Category: Career

John Schneider

If you don’t have a Plan B, an alternative, in case your job moves overseas you’re putting yourself in a precarious position that could hurt you for years.

That’s a strong statement, but when it comes to your family’s financial and emotional security, we must be strong. Anyone who’s lost a job or been at risk of losing a job knows the toll it can take.

The risk: your job may not be safe.

With an ever-growing global economy and the increase in robotics and automation, jobs are no longer the secure and life-long guarantees from which our grandfathers benefited. Our jobs are not even as secure as what our fathers had.

As with most things in life, a backup plan helps. You have health and life insurance in case anything goes wrong.

Prospective college students apply to multiple colleges in case they’re rejected from their school of choice.

It’s for the same reason that it’s important to know what you’ll do should your job be shipped overseas.

Here’s how to start preparing yourself just in case your job moves overseas:

Build an emergency savings account.

First and foremost, have an emergency savings account. This is important not only because of the risk of losing your job, but for many other reasons.

An emergency savings account provides added cushion if you experience health issues and high insurance deductibles. If you’re a homeowner or car owner, it provides you extra protection if there’s an accident. Hot water heaters only breakdown in winters. Be prepared for that little bit of Murphy’s Law.

Open an account at a bank or credit union that has no bells or whistles. Decline debit card and check-writing features. Make it as hard to access this account as possible. This way you’ll be less inclined to access this money when a fake emergency, such as your TV going out, presents itself.

Arrange for a direct deposit from your employer or a one-way, regular electronic funds transfer (EFT) from your primary savings or checking account into this new account.

(Editor’s note from Miranda: I actually use a taxable account for my long-term savings. You can learn about my tiered strategy for emergency savings, which includes a traditional savings account and my investment account, by listening to our podcast episode on emergency funds.)

Once you save more than $400 in this account, you’ll be better than 47% of Americans.

Don’t stop at $400, though. Save three to six months’ worth of living expenses. If you’re unemployed for three to six months, you’ll appreciate this savings. If you never use it, at least you have a sense of financial security that many Americans lack.

Create a list of employers.

Create a list of employers within the distance you’re willing to drive every day. Make sure these employers offer jobs for which you qualify. This won’t guarantee you a job immediately, but it will reduce your search time. If a lot of people at your company lose their jobs at the same time, you need to know exactly where to go before everyone else starts hunting for work.

Gain more skills.

Learn one or two new skills that can be applied to your job each year. This is a good practice whether you’re at risk of losing your job or not. Learning more and more new skills will make you more and more marketable and available for upward mobility.

Many employers pay a certain amount of money each year to each employee to learn new skills. If you’re not sure if your employer offers this, contact your manager or human resource department. If you’re lucky, it’ll only cost you your time to increase your skills, your value, and your job security.

Sites such as Udemy and Coursera, offer advanced education for a fraction of the cost of college courses. This is great whether your newly-acquired education is being funded on your dime or your company’s dime.

All these courses can be taken on a computer from almost anywhere in the world.

Always be connecting (ABC).

There’s an acronym sales people use, ABC, which stands for Always Be Closing. The idea is that if you’re always closing sales, you’re making money.

This same strategy can be applied to maintaining or improving job prospects. The more people who know you and what you do for a living, the more people you help with their jobs and careers, the more people who will be your advocate if you’re in need of a job or career advancement.

Networking is an important skill to develop.

Link up to LinkedIn.

If you’re in the workforce or want to be in the workforce, you need to be on, and engaged with, LinkedIn. Ours is a virtual world and an online presence matters. Whether for your business or yourself, whether you’re employed or want to be employed, the number and value of professional connections that can be made on LinkedIn knows no comparison.

Use your company job board.

If your job moves overseas but your company doesn’t, search your current company’s job board to see what jobs are currently open or, better yet, who you know within your company that is hiring.

People like familiarity. If someone already knows or likes you and is hiring, they’re more inclined to hire you than they are a stranger. This may give you a leg up even if you’re not the most ideal candidate for the job.

Start your side-hustle.

I gush over our new gig economy because my entire business is predicated on it. I also think it’s important to have multiple streams of income, which the gig economy has made easier to achieve.

All that’s needed is a tablet, a website, or web hosting platform, and some social media accounts. Invest a few hundred dollars in recording equipment and basic editing skills learned from YouTube or other podcasts. The right person can create a successful blog or podcast themselves.

Blogs and podcasts can be monetized with affiliate marketing and sponsorships that can provide a stream or multiple streams of income.

Today’s job market is more competitive than ever, and it’s ever-changing. Many of these recommendations should be started today — before your job moves overseas. The more proactive you are, the better you’ll survive employment and unemployment.

John Schneider

It’s cruel problem to have today: how can an 18-year-old (or 25-year-old) decide what they want to do for the rest of their life?

Anyone who’s like people that I know in their 30s and 40s want a career path change. And it’s not uncommon for someone in their 20s to job hop.

That moment when I changed my mind about my career.

I was a C-student without any direction in high school. When I graduated, the advice was to go to college even if you didn’t know what you wanted to do. Undecided major? You’ve got two years general education to figure it out.

By my junior year in college I was a C-student in Exercise Physiology and an Honors Student in beer pong. I graduated and found a career in retail, which gave me a nice salary for 70 to 90 hours of work each week.

It wasn’t until I was 27 and found a home in financial services that I started to feel like I had a future and that I was on the right career path. Recently, I left my career in finance to grow my own business with my life and business partner. (But it’s still related to finance.)

I understand what it’s like to have to decide what you want to do with your life — only to realize later that you want to do something else. Lucky for me, what I’m doing now is a version of what I was doing before. But it was still stressful trying to decide what I wanted to do in my 20s and then leaving comfort and security in my 40s.

Having floundered to find a career and then versioning to a new one, I have thoughts on how best to choose what you want to do for the next five to 10 years of your life.

Meditate.

My first piece of advice for everything is to meditate. Yes, it’s become so common it’s almost passé. The truth is that in this crazy, over-connected, over-worked, and over-scheduled world, it’s hard to get in touch with our inner-selves. I can’t beat Miranda’s take on the benefits of meditation; I’ll just add that in addition to managing stress and relaxing, meditation gives us an opportunity to hear our inner-voice. Many of today’s most successful people credit instincts or gut-feelings for their successes.

Meditate on the idea of your career path. You might be surprised at rises to the top of your mind.

Check your feelings.

A supplement to mediation that my husband and I do most mornings is what we call “I Feelz.” We each take turns expressing three of our current feelings.

Before we agreed that I would leave my secure, retirement-funding, benefit-providing, regular paying job, I wanted to be sure that we were both 100% on board and prepared for this life change. We started this exercise then and continue it to this day.

This isn’t always as easy as it seems. We dig deep sometimes to tap into our feelings. Once our feelings are expressed, we can address them accordingly. Likewise, it keeps both our business and personal relationship transparent.

To use this exercise to choose or change your career path, take time every day express to someone else or write down emotions you’re feeling about your current state or prospective future. Be specific, rather than general. Rather than saying, “I feel good,” say “I feel good because of X.”

Use these feelings to inspire your career decisions.

Journal.

There are as many ways to journal as there are to meditate. An applicable journaling style that I practiced before I took my leap from W-2 to 1099 is like the advice of nutritionists for those who struggle to lose weight.

Keep your journal with you throughout the day. I used the Notes app on my phone. As they happen, write down the things to which you respond positively and those to which you respond negatively.

If you see a person on TV or IRL with a job or career you think you might like, write it down. As thoughts on jobs and careers come to you, activities you like and don’t like, write them in the appropriate place and designate them as positive or negative.

Over time, you’ll notice patterns. These patterns can guide you towards what you like doing and are good at doing.

Consider the career path less traveled.

Most high school students go straight to college. Most adults looking for a mid-life career change get an MBA or other advanced degree. I support these decisions for those who have considered all options, including less expensive and less time-consuming options:

• Consider a paid-apprenticeship to earn as you learn valuable skills. This is a great way to offset education costs and increase your chances of having a job when you’ve completed your learning.
• Consider certifications. Certifications cost a lot less than degrees and take much less time to earn. This is especially helpful if you’re flush with neither cash nor time. A friend of ours recently went from being a tax attorney to becoming a Certified Financial Planner. At about $4,200, this saved him about 12 months and $55,800 over getting an advanced degree.

Finally, if going back to school is inevitable, consider strategically taking courses at a community college. With the escalating costs of college, more employers understand the value of associate degrees and taking a few courses to enhance one’s skills.

Coupling these exercises with the standard career path seeking advice of talking with mentors, job shadowing, taking career tests, and doing informational interviews can help you get in touch with your true self.

As we all eventually learn, job titles and salaries provide temporary satisfaction. It’s fulfilling our highest purpose and being our truest selves that offer real meaning in life.