CAREER MANAGEMENT SERVICES
THE NEW JOB SECURITY REVISED
by Pam
Lassiter

Table of ContentsTestimonialsWork FormsReviews, Articles, Blogs,
Interviews
Fifty years ago,
workers strove to move steadily up the ranks of one or two stable companies.
Today's workers jump from company to company, building contacts, expanding
skill sets, and increasing salaries at each one. Job security has taken on a
new meaning, referring to security within your chosen career, rather than a
single company.
Unfortunately, nobody teaches us
how to develop career management strategies before we join the workforce and
realize we need them to grow our careers. Even if you were lucky enough to pick
up some basic strategies in college, they have a tendency to change. The good
news is that you can change as well and The New Job Security will give you the
tools you need to effectively manage your career, not for a single job hunt,
but over your lifetime.
In THE NEW JOB
SECURITY, executive career management consultant, Pam Lassiter,
teaches mid-career professionals how to navigate this new work environment by
mastering five key skills:
-
Send Clear Signals
-
Market for Mutual Benefit
-
Stop Looking for Jobs
-
Build Sustainable Networks
-
Negotiate in Round Rooms
If you're looking for ways to take control of a current job, or
struggling to manage the transitional period between jobs, Lassiter's proven
advice shows workers at all stages of their careers how to stay competitive and
achieve their professional goals.
Move over Richard
Bolles! Pam Lassiter has written the career book for the new millennium and new
economy. Though basically common sense - as are all good self-help books - this
one is current and relevant, and the ideas are packaged in a clever yet
practical way, one that hopefully will make its suggestions easier to
implement.
Bob Gardella Former Director
of Alumni Career Services, Harvard Business School
Read more testimonials

The Table of
Contents
(To read excerpts from The New Job Security,
click on the highlighted links in
the table of contents below)
Work Forms From
Various Chapters
(To use the forms that pertain to the content in the book,
click on the highlighted links below to
open each PDF form in a new browser window. These forms can be printed from the
browser or saved to you computer.

|
When it comes to the hard
work of finding great work, Pam Lassiter is the consummate pro. She has the
experience, the common sense, and proven track record. My advice: take her
advice.

Alan
M. Webber,
Founding Editor,
Fast Company
Lassiter challenges us to
take a lifetime view of our careers. Each chapter provides useful tools to
achieve a successful transition from 'job search' to 'job security.' A
must-read for those seeking growth and satisfaction in their careers.

Dr.
Myra Hart,
Professor of Management Practice,
Harvard Business
School
In the New Job
Security, Pam Lassiter has taken on today's complex career management
challenges and provides the reader with tools that work in the real world.

David Opton,
Founder &
CEO,
ExecuNet
From: The Ingredients
of a Career
A New Attitude:
Avoiding the Inverse Security Monster
If you're currently employed, especially if you've been working for a company
for a long time, you may be at risk and not even know it. You may have fallen
prey to the Inverse Security Monster. The Inverse Security Monster creeps up on
you slowly as you get comfortable in your work, become immersed in the
day-to-day details, and start forgetting about that competitive edge that got
you into the company in the first place. The blinders start to slide into place
as you look down rather than out. You're taking employment for granted. Inverse
Security means that the longer you work for one company, the more insular
and at risk you can become unless you are actively managing your career.
The Inverse Security Monster can consume your competitiveness, making
transitions to another job slower and tougher. It's easy to defeat the Monster,
but you have to be awake at the controls to do so. If you've been with a
company for a long time and want to stay hot, learn the new career management
skills and consciously pursue your growth and success as a professional outside
your company as well as inside it by building your reputation and your network.
Being known and respected both inside and outside of your company brings your
job security where it belongs: within you.
(P.S. Your friends who the Inverse Security Monster has already eaten
won't be thinking of career management, so do them a favor and show them this
paragraph. You can rescue them.)
What Is the New Job
Security?
The New Job Security is a work agreement that you make with
yourself. You consciously decide to take the initiative in your work life, to
set your own course for your current employment and future alternatives. No,
this doesn't mean that you're going to tell your boss what to do and tell
everybody else to get out of the way. It does mean that you will have your own
professional goals and fallback plan. You decide how you're going to play to
win, and you tweak your strategy according to the cards you are dealt. As you
transfer the control of job security to yourself, you'll develop an overall
strategy to help you get what you want from your work. You'll learn how to
develop a demand for your services, either at your current company or a new
one, so you will always have choices. You'll identify goals and the skills that
you'll need to reach them. You'll develop backup plans to help you conquer the
challenges that will inevitably appear. Anticipating change and being ahead of
the game, positioned where you want to be before shifts in the economy or
company occur, will keep you vital. Watch out world: you're taking control and
you're going to make a difference.
Once you've created your New Job Security, you can:
-
Move successfully within a company
-
Move externally, with little trauma, to interesting
alternative jobs
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Create multiple income streams, if you choose
-
Shape your job so that it reflects your values and
goals as well as your expertise
-
Plan for your career transitions (including your
eventual retirement) so they're under your control rather than someone
else's
To achieve the New Job Security, you just need to become comfortable
with the 5 best strategies that I teach in my practice, which thousands of
people are now using successfully. Without these skills you are at a
significant disadvantage, both while you're employed and while you're in
transition. With them, it's like being the only person to have discovered SAT
prep courses when the exam is coming up. Who's going to do better?
The Birth of a
Job
To give you more options than waiting for job postings, recruiters, or
search firms to surface-in other words, reacting to the
marketplace-let's look at how jobs are created. This is truly the main course:
how to find meaningful work not by looking for jobs but by creating them. A
job's boundaries are artificial; they change all the time. How a company
divides work in order to produce its products and services must evolve
continually because market needs, technology, and economic conditions can shift
overnight, changing the demands on the company. Have you looked at the job
description for your current job lately? What you're doing has changed from
what you signed on for. You can take advantage of these changes to create the
type of work that you'd like to do by tapping into the job formation process
earlier and not waiting for approved, funded, highly competitive job openings
to appear.
Let's look at how jobs are created to see why getting involved earlier
can give you more interesting choices. Jobs don't just "exist" when a company
is started; they are born when there are problems or opportunities. How many
employees did Hewlett-Packard have when it was started? Sears, Roebuck and Co.?
Harley-Davidson? Your company has just won a new contract; you have a deadline
and aren't sure whether you can make it; you're not getting accurate, timely
information for decision making; you don't have enough business. There are
millions of problems every day in every operation, and good times can create
them as well as bad times. These pressures may not lead to someone thinking, "I
need to get some more help here" so much as "How in the world am I going to
handle all of this?" Can you tell where I'm headed?
Traditionally, internal pressure mounts to the point where it becomes
clear that additional help is needed. Then a manager, or a smart administrative
assistant who plants the seed, realizes that it's time to get serious and start
the formal hiring process. This is not something they embrace joyfully; they
have other things to do, but there's no choice. More help has become essential.
In order to actually hire someone, many steps are needed. Someone needs to take
responsibility for shepherding the job through the system. Job descriptions,
consensus with other employees, budgeting, approvals, and timing all need to be
worked out. Once a job becomes official, it's often posted internally first.
Then, and only in a small portion of cases, is it advertised publicly on a job
board or trade magazine or through a search firm. If you worked in human
resources, would you really want to post a job publicly? It costs a lot, brings
in a lot of garbage, and gets people mad at you for not responding to them.
Posting a large, expensive want ad is closer to an act of desperation than a
standard operating procedure.
Strategy #3: Stop
Looking for Jobs
When professionals describe the pain they feel after having been
rejected or, worse yet, ignored by multiple companies, their discouragement is
palpable. "I was a perfect fit for their opening and I didn't even hear back
from them." Or, "After the initial screening by the search firm, they wouldn't
even return my calls." Or, "I applied for a promotion in another part of my
company, didn't get it, and now my boss has cut me out of the information
loop."
There's an easy solution to feeling like road kill. Stop looking for
jobs.
People are always taken aback when I say this. "How can I? Job
openings are real, and they're currently available. That's where the income,
security, and opportunities are." Like Willie Sutton, who chose to rob banks
because "that's where they keep the money," professionals know that a company
is where the jobs are kept, and so job listings or search firms must be the
best way in. This is true sometimes, but not always. Posted job openings,
regardless of whether they're listed on a company's website, on a job board,
internally, or with a search firm, are just a fraction of what's happening. The
same goes for search firms. Not all companies can afford or choose to pay
others to do their searches for them. You can have it all. You can have
relationships with search firms, know how to draw them to you, respond to the
few ads that are worth your time, and then use the majority of your time to
hang around "where they keep the money," addressing company problems that are
just waiting for you to solve them.