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No one is announcing it formally, but a recession is on its way, if it is not here already. Recession means the job market is going to get a lot tighter. What does this mean for working professionals and upcoming college grads alike? Does this mean the job market and the workplace will become a virtual American Gladiators arena where the weak and uncommitted are run asunder by the powerful and ambitious? Not quite. But it is time to bring your A-game and be prepared for the worst.

Your game plan should be two-pronged: make yourself as invincible as possible and create a safety net. The coming job market will be handling an overwhelming surplus of applicants. With company belts tightening, employers will be looking for the absolute most bang for their buck. Taken together, this means employers will pick and choose between candidates with the highest level of scrutiny. Only those who can offer real value to the company will survive the sifting process. Those with weak credentials or performance may soon find themselves in the unemployment line. Also, of course, nothing is guaranteed in markets like these, even for the most deserving. Take steps to prepare for the possibility of unemployment.

The following four tips will help you survive the coming recession with your shirt on. Put your best foot forward and watch your back, and you will live to fight another day. You might even find yourself riding higher than ever:

1. Make yourself indispensable.

Think about it: Who gets laid off in a recession? The love handles of the organization, the excess weight, the folks that are not essential to the company’s future. Your focus, therefore, should be on getting your name into that pool of people who are indispensable to the organization, those who are the heart, brain, or lungs of the company.

How do you accomplish this? If you are an upcoming college grad, you should be focusing on obtaining skills and experience that will say to recruiters that you will be a strong contributor to their company. First you want to be clearly superior to your job-hunting peers. You might work on gaining relevant certificates or taking on internships. You should be going above and beyond the crowd in participating in relevant extracurricular activities, like business competitions or field studies. Second, you want that superiority to translate clearly to value added for the company. Show in your resume and interviews how these skills and experience will equal success for their company. The candidate who can bring the most to the table and plainly show how they will benefit the company will win the job.

If you are a working professional, you also can obtain relevant degrees or certificates on the side. Most of your advantage will be found, however, in embedding yourself into the most vital functions of the business. Take on the most important projects and knock the ball out of the ballpark. Volunteer to be a part of new, important initiatives. Make yourself absolutely crucial to their plans. When they are considering who to let go, they will tremble at the thought of losing you. Maybe Joe in the next cubicle over, but certainly not you.

2. Mine your network.

Most people wait until they’ve been handed their walking papers to start calling friends and family looking for jobs. Obviously, that is too late. Networking now is one of the best things you can do to ensure that you have a job later for a couple reasons. During a recession, employers are inundated with job applications and resumes. Going through friends and family allows you to cut through all of that clutter and get straight to the decision-makers. It also gives you that extra boost over most of your competitors.

If you are getting ready to graduate, get on the phone with Uncle Charlie and Grandma Joyce and you will find yourself leaps and bounds beyond most of your peers, most of whom are likely pouring resumes into Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com which will be destined for that black hole where internet resumes go. If you are catching negative vibes at work, start mining your friends now. Having another job to fall back on is always a good thing. And who knows? You may actually network yourself into an even better job.

3. Cut down your debt.

The people who fare the worst during recessions are those who have procrastinated resolving their financial problems. In the event that you lost your income, nothing would put the nail in the coffin faster than exorbitant credit card payments. No, the Piper does not take a break during a recession; he mails you, calls you, takes your boat, car, big screen TV, house, and the shirt off your back if he has to. He will get paid. That’s why it’s best to minimize, or eliminate altogether, your relationship with the Piper before you find yourself empty-handed.

Begin now to say no to additional credit card spending and yes to putting as much money as you can into reducing your consumer debt. Learn to live lean. Once you’ve lost your job, it’s too late to decide to get those bills under control. Do yourself a huge favor and start now. Maybe you’ll keep your job. Maybe you’ll end up make more than you did before. But you will never regret take this step toward financial freedom.

4. Put some money away.

Experts recommend having three- to six-months worth of income set aside for a rainy day. I know, in this day and age of wild consumer spending, this advice sounds like it came straight from your great-aunt Dolores. I mean, how can you possibly set aside that much money? Most of us are lucky if we have anything in our savings accounts. But let’s be realistic here: an average severance package is around two-weeks pay. It takes more than two weeks to find, start, and get paid for a new job. The bills won’t stop coming in. What choice do we have but to put some amount of money away, at least enough to pay the bills for a few weeks?

Saving money sounds old-fashionable now. But it won’t when you don’t have to worry about Bruno the Repo Man showing up in the middle of the night to take your BMW. In fact, Great-Aunt Dolores is sounding better and better.

You’re probably realizing by now that the key to surviving a recession is to get ahead of the curve. Six months from now, authorities will announce that the recession is official. Everyone else will be going bonkers. But not you, my friend. If you’ve heeded my advice, you will be resting easy.

About the author

Marcus Varner earned his BA in English from Brigham Young University with a Creative Writing emphasis. He is currently in his second year at BYU’s lauded MBA program studying Marketing. He blogs, writes fiction and screenplays, loves movies, and can’t resist playing superheroes with his kids.

Tags: economy, employment, job advice, job search, recession, unemployment

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 11:50 am and is filed under Careers, Education, college life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.