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Overcoming A Career Downturn

This column serves as a primer on effectively navigating this phase and emerging better at the end of it.

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The pandemic has dealt a severe blow to many careers. It has been estimated that nearly 30% of careers have been adversely affected over the last 18 months, particularly for younger millennials and Gen Z professionals. It is manifesting itself with experienced professionals losing their jobs or entry professionals not getting a job for months on end. While an economic recovery is underway, it is not uniform across industries and the supply of resumes is far more than the number of jobs being created. 

This column serves as a primer on effectively navigating this phase and emerging better at the end of it.

Be brutally active on social media 

A lot of openings and hirings are happening on social media. To tap into this opportunity, it is necessary to build your LinkedIn profile. There is a need to stand out on LinkedIn as the demand is high but supply of profiles is huge. It starts with beefing up your page with a short 1 minute video resume, using a professionally shot photograph, a series of recommendations and a good narrative on the impact you have had so far and the skill sets you possess. 

Also, it is equally important to post interesting content on LinkedIn. This can be in the form of interesting learning experiences from your life, interesting articles you have read, any achievement of yours or anecdotes that apply to everyone else. No anecdote or achievement is lesser compared to what others are posting. Building traction for your profile will always help you in building visibility in the eyes of people that matter. In addition, it is advisable to connect with hiring managers of your target companies. 

Reach out to your network

It is absolutely necessary to reach out to your existing network. In all likelihood, people who have worked with you are likely to hire you again. Tapping into alumni networks of your business school or college is an excellent starting point. It also helps to reach out to influencers on LinkedIn to keep yourself abreast of various opportunities across sectors. There are numerous virtual events that are being held regularly and it is a good idea to attend these to meet people or come to know of opportunities. While looking for a job, the rejection rate is nearly 95% and you should be prepared to handle the volume game. 

Make hard career choices

This is the ideal time to make hard career choices by identifying which sectors that you don’t want to work in and the ones that are of interest to you. It is an appropriate time to evaluate if a higher education degree is the way forward to enter an industry of your choice. If you have always wanted to pursue your own venture, this is the golden time to give it a try. The key in such a phase is to always keep moving and not worry overtly about outcomes and compensation. This ‘just keep moving’ mindset can manifest itself in joining the family business or a friend’s startup or volunteering at the local coaching institute or starting your own YouTube channel to teach students. Sometimes you might find your true calling in these temporary opportunities or these might help you get visibility or build skill sets to get into the industry of your choice. 

Focus on relentless upskilling

Once you have identified your hard career choices, it is necessary to identify skillset gaps that might need an upgrade. These could be skill set gaps in your past roles or ones that are necessary for your next potential role. These skill set gaps can be technical like excel, powerpoint, portfolio statement analysis or can be functional like storytelling, problem solving. There are numerous online courses or various ed-tech platforms to assist a person in their journey. Finally, listening to business podcasts everyday is a great way to move forward one step at a time. I personally recommend the podcasts hosted by the Economist and the Wall Street Journal for an overview of global business. 

Make smart lifestyle choices

During the onset of such a phase, it is necessary to not jump straight into locating a job of your choice. Due to the disturbed state of mind, it might be necessary to take a short break and head out to a natural environment to clear the mess in a person’s mind. Once you are back, there might be a tendency to fall out of rhythm with getting up late, eating at odd hours and introducing lethargy in day-to-day life. A disciplined lifestyle with dedicated time for physical exercise is absolutely essential. In addition, a block of time dedicated to relaxation is also critical. Watching the latest web series is always a good idea to stay in touch with how the world is moving. Finally, it is necessary to evaluate your personal finances and build an emergency fund to take care of yourself for the next 6-9 months. In case a fund has not been built in advance, it might make sense to liquidate a few of your savings. Also, the latest discretionary purchases can wait!

In conclusion, a career downturn can prove to be a huge blessing in disguise and can be one of the most rewarding phases of an individual’s career if handled correctly. Such a phase helps in making hard career choices and aids in incredible individual learning. Akin to a cricketer losing form, such a phase is necessary and almost every professional goes through it. In most cases, it takes about 4 - 8 months to overcome a temporary downturn. 

At the end of the day, such a downturn is at best, temporary!

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house


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