Competing in the Global Workforce

It's a different world for working now

I've often heard the phrase, "What a difference a day makes." For the American workforce, it's what a difference a year makes. In 2007 and the beginning of 2008, business was concerned with talent development and the loss of the baby-boomer knowledge to retirement. How many have to put off retirement, I don't know; but, most newspaper accounts make it significant. That's significant for the young grads looking for their first job, it's significant to the 4 plus million who have lost their job in the past year, and it's significant to employers.

Many economists are now calling this a "jobless recovery." I'm not an economist, but I say that's just a phrase. In every economic cycle, job creation lags behind recovery. After 9-11, my county's worst year was 2003. We saw significant job loss because American Airlines in headquartered in our county and a lot, I mean a lot of secondary suppliers were affected. In the third quarter of 2003, we started to see job growth again. Using that as a yardstick, it won't be until the later part of 2010 or the first part of 2011 until job recovery begins.

SO WHAT CAN I DO?

Now more than ever, you should know what makes you unique. I am hearing from many workers in their 50s and 60s that they are witnessing age discrimination. If you're an older worker, think about your experience and how is unique about your set of experiences. I also suggest learning much more about communicating via facebook, Linked In, and other social networking sites. Now is not the time to rigidly hold on to the past. Your local community college can help you become more computer literate. Why? Because jobseekers find jobs through networking faster than by sending 6 zillion resumes out to the black hole of job openings.

Here's an example. A friend on mine was looking for a secretarial position

So it's really the American worker's salary that isn't globally competitive?

I find it irritating to hear that it is the American worker's salary that keeps America from being able to compete in the global marketplace. I think it is the ridiculous compensation packages that CEOs of American companies demand. Here's a prime example:

Home Depot's former CEO Nardelli

MSNBC story Jan 07

Nardelli got a severance package of $20 million cash payment and unvested stock awards worth $77 million at that time. The article goes on to say that the package is worth 7 TIMES the $30 million that Home Depot set aside for stores and employees that provide good customer service.  By the way, he resigned (although he said he had no intention of doing so, yeah right) because the company's stock was performing so poorly. ATTENTION AMERICAN STOCKHOLDERS: the pattern of paying high money to a CEO to come in and streamline a company so you can sell to for higher costs is over. It's short-sighted and is killing America's competitive ability-not the American workforce. Although you've done a great job demoralizing them. You see, what keeps a company on top is people coming back to it. Home Depot use to be so helpful, but it got to a place where you couldn't get help and forget about check out of the place fast. Think about it.

Jann

READ THIS

The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

This book gives a great description of what happened and why sitting there complaining is not going to help you. The first two chapters are really good. The second chapter explains the 10 things that flattened the world and screwed up your life. The rest of the book is up to you; he is kinda redundant (look it up) for me, but he had me at Chapter Two.

You need to know this if you work for pay

Unless you are living in a cave eating bugs, independently wealthy, or under 10, you probably are one of the millions and millions of Americans going to work on a daily basis to pay the mortgage, put food on the table, and pay those bills.

If globalization hasn't hit you yet, you're not trying, and you're probably not in the U.S. The one thing that is absolutely obvious about the new brave one world, it that you've got to keep your skill sets up to date...or at LEAST know what's most in-demand in your field of work.

It use to be that you just had to worry about competing with the guys from your school or in your region, but lucky you, you get to compete with the whole wide freaking world!

Now before you start crying about fairness, OK, you already started, I'll wait.......

Feel better. You can't stop it. You can write your Congressman/woman to tax imports, protect American jobs, blah, blah, but it won't help because that ship sailed while you were shopping at Wal-Mart.

Here's what you need to know. Come closer. For now on, you've got to view yourself as your own little cute corporation. Your product is your skills and you better have a pretty good idea of what their worth in the market place. You also better get use to the fact that you will need to continually update them throughout your working life. You're thinking, "Crap, I hated school." Hey, they hated you too, but there are multiple ways to keep yourself on the cutting edge of your talent pool. Be creative. Oh, you're not creative, well see my next post.

Back to globalization. The good news is globalization also opens doors to you personally that weren't possible ten years ago. So, get off the couch, turn off the TV, push your little shoulders back and start thinking about where you want to be in five years. You look good in an up-right position.

I've got news for you, your government is WORRIED about our (you, me, the American workforce) ability to compete in the global market. You see you're a little cog in a spocket and we don't have enough sharp cogs, or put another way: cogs with higher order thinking skills. Maybe the government should have given that more thought before they instituted some of the worst education reform in the history of mankind, but that's another subject. Back to the subject at hand. Uncle Sam wants YOU!!! Well, actually he wants you if you're a science or math major, an engineer, etc. But he's just being short-sighted. In the future he's gonna need you're creative mind so whether you 18, 25, 55 or 75, our workforce is in danger and you do have a future. See, somebody wants you.

FIRST STEP. Go find out your local labor market information. Your what? Your state should have a labor market web-page that can tell you stuff like the current and future prospects of employment in your field, salaries, etc. FIND OUT IF ANYONE'S GONNA HAVE A JOB IN YOUR FIELD IN FIVE YEARS! Explore. Start Googling (I always love typing that) careers you're interested in pursuing. That's it; dare to dream.

Good Luck. If you've got questions, I'll try to answer them or point you in the right direction. You don't have a lot of time, the world snuck up, sucker punched you and took your job while you were watching TV. It's time to do what you have to do to fight back- surf the web (what did you think I'd say?). Better hurry, Congress is after the freedom of the web too.