof yourself as much as possible so that you're more prepared for this breaking wave of technology.  Some Additional Resources (Thanks to Matthew Price for these links) The G+ Technological Unemployment Community--This group is constantly posting new examples and discussing the implications of technology, particularly for knowledge workers.   Technological Unemployment Resources--A Google doc with tons of links collected by the G+ Technological Unemployment community.  Lights in the Tunnel--Martin Ford's book on the topic and his excellent blog with more links/reading  is here.  Andrew McAfee's Blog Part One of this discussion, with more links.    Related articles Clarifying Your Career Path: Technology is Eating Your Job The Four Patterns that Should Guide All Your Career Moves

Tech Is Eating My Job, So Now What Do I Do? from Michele Martin on Vimeo. In response to yesterday's post on how technology is eating your job, Deborah Gabriel commented: So, Michele, I cannot argue with your research data as mine confirms it. What I want to hear are solutions. Solutions are what interest me, too, so I went to video to explain how I think we, as individuals, can deal with the this issue in our careers. Some Resources For Clarifying and Connecting The G+ Technological Unemployment Community Martin Ford's Blog Andrew McAfee's Blog For Creating In A Whole New Mind (book summary), Dan Pink suggests 6 right-brain "senses" that humans do well and that we should build upon. This is a good starting point for creating a plan--which of these skills could you develop?  Consider these 3 ways to create your own job  Look at this advice on job crafting.  Check out 5 Ways to Find Work When There Are No Jobs, which offers some additional good advice. I'd love to hear from you on this topic. Who are your "Go-To" people for staying on top of all things technological (not just social media)? Which are your favorite sites? What else can we do to deal with the impact of technology on our careers? 

One of the things I decided to do as I began exploring the concept of career resilience was to begin collecting stories from people about how they've applied the 4 patterns of reslience (Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping) to their own work lives. To that end, I put out a call on my social networks for volunteers who were willing to share their stories and one of the first people I heard back from was Sheri Ponzi, an artist, teacher and guide running several online programs.   As part of my plan to continue stretching myself, we decided to get together for a Google Hangout interview to talk about Sheri's career path and her experiences in developing resilience through the "4 C's." Although there were some audio issues (for which I apologize) Sheri's story is really instructive for those of us looking to develop our own career resilience. For me, there were a few key takeways from the discussion: Sheri's "career crisis" came about in part because she had stopped paying attention to the 4 patterns and they basically caught up with her. This to me is more evidence that we need to work with these patterns on a regular basis.  Sheri has made particularly strong use of the Connecting pattern, both as a way for her to develop her own personal resilience, but also as a career/business strategy. Her online courses bring together several instructors, each of whom contribute their own particular assets to the projects. Sheri is making it win/win for everyone.  This idea of looking at how to build relationships and collaborate with others as being key to resilience is something I talked about in my recent post on limiting beliefs and Sheri's experience reinforced its importance to me.  Connecting can also be a powerful way to help other people develop their own patterns of resilience. Sheri talks about how by bringing people together for her online course, she's now seeing them go off to teach courses on their own. A lovely virtuous cycle.  Sheri has made great use of the Clarifying pattern, too, focusing on her own strengths and assets and then looking at how she could use technology and her connections to create her own employment opportunities. Her's is an excellent example of how all of these patterns can interact together to synthesize the right option for you.  Sometimes you have clarity, but you need courage to take the next step. For many people, courage is forced upon us when we have to face a huge challenge in our lives. But if you meet the challenge head-on, with clarity, then you can create something that's amazing.  Talking with Sheri and hearing her story was a really powerful lesson for me. Hopefully it will help you learn more about resilience too.  Related articles Do You Network to Build Your Career Resilience or to Get Your Work Done? Career Resilience in Action Career Resilience for Entrepreneurs

  One aspect of career resilience it's important for us to keep in mind is the need to have multiple options. This is particularly true when it comes to our finances, where we need to be far more entrepreneurial than we've been in the past. It's fine to rely on a single source of income (your job) when that source is very stable. But jobs are anything but stable anymore. In fact, they may be the least stable thing going on right now.  Last week Harold Jarche wrote that we are in a post-job economy:  I have been observing for quite some time that most work is getting automated and outsourced, while only complex and creative work remain valued, and therefore wealth-generating for those who do it. The construct of the JOB highlights this problem, because jobs are designed around work that can be copied and workers who can be replaced, but anything that can be reduced to a flowchart will be automated. Relying on the job as society’s main wealth-sharing mechanism is a major mistake in the network era, but one that politicians and many others continue to make. We are entering a post-job economy. And in Forbes Magazine, Dave Maney makes a compelling case for the death of jobs.  Imagine for a moment that you’re a company and you’re going to an imaginary store to buy labor solutions for tasks you need done. If it’s 1980, there’s pretty much one item on the shelves, albeit in two different sizes. The boxes are labeled "employee", and there’s a big box (full-time) and a small box (part-time). You need something done that needs any amount of supervision and interaction - those are pretty much your choices. Now stroll into the labor solutions store today. You’ll immediately notice an astonishing array of choices on the shelves: Full-time and part-time employees are still there, to be sure, but now they are joined by outsourcing, crowdsourcing, freelancing, social media methodologies, software automation…and more, and all in a million different permutations and varieties. Collaboration has become increasingly frictionless, meaning increasingly costless. As a result, the one thing that is absolutely certain about the store’s inventory of labor solutions: The largest, most unwieldy, most expensive, most regulated, riskiest, and least flexible box in the entire place is, without question, the full-time job box. In an era of economic flux and uncertainty, what box is going to be favored? The big box might sell, but only under a set of very particular circumstances. Sane companies will buy every other box first - and they have been, and it’s showing up in our economic statistics month after month after month. I agree wholeheartedly with this analysis and it's something I've been blogging about for awhile. Putting all your eggs into one basket (your job) is a recipe for career rigidity and financial problems in the future.  The resilient careerist will recognize this new reality and start working now to diversify possibilities for him/herself. I suggest taking a lesson from the solo entrepreneurs among us--those of us who have been managing multiple streams for awhile in order to make ends meet.  Learning From Solo Entrepreneurs In a recent post entitled The Right Mix of Income is Your Safety Net,  Kivi Leroux Miller, one of my favorite nonprofit business people,  does a nice job of laying out how she manages muliple income streams within her small business. When her business was new, it looked like this: Steady Clients - I had two clients that I worked for nearly every month. Intermittent Clients - I had several clients who gave me a few projects per year. Magazine Articles - I wrote articles for trade magazines. Online Courses - I taught several online courses through my websites (business writing and writing nonprofit annual reports, at the time). Tip Sheets - I sold tip sheets on various writing topics through my websites. In-person Workshops - I taught workshops through the Duke University Certificate Program in Nonprofit Management. Advertising Revenue - I ran Google AdSense ads on most of my websites. Affiliate/Reseller Revenue - I ran ads for affiliate program products on most of my websites. As it has evolved, the mix has now shifted into this: Webinar Series and E-Clinics- I offer a weekly webinar series with a subscription fee at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, and also teach webinars almost weekly at CharityHowTo. We also offer more in-depth online training via two-week e-clinics. Mentoring Program — I offer a six-month group Mentoring Program for nonprofit communications directors. Coaching Clients — I work with three clients currently, helping them work through marketing challenges and develop their marketing teams. Public Speaking — I present more than a dozen workshops and keynotes each year, and am paid for almost all of them. Book Royalties — I get checks twice a year from my publisher. E-Books — We sell a few e-books online. Kivi's mix is based on her particular interests, passions, skills and the changing needs of her clients. But it's still an instructive combination of products and services that can be an effective jumping off point for your own planning.     Your Path to Diversification If you're currently working, think of your job as your own version of Kivi's "Steady Clients." This gives you a baseline source from which you can build out your other options.  Then look to your passions and skills to find other potential revenue streams. Are there skills you use at work that you might also use with customers? Don't forget your hobbies and other interests when thinking about sources of income. Are you a fantasic cook or an artist in your spare time? Maybe you can turn these hobbies into paying opportunities.  As you develop ideas for side gigs and potential products, don't make the mistake of assuming that they must bring in huge amounts of money. You're looking for diversification. Some strategies will be more financially lucrative than others, but all can combine to create a safety net for you. Also, I've found it's a good idea to be methodical about this. Lay out all your possibilities and then start prioritizing. Which of these options do you have the will and resources to work on now? Which are opportunities for the future? If your job is particularly demanding, you may want to focus on finding passive income sources where you create a product to sell and then focus on marketing and selling it. E-books and online tutorials are examples of this kind of passive income opportunity.  Eventually, your side gigs may become your full-time work. This is how I've developed in my own career and I know it's how Rosetta Thurman's career has evolved too. It may also be that you continue to work at a job, while also doing things on the side.  The point is that your career becomes more resilient when you weave for yourself a safety net of multiple income streams and opportunities so that you are less dependent on a single job or client.  I've found that there's an added benefit to this approach that allows you to further develop your skills and talents in ways that best meet your own, individual career needs. By diversifying your career portfolio, you develop new capacities and new connections, building your career resilience.  While I know that it's tempting to see your job as your single source of financial and career salvation, I promise you that this will eventually be a problem. Resilience is about diversity and one of your greatest opportunities for resilience lies in diversifying your sources of revenue.  You must be an entrepreneur when it comes to your career, so start thinking now about how you can build new possibilities for yourself. 

There are two labor markets nowadays. There's the market for people who have been out of work for less than six months, and the market for people who have been out of work longer.--The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment   Many laid off workers I know decide they want to "take a break" in between jobs, especially if they got some severance. Big mistake! In today's job market you simply can't afford to do that. Too many potential employers are only interested in you if you're currently employed or have only recently been laid off.  Here's a money quote from an article in the Atlantic on some research into the impact of long-term unemployment on your ability to find a new job: As long as you've been out of work for less than six months, you can get called back even if you don't have experience. But after you've been out of work for six months, it doesn't matter what experience you have. Quite literally. (my emphasis) There's only a 2.12 percentage point difference in callback rates for the long-term unemployed with or without industry experience. That's compared to a 7.13 and 8.95 percentage point difference for the short-and-medium-term unemployed. This is what screening out the long-term unemployed looks like. In other words, the first thing employers look at is how long you've been out of work, and that's the only thing they look at if it's been six months or longer. (my emphasis)    That's right. The longer you are unemployed, the harder it is to find a job. In fact, your best likelihood for finding a job comes in the first few weeks after you've been laid off. That's when your skills are freshest and when people are most willing to help you out.  I'm in the process of working on a series of posts about things you need to do when you get a lay-off notice, but here's the one piece of advice I want you take right now: If you lose your job, your # 1 priority needs to be finding another one, ASAP.  Don't take a break to rejuvenate. Don't take time off to figure out your next move. Don't say "I'll take the summer to be with the kids and then look for a job in the fall." You. Will. Be. Sorry. Even if you think you want to start a business, I still encourage you to put some time into a job search. You don't know how your self-employment efforts are going to go and believe me, it's easier to start a new business when you're not freaking out about how you're going to pay your electric bill.  I've worked with too many people who have put off job searching until it was too late. You cannot afford to lose a single day in this process. The time to look for a new position is yesterday. 

Patterns, not problems, will ruin your business. . . "Problems aren’t the issue. Problems are the work."              --Dr. Henry Cloud As I've been thinking and writing about career resilience, one of the main points I've been emphasizing is that resilience is about the patterns we build into our lives. We tend to think of our careers as being very event-based, but in reality, the events we experience are a product of the patterns we've created in our careers. When we have positive patterns, we are more likely to experience positive career events. When our patterns are negative, then we will have problems. This post from Dan Rockwell on breaking destructive business/leadership patterns go me thinking more about the issue of career resilience as a series of patterns. The quote above, from Henry Cloud, is from Dan's post and I think it applies equally to our careers. Here's what I know for sure: It's not the individual problems in our careers that will break us. It's the patterns we've set up in our lives that will be our undoing.  Three Typical Destructive Career Patterns In my work with people, I continuously see three persistent patterns of destructive behavior:   Having no career goals beyond those set for us by our current job. This creates a pattern of dependency on our company and supervisors that can make us stale and irrelevant when the world shifts. We focus on becoming really good at the job we have today, only to find that it's no longer needed and no one else wants someone with those skills.  Living in a career silo. All of our connections are in one industry. Any reading or professional development we engage in is related to our narrow industry and occupation. To the extent that we become aware of things happening in other industries or occupations, we automatically tell ourselves "well this won't impact me or my field." Career siloes keeps us blind to the developments happening in other areas that eventually will impact our own work. They also put a career straitjacket on us, limiting our options when change eventually comes.  Crisis-managing our careers. There are two times when I'm most likely to hear from someone about their career development--when they are so crushingly unhappy with their jobs that they can't take another day and when they've been laid off or fired. I rarely (if ever) hear from people when their careers are going reasonably well. Yet one thing I've learned in therapy (which applies in most other parts of life too) is that crisis management doesn't work. It just makes us lurch from crisis to crisis. We do our best work  when things are relatively stable and we aren't feeling afraid or anxious.  These three patterns are not the patterns of career resilience. They are patterns that lead to career rigidity. And career rigidity is the last thing you need in today's economy. Inflexible people and inflexible careers are a recipe for disaster when the landscape changes so quickly. Breaking Your Destructive Patterns So how to break destructive patterns? First, you have to be aware that patterns are in play. Look at your career thus far and ask yourself if you are managing it according to one or more of these destructive patterns. Specifically, ask yourself: What are my career goals? To what extent are these goals tied up with my current job and/or my current company? If I lost my job tomorrow, how would those goals change?  How siloed is my career? Am I connected to people in other industries/occupations? Do I read and learn broadly? Do I try to expose myself to many experiences and communities?  When am I most likely to think about my career and do things to actively manage it? Do I do this all the time or is it only when "big" things happen, like when I'm unhappy or I'm worried that I'll lose my job?  Spend some time really considering these questions, looking at previous career experiences and how these patterns might have contributed to their creation. Try using the Career Stepping Stones activity in conjunction with these questions.  Once you have a clear picture of the extent to which you've been engaging in these more destructive patterns, start looking for ways to change your habits and bring in new, more positive patterns. In particular, look at how you can find ways to incorporate the patterns of career resilience into your work and life. How can you focus on Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping on a regular basis?  Your final step is to actually implement new behaviors in support of these more positive patterns.  Don't just think about what you could do differently. Actually DO things differently. Awareness is not enough. Planning is not enough. Change only comes when you act on what you're thinking.  As part of this implementation phase, it's important to connect with other people who are working on the same sorts of changes. Often it's the people we are currently connected to who will hold us back from changing our patterns. They worked as connections for us in our old ways of being, but they may no longer be our best companions for this new career work we want to do. We need support and encouragement to persist and that often comes from connecting with new groups of people. This will have the added benefit of building one of your resilience patterns--Connecting.  Here's what I've found as I work to build my own career resilience. You cannot control all of the career events you will experience in your life, but you can create patterns that will minimize destructive events and the impact of those events on your career. Remember, it's not the problems that will kill you. It's the patterns you've created that lead to those problems that will be your undoing. 

As I've been talking with people about the idea of career resilience, I've also started collecting stories of how these individuals have incorporated the patterns of resilience into their lives. Over lunch a few weeks ago, one of my learning professional friends agreed to share her story (anonymously) through email. She's one of the many people I've talked to who is who is expressing her resilience by developing a small business with multiple income streams. She is a resilient entrepreneur. Here's her story: A story of career resilience, or "I’m the greatest star…" We are, in many ways, the stories we tell about ourselves. So when Michele asked me to share my story of career resilience, I hesitated. The career story I tell is not one of resilience or triumph over adversity; it’s one of choice and deliberate action. I don’t generally share the harsh details and existential pain I encountered along the way, but I instead stick with a narrative - also true - of a satisfying and successful career built on self-reflection and deep knowledge and skill building. I decided to tell my story anonymously because I don’t necessarily want to be seen as a resilient person; I prefer to be judged on my current skills and accomplishments. But for this purpose, I’ll tell some of the parts of the story that are balled up and tossed in the wastebasket - not forgotten, but not in the story either. In a 30-year career that has also been marked with accomplishments, I have encountered just about every set-back you might name. I have been fired, laid off, reorganized out of a job, demoted, and pushed into "retirement" in a role shuffle. I have had to keep "proving myself" for new bosses even though I kept the same job. I can clearly remember tears of despair and frustration during some commutes, and I can still feel the sting and shock of surprisingly negative performance reviews. I have wrestled with the hard questions… How did I get here? How could this happen to me? What do I do now? Here’s the main thing. I’m still standing, and currently enjoying the work I do every day. (It’s a shame how few people can say that.) Moreover, I have a solid reputation in my field (on a national level) and people who I deeply respect also deeply respect me. I have worked very hard to ensure that set-backs don’t keep me down for long, and I have refused to let others define me. Along the way, I have indeed relied on - and had opportunity to fine tune - my career resilience. When Michele discussed her career resilience patterns with me, they resonated on many levels. I am happy to share some stories to underscore how these patterns can help others gain some resilience as well. Clarifying The most rewarding step I’ve taken in my career is to get very clear on what my talents are and what I want to be contributing in my work life. By analyzing what makes me energized and what brings me down, I have been able to gain perspective on my skills and come to a deep understanding of the ways I might apply them in how I make my living. I know what kind of work gets me in the "flow" state - and I know the strengths that I contribute to that work as well as the weak areas that I need to mitigate along the way. Another critical, mental-health-supporting bit of clarifying is that I have developed my own standard of excellence. I know my field very well, and can define what quality work looks like - and so I am much better able to respond when others might try to tear me down. I certainly listen carefully to constructive feedback, but I am also able to recognize when those giving direction don’t share my standards and perspective - which puts their feedback in a different light. Connecting Being an introvert, this pattern is actually tricky for me. But I have learned to initiate invitations for lunch, to plan ways to start conversations, and to reach out to those with whom I think I might have a mutually beneficial relationship. I have to set goals for myself so that I don’t let too much time go by without expanding my network and staying in touch with contacts. The best advice I’ve gotten in this regard is to be generous. I don’t worry so much about how a relationship with another person might benefit me - I try to do what I can to help others - to listen, to share resources, to offer advice, and to make connections if possible. You don’t have to believe in karma to endorse this as a good strategy- studies show that helping others does come back around in a positive way. Creating Like Michele, I think we have to get better at creating jobs for ourselves. In the last turn of events, I took a HUGE risk to go out on my own because I knew deep in my heart the kind of work I wanted to be doing, and I knew that I could best be doing that work in my own consulting practice. It’s not the first time I’ve invented my own job. I created the department that I worked in for ten years, and the role was very unique - I don’t expect to ever find it on a job board. For a time, I was also able to create a "portfolio career" - a combination of part time jobs that added up to the right balance of different kinds of work that I wanted to pursue. These things don’t always last though; either the organization changes, or my own needs change. So I try to keep myself open and ready to create new opportunities along the way. Even now, I have my mind and heart open for new possibilities. I have also tried to create a rich and complete life that works for me… family time, work hours, leisure time, vacations, community involvement, spiritual practices, exercise, and so on. We have a tendency to think of "work life" and "personal life" as if we have two lives to live… and we have just the one. I’ve learned it’s important to take time to craft a way of living that suits me. Coping I imagine my standard coping mechanisms are much the same as other people, although I am an introvert so they tend to be more sedate strategies. I escape into reading books, and can sit for hours absorbed in a good story. I love walking - especially at the beach, along the riverfront, or around the paths of a local park. Walking clears my head, and I try to get out almost every day. I love spending time with my family and friends, and getting out of the house (and home office) to see other people and recharge my batteries. I have to say, though, that when my resilience is really being tested, I cope best with Barbra Streisand blaring on my car radio. Sing along with me: "I’m the greatest star. I am by far, but no one knows it…" "Nobody, no nobody is going to rain on my parade." "Why settle for just a piece of sky?" Seriously, having those small snatches of lyrics playing in my mind has gotten me through many a dark day. They injected just that small bit of mental fortitude that made clarifying, connecting, and creating possible. 

  Knowing that I've been doing a lot of writing and thinking about career resilience, fellow career coach Scott Woodard recently pointed me to a Seth Godin post on the topic. A few things from Seth's post stood out for me, further underscoring the points I've been trying to make here.  First, he says: Most of the time, we build our jobs and our organizations and our lives around today, assuming that tomorrow will be a lot like now.   This is something I see many of us doing--assuming that what has happened before will happen again. It's a big argument I get from people about the impact of technology on our jobs. They argue that we've always created more jobs when technology disrupted us before, so we should expect that to happen again.  But if there's ONE thing we should have learned from the last few years, it's that tomorrow will NOT be like today. The only thing we can depend on is that we live in volatile times, which means that prediction specific events is getting harder and harder to do.  Another quote: Intentionally stripping away dependencies on things you can no longer depend on is the single best preparation to change. This is a challenge for folks, I know. But it's necessary. Dependencies can get in the way of our ability to be resilient because they limit our opportunities to respond to changing circumstances. Think carefully about what you are dependent on that you can no longer depend on. Jobs as your single source of income is one thing that comes to mind. Being rewarded for blind loyalty in the workplace is another . .  Third key quote: Invest in a network. When your neighbor can lend you what you need, it's far easier to survive losing what you've got. Cities and villages and tribes with thriving, interconnected neighborhoods find that the way they mesh resources and people, combined with mutual generosity, makes them more able to withstand unexpected change. And yes, the word is 'invest', because the connection economy thrives on generosity, not need. (my emphasis)   This is what I've been saying about Connecting as a key career resilience pattern. It's crucial. What Seth points out, though, is that it needs to be connection based on being generous, on sharing and paying it forward, not connection when you need something. It's relational, not transactional.  Finally: We're tempted to isolate ourselves from change, by building a conceptual or physical moat around our version of the future. Better, I think, to realize that volatility is the new normal. Putting all your eggs in one basket and watching the basket really carefully isn't nearly as effective as the other alternatives. Not when the world gets crazy.   Isolation and trying to insulate yourself from change aren't going to work. Change is coming anyway and you won't be prepared. The "moat" approach is a recipe for disaster.  Career resilience isn't about "putting all your eggs in one basket and watching that basket really carefully." It's about building the right patterns into your life now that will allow you to respond to a volatile future. The more we focus on our capacity to respond to change the better off we'll be. 

What's Your Layoff Plan? from Michele Martin on Vimeo. A big part of career resilience is being prepared for what work throws at you. The more prepared you are when something bad happens, the better you'll feel. One work event more and more of us are having to deal with is a lay-off. Sometimes you'll see the writing on the wall and can plan for a lay-off. More often than not, though, it will come as a surprise. I know people who thought things were great on Monday and were being escorted from their desks on Friday afternoon. Honestly, you just never know.    In today's video post I go through what you should have in place to avoid being blindsided in the event of a lay-off.  These are some tips that will help you jumpstart your job search so you don't end up in the ranks of the long-term unemployed.  A couple of follow-up comments to the video: I mention in the video the need to have contact information for your network. What I mean here is that you need to have this information accessible to you from a place outside of your job. If all of your contacts are in your work Outlook, you need to do something about that now.  You may not get a chance to access that info. Related to this, make sure that you can access your LinkedIn account via a personal email address. You do this by going to Settings and then selecting "Edit/Add" next to "Primary Email account." Be sure to add a personal email address and then if you get laid off, make that your primary email.  Finally, for your personal business/networking cards, you need to have your home contact information, not your work contact information on those cards. The point is that people are able to reach you outside of your previous employment.  Additional Resources 6 Easy Steps to a Great Elevator Pitch---Via Tim Tyrell-Smith  Moo--My favorite place for business cards.  More on having multiple income streams  

More things seem to be changing in my world than ever before, but I can’t quite put my finger on it, let alone know how to adapt. So let me try to put my finger on it: We now live in a 401(k) world — a world of defined contributions, not defined benefits — where everyone needs to pass the bar exam and no one can escape the most e-mailed list.--Thomas Friedman, It's a 401(k) World  As I've been exploring career resilience and trying to talk with people about the shift that they need to take in their attitude toward their careers, I've been struggling with how to get it across to people that showing up is not enough anymore. That they can't just keep their heads down and hope that if they just follow directions, they will be OK.  Now I see that Tom Friedman nails what's going on in an editorial from a few days ago: Something really big happened in the world’s wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I’m always struck that Facebook, Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, high-speech broadband, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago when I wrote a book called "The World Is Flat." All of that came since then, and the combination of these tools of connectivity and creativity has created a global education, commercial, communication and innovation platform on which more people can start stuff, collaborate on stuff, learn stuff, make stuff (and destroy stuff) with more other people than ever before. What’s exciting is that this platform empowers individuals to access learning, retrain, engage in commerce, seek or advertise a job, invent, invest and crowd source — all online. But this huge expansion in an individual’s ability to do all these things comes with one big difference: more now rests on you. If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you’re not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say "it is a 401(k) world." Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees.Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it. (My emphasis)  This is the thing. Each one of us is placed in the position of either steering the ship of our own aspirations and development or of having those decisions made for us by companies and organizations that aren't going to have our best interests at heart. It will be virtually impossible for you to thrive, and possibly even survive if you aren't willing to take a more active role in your own development.  I don't entirely agree with this shift. I'm personally troubled by the fact that the belief seems to be that we all need to figure it out on our own and that if we aren't actively contributing to the economy, we can forget about having any kind of safety net or supports. I aspire to something different as a way of life. BUT, I'm also aware of reality. And we have to always plan for what is, not what we wish could be.  Right now, we are living in a world that REQUIRES you to be self-motivated and in charge of your own career if you hope to maintain any level of security or stability in your work life. Even with self-motivation, it will still be a rockier road.  As Friedman points out in his piece, it's difficult to get the information that's needed to make good decisions about developing your competencies even when you are taking charge of your career.  Friedman also points out the value of many of the things I've been talking about here in terms of the 4 resilience patterns of Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping:  "Just as having a 401(k) defined contribution plan requires you to learn more about investing in your retirement, a 401(k) world requires you to learn much more about investing in yourself: how do I build my own competencies to be attractive to employers and flourish in this world," said Byron Auguste, a director at McKinsey and one of the founders of Hope Street Group, which develops policies to help Americans navigate this changing economy. "As young people rise to that challenge, the value of mentors, social networks and role models will rise." . . .  When I say that "everyone has to pass the bar now," I mean that, as the world got hyperconnected, all these things happened at once: Jobs started changing much faster, requiring more skill with each iteration. Schools could not keep up with the competencies needed for these jobs, so employers got frustrated because, in a hyperconnected world, they did not have the time or money to spend on extensive training. So more employers are demanding that students prove their competencies for a specific job by obtaining not only college degrees but by passing "certification" exams that measure specific skills — the way lawyers have to pass the bar. Last week, The Economist quoted one labor expert, Peter Cappelli of the Wharton business school, as saying that companies now regard filling a job as being "like buying a spare part: you expect it to fit. To see where you need to invest, you need Clarity about your strengths and the opportunities around you. Mentors, role models and social networks are the heart of the Connecting pattern.  And "passing the bar" means Creation--creating value and creating structures that allow you to continually renew and refresh your skills.  The biggest change, though, that we're going to have to deal with is ensuring that we all recognize the profound way in which the world has shifted. It is not enough to just show up anymore, ready to follow orders. Only those who become active creators of their own careers will be able to survive, let alone thrive, in this new, hyperconnected world.  The question is, how willing are we to accept this responsibility for ourselves? How well are we communicating this to our children and to the other young people in our lives?   

  Many of the people I talk to and many I work with are in pain about work. They have been treated poorly by toxic bosses, stressed out colleagues and uncaring organizations that regard them as  disposable.   Job requirements are constantly shifting and they live with daily uncertainty about the stability of their jobs. And as I've discussed before, the quality of many jobs from an employee perspective is trending downward, with expectations at all-time highs and wages and working conditions at some all-time lows.  I work with a lot of people who are unemployed and their lay-offs have been handled poorly, leaving them bitter and angry about work. The job search process itself is a daily exercise in rejection and humiliation and the longer people are out of work, the worse things become.  I know I'm not helping things either, talking about how technology is eating your job, how we live in a 401(k) world and encouraging you to have a lay-off plan.  I'm trying to communicate with you about the realities of modern work, to encourage you to make changes now, but these realities are bitter pills to swallow for many of us and only add to the fear.  So I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of sanctuary and how we need some sort of safe space to develop our career resilience and heal our relationships with work. Many of us are caught up in anxiety and stress  (sometimes without even realizing it because the pace is so ridiculously demanding) and we need a break from this cycle. It's difficult to replace unhealthy career habits with healthier ones if we don't give ourselves the space to breathe.  As I've thought about the work issues so many people face, the ways in which work has become a source of ongoing anxiety, pressure and toxic relationships, the concept of sanctuary has continually popped into my head. It has seemed, in many ways, the necessary container for the transformations we need to go through to adjust to our changing work circumstances and develop the habits that will allow us to thrive.  A sanctuary is safe space, a refuge from outside dangers and pressures. It is a source of help and comfort, giving relief in times of difficulty and protection from the outer world.  You are not meant to live permanently in a sanctuary. It's a way station for a particular time of your life. It gives you the sustenance and support you need to carry on when you're ready to resume your journey.  There are few sanctuaries available to us in modern life that will allow us to heal and grow strong. We also have a peculiar distaste for the idea of retreat into sanctuary. It might mean we can't hack it at work or we feel we don't have the time for such luxuries.  But as I see it, sanctuary--safe space--is increasingly critical to our ability to thrive in this strange new world. We cannot live indefinitely in fight or flight mode. We need a break to re-group and restore before moving on to the challenges and opportunities that await us. And we need connection to people who understand and support our need for safety and who can provide us with the resources to continue to the next phase.  Resilient people recognize when toxic emotions and experiences have eroded their ability to respond well and take steps to heal those places that have been injured. Seeking sanctuary when you need it is not a sign of disease. It's a healthy response to difficult circumstances.  I think we need more sanctuaries and more opportunities to recognize, acknowledge and work with the changing dynamics of our jobs. We need safe space to mourn what has been lost and to look for the opportunities in our new circumstances. And we need support and resources that will help us continue on our journey.  Where do you find sanctuary in your life? How do you use it to heal and restore?   

  One of the issues that is clear to me when it comes to career resilience is that we need to build our connections to other people. Humans are social creatures, built for attachment and primed from birth to connect with others, and the more isolated and alone we feel, the more fragile and rigid we become. Caring for and being cared for by other people is critical to our emotional and mental well-being.  Typically when we talk about our connections in a career sense, we use the term "networks" to describe the people we are connecting to. We talk about living in a "networked world" and how it's the quality of our networks and the people in them that will help us be successful in our careers.  The problem I'm having with this, though, is that the term "network" carries many connotations that I think get in the way of building resilience. Maybe it's me, but networks feel very transactional, focused on whether not you are "bringing value" to a relationship. We want to network with people who have power or authority or influence, people who can bring us something that will help us be successful. Networks have us thinking about the WIFFM--what's in it for me?--and that's hardly a recipe for resilience.  I also find the term "network" to be very mechanistic, making us feel like cogs in a machine. It calls to mind computer networks, which are simply collections of nameless, faceless machines harnessed together to accomplish some larger task. There's enough in the world that makes us feel that way. Why do we have to talk about relationships like they are machines too?  I think I might not be alone in my concern about networks as I find that the one thing that most job seekers seem to consistently resist is the idea of "networking." They know on some deep level that networks and networking don't carry the same relationship ideals that really resonate with us as human beings.  As someone who believes that "words create worlds," (an appreciative inquiry concept), I think we need to think differently about the relationships we are building in our lives, focusing not on building "networks," but on building circles of connection.    Why Circles? As human beings, we have a deep, primal relationship to the circle. It is a universal symbol, found in all cultures. From our earliest days, we have gathered in circles around the campfire to receive protection from the dangers of the dark and we have used circles in our spiritual and community practices to represent inclusivity, connection and belonging.  Circles represent sanctuary--those who are in the circle receive protection from and provide protection to those who are gathered with them.  This sense of safety and containment is critical to developing our resilience because it strengthens the sense of attachment we feel to other people and our sense of safety so we can relax and trust.  Circles also represent inclusivity and wholeness. Whenever we see the symbol of a circle, we are drawn to enter it. It is inviting and suggests that we come closer to experience its warmth.  While networks carry a connotation of information and messages carrying ever outward, circles close the loop. They emphasize the cyclical nature of life and experience and remind us that "what goes around, comes around." What we put into the circle will eventually cycle back to us.  Circles can be small, with just a few people, or large. They can intersect (think Venn diagrams), interlock or be completely separate. We can have a few circles or many circles. If our goal is resilience, though, it's the circles that will provide us with the support and nurturing we need. For me, thinking about expanding and building my circles feels far more energizing and supportive of resilience than does the idea of "building my networks." Circles resonate at a very deep, emotional level, and connecting for resilience is about creating those deeer connections.   What about you? How does the idea of building a circle compare to building a network?  

  Awhile back, I wrote about the value of having a career journal and discussed some of the ways that I used my own journal. I'm a huge proponent of reflective practice and a journal is a critical tool for that work. A lot of people think of journaling as a "nice to do," but as Harvard researcher Teresa Amabile has found, a career journal, especially for anyone who does creative work, is really more of a "must have." It becomes a tool not only for managing what's going on today, but for thinking about the future and gaining perspective on the past.  The video above is a synoposis of what Amible and her colleagues have found in their research on keeping a daily work diary. (Hat tip to Idealist.org for the find, btw) They identified four key benefits: Celebrating small wins, which helps people see overall progress in their work. Much of resilience is about seeing the positive, so celebrating small wins is a way to do that. (see more about the Power of Small Wins here)  Planning next steps. If you don't make the progress you wanted to, your journal can be a place for thinking through and planning next steps. What do you want to try tomorrow? What could you do differently?  Nurturing personal growth. This is HUGE for developing resilience because it's a way for you to work through challenges and problems and to find your own inner strength and resources. You can see patterns of behavior or reactions you may want to work on. You can also re-frame experiences so that you gain new perspectives and insights into what happened.  Cultivating patience. This is also big for resilience, which requires persistence in developing new habits. And you can see that in the past, you were able to solve various problems or issues, even on days that may have been worse than today.  The video is definitely worth watching. The examples and discussion offer even deeper insight into how people are able to use a journaling practice to stay in touch with themselves and their deepest and most personal goals and values, even in very turbulent, rough times. You may also want to check out this HBR post on Amabile's research into journaling.  I admit that there are days--even weeks--when my journaling suffers. I will write sporadically or not at all. But I inevitably return to my journal, often when things begin to feel unmanageable. I need to find a way back into the work and into my motivation for doing it and my journal is one of my most reliable practices for making this happen.  I've also found in working with the idea of resilience that journaling is one of the best ways to support the four key patterns of Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping. It's a tool that can help you reflect on your experiences and gain insight into which patterns might need shoring up or just some attention for you to keep making progress.  For more resources and information on keeping a career journal, check out my earlier post on the topic. Also see how to use career stepping stones for a longer perspective on your career activities. 

Last week, one of the women I've been working with in a Career Club sent me an email asking me about what it was like when I first started working for myself--was I as freaked out about self-employment as she is now by a stretch position she'll soon be taking on. At the end of her email, she asked me this:   What I want to know is, how long does it take to turn into the person who actually 'feels' comfortable, confident, and competent on the inside, rather than the person who believes they are a fraud in these three categories, and taking a new setting hour by hour and hoping they don't get discovered in their inept-ness.   I love when people ask me questions like this, because they force me to think about my own experiences in new ways, to find my own resilience which isn't always an easy thing to do. Here's what I wrote back to her: Let me answer the easy questions first. When I started my business, it did feel like a risk of sorts, but it also felt like something I HAD to do. It was the only way I could find to pursue work that to me felt interesting and meaningful. What felt riskier (or at least more soul-crushing to me) was continuing to do work that didn't build on my strengths or feel very useful in the world. I just got to a point where the risk of stagnation and burnout seemed greater than the risk of starting my own business.    I was fortunate in that I didn't have to deal with a ton of financial risk in the process. I started my business when I did in part because we could live on my ex-husband's salary at the time. It took me a couple of years to get to the point where my net profit replaced the salary we'd lost, but we were OK with that because we'd sized our life to be OK with one salary. So I was more fortunate than a lot of people who, on top of everything else, must take a financial risk.    But those aren't answers to your real question. Your real question is did I feel like a fraud inside and, if so, how did I get over it?    Here's the thing. There are days when I feel very good about myself professionally and then other days when I feel like I don't know what the hell I'm doing at all--a complete, inept imposter.  The days when I feel confident, competent and comfortable are gifts.  I can do things to encourage the gift to come more often, but I can't control it all the way. I can only try to create the fertile ground for the gifts of grace and ease to come to me.    So to create more "good" days, I try to focus on what is going well, not on what is screwed up. I try to focus on bringing out my strengths and using them, rather than thinking about my weaknesses and trying to "fix" them. I try to see myself as someone who is learning all the time and sometimes learning means being uncomfortable and challenged and "out of your league," so what can I learn from those moments about myself? I try to surround myself with people who are positive and supportive and nurturing and to limit my time with people who are negative and who drain me of my energy. And I try to work with problems and issues that really engage me on an emotional level so that I'm able to keep myself going, even if I'm not feeling good about myself just because the problems themselves need to be solved.    I also try to share with people when I'm feeling out of my league--to say "I'm not sure what to do here and it makes me feel stupid and incompetent to say this." Ninety nine times out of 100, people will melt when you say this. Everyone can relate.    Notice how often I say "try" in all this though, because I'm not always successful in doing any of those things. So then I'll have a day or a series of days where I feel like I'm a big failure or I'm having no positive impact in the world or I'm pushing things that other people don't really want. That's when it helps me to go back through my journals (journaling is HUGE, HUGE, HUGE in all of this) and see the times when I was down like this before and then the next day, something clicked and I was changed back into confidence. I see that my fear and anxiety about myself is a fleeting thing and that this too will pass.    You are embarking on a big journey and it's been awhile since you worked outside the home, so it's not surprising that you're feeling anxious and concerned. You're going to make mistakes at first--that's part of learning. You're going to feel like you're a fraud because you haven't been a nurse before--it isn't a full part of your identity yet. Accept that. Don't fight it. Don't beat yourself up. Just try to stay with it and and your emotions and give yourself kudos for every small win.    My last bit of advice is to "fake it till you make it." When I have to do things that feel really uncomfortable and out of my league, I spend some time doing grounding/centering exercises, I set my intention for how I want things to go, and then I just go in and pretend that I'm someone else making it happen. I don't put my "real" self out there--I put on a mask. Most of the time that takes me far enough into it for me to then see that it's working and I experience the real success that I wanted. Faking it is one of the best things you can do in those circumstances.    Now my question for all of you--How do you deal with feeling like an imposter? 

  In the past few weeks, I've had occasion to email several people who are unemployed. Some had emailed me for advice or connections. Others had participated in live events with me and I'd followed up by emailing them some resources they'd requested. A few wanted me to review their resumes or cover letters.  In each case, I took the time to craft a helpful response, including links to relevant information. Some took me only 5 minutes to respond, but several required up to 30 minutes, including reviewing materials and providing specific feedback.  I emailed these off and then.  .  . crickets.  No thank you. No "I appreciate you taking the time to look at this." Not even a "got it." Just silence. Only one of two things can be going on here, neither of which is good for the job search.  First, it's possible that they haven't checked their email and therefore don't know I've sent this information. However, since the vast majority of employers are using email to stay in contact with folks, not checking your email when you're looking for a job is a HUGE problem. The race is going to the swift, my friends, so if you aren't on top of the emails in your inbox then someone else is going to get that job ahead of you.  The second possibility is, in some ways, more disturbing. They may have received the email and simply not thanked me for my time. They got what they wanted, now on to the next thing.  This is what's wrong with the world right now, especially when it comes to connecting--this idea that human interaction is all about you. It's not. It's about me, too.  I love helping people--it's what I do. But when I'm not even acknowledged for these efforts, it makes me much less likely to help you the next time you ask for something from me. And if this is how you're treating other people, then maybe that's contributing to the fact that you're still unemployed. Job search these days is about connections and if you aren't contributing to the circle then you're using up all the goodwill that could be helping you find another job.  Relationships are not transactions, where we simply extract from them what we need and then move on to the next person. They are reciprocal--two-way, where each does for the other. I know that it's scary and hard and frustrating to look for a job right now, but that doesn't mean that you should wallow in it. You have to give back too. I promise that it will make you feel better. And those you thank will want to help again.  The best thing you can do for your job search is to THANK PEOPLE FOR THEIR HELP. It costs you nothing (except a little time) and it goes a long way toward strengthening the connections you need right now.