Laying-Off Could Mean They Are Hiring

All of us sometimes fall into a funk and create impediments to our own progress. I often hear a job searcher say, "That company's not hiring. They are laying off people!"

This sentiment is founded on a view that "the company" is one monolithic entity. The truth is that a company may be laying off people in one area, and as a result find they need people in a different area of the company.

One of my consulting clients was a major international tire manufacturer. They made a decision to send most of their software development to offshore teams in India and Europe. One can immediately conclude the obvious: this would mean that this company starting giving termination notices to the U.S. software developers.

But that was not the end of the story. Now, with the development teams now 10 time zones away, a new need arose. The company had to build up its skills and staffing in the areas of project management, business analysis and software design to feed those teams. These product activities had to be done in the U.S. so the proper directives and specifications could be sent to the offshore groups writing the software so the project requirements would be met.

The software development positions did emigrate overseas, but the company more than doubled its staff of project managers, business analysts and designers so the proper information was generated to guide the product development of the offshore teams.

When you hear a company is laying off workers or moving work overseas, ask yourself if that could mean the company will have new, or increased, needs in other areas. Visit the Careers page on the company's website and get a sense for a common thread or business area for the job postings. If your skills match those new needs, make initial contact and let the company know that you are a solution for the new challenges they face.

The Best Way to Find Companies Hiring

I do not know of a best way to find a company that may be hiring, but a good way is to start with the companies that are growing.

Look for companies that are advertising new products. If they are advertising they are probably making sales. Sales mean they might need more people to handle everything from product design to people on the shipping dock. Pay attention to every advertisement on TV, radio, in print, or on local websites.

An obvious indicator of growth is a company that is experiencing increasing revenue (income) over time. You will have to do a bit of research to find the numbers, but websites such as Yahoo Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com) have the data. Enter a company name or stock symbol in the Get Quotes field. When the company page appears click on the Income Statement link on the bottom of the left hand side of the page. This will give you three years of data on the company's total revenue, gross profit, and net income. A growing company will show Net Income increasing each year.

One of my own favorite sources are local business publications. In the area where I live a local business magazine prints the "25 Fastest Growing Companies" in our state every December. Check on business publications in your state or city. The data they provide is fresh, local, and is a bargain - just the price of the magazine.

You won't find this information on job boards. Since this approach of identifying growth companies requires a bit of extra effort, you won't have a lot of other people competing for this information.

2 Years and Stalled

After my own layoff in 1993 I always tried to help others who were looking for work. As I wrote Hired! this past year I was stunned at the increasing number of people I encounter each month who have lost jobs. If the government says the recession ended a couple of years ago, apparently the economy did not get that email. I continue having now weekly encounters with people on the verge of, or over the edge of, unemployment.

Yesterday I stopped at a grocery store after playing soccer. A woman being checked out made a nervous comment to the cashier about not being able to find a job. I was in line and mentioned I had just written a book about this very topic. She latched onto me. I was happy to talk with her so we rolled her cart out to the sidewalk. Her name was Mary. Mary is in her 60s and has been looking for work for 2 years to no avail. She is a tenacious, feisty woman and I liked her right away. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered she has been making many basic mistakes in her job search:

•     She has sent out "a thousand resumes" and gotten little or no response,
•     She is looking for only one position - a job of "general office worker," and
•     Her resume is in the format that was appropriate 20 years ago, but not today.

Anyone could tell Mary was discouraged and fearful. I spent about 20 minutes going over each of these missteps, and her eyes kept getting wider. She understands now that she is not a title of "general office worker" but a possessor of skills that can be applied in many different contexts, not just in an office. She had a copy of her resume with her (I was impressed that she carries it with her) and standing on the sidewalk I marked it up with what to remove, what to include and what to rewrite. Her resume will be much stronger and she knows she needs a cover letter (which she did not think about before) specific to each position she pursues. One of her biggest concerns was her age. I told her, yes, age does make a difference but many times being older is an advantage for the job hunter. I told her how the drugstore chain CVS has a bias toward older workers so their staff better reflect the demographics of their customer base.

When we parted Mary was like a new woman. She had been so negative and beaten down when we started talking. I just felt grateful that I could help a person who was afraid about her future. That was what motivated me to write the book. And it's Christmas, a time to give gifts, even little ones on sidewalks.

Drop in Unemployment?

Last Friday the U.S. U-3 unemployment rate for the month of November dropped to 7.7% from the 7.9% rate for October. Great, right? Not necessarily. We all fervently hope for improvement in our economy, but the numbers behind these numbers reveal that this 0.2% drop occurred because over 350,000 people dropped out of looking for a job. As weird as it may sound, if a person is unemployed but not actively looking for a job, they are not considered officially unemployed. Hurricane Sandy was also a significant factor in the new unemployment rate. Other numbers show further uncertainty: the Consumer Confidence Index rose about 1/2 point, but the CEO Confidence Index dropped a full 5 points, showing less inclination for businesses to invest in capital equipment.

What does this mean for the job searcher? It partly means our U.S. economy is still stalled and not growing at the rate is should be historically if we are truly coming out of a recession. But it also means more opportunity for the job searcher who is willing to put in the correct effort. This sounds callous but it is really just an economic observation: when 350,000 people stop looking for work, that means there is less competition for you and others still actively looking for a position. As I discuss in Hired! the important factors are to identify the skills you bring to an employer, and identify the companies or industries that match those skills. In yesterday's report the industries that added new jobs are retail, professional services, hotels, restaurants, and health care. So there are jobs out there. I urge you to focus on being the one who does not drop out, and let the official numbers fall where the will. You have no control over those numbers. Please don't let them control your job search.