Tag: LinkedIn

What do you do when you’re stuck “off assignment”?

It's a tough market out there
It’s a tough market out there

Over the past couple of weeks a rather wonderful discussion thread has been unfurling at LinkedIn (an unexpected sentence I never thought I’d write).

The members of the Interim Managers Group  have been discussing what they do when they’re out of work – stuck “off assignment” .

This is heartening, not just because of the advice they’re sharing (of which more later), but  for the  simple fact that they are publicly acknowledging that even the most experienced interim has periods out of work when no matter how good you are, how expert, how well connected, you still can’t get hired for love nor money.

People rarely feel comfortable owning up to the fact that they’re not as successful/busy/in demand/well-remunerated as they’d like to be.  There’s lots of success shared over the networks of LinkedIn, but very few accounts of troughs to go with the peaks.  Having just finished a period “off assignment” myself, I was particularly cheered by this thread. People tend not to talk about this side of consultancy so it’s perfectly possible to believe that you are the only person who doesn’t move seamlessly from one well-paid assignment to the next. But hey, waddya know, everyone’s in the same boat.  Lots of people – experienced, well-qualified, massively employable people – sometime endure hair-raisingly long gaps between assignments.

Advice from the horse’s mouth

It’s the notion of a shared experience rather than any one piece of practical advice which will be the most help to me next time I’m caught in between jobs. But here’s a digest of practical suggestions for what to do if you’re temporarily without billable work, with thanks to the massed ranks of LinkedIn’s interim managers:

  • Maintain a structure to your day, your week, your month. Set some goals to achieve, work-related or not, and work towards them.
  • Keep your networking fresh, especially during the time you’re in an assignment otherwise your network may see you making contact only when you’re looking for work.
  • Create a business plan every year which will ensure the business is sustainable. Plan in time for personal development and marketing activity.
  • Go to as many industry events as you can to keep your network and industry knowledge up to date.
  • Work on your Linked In profile:
    1- Look at other profiles and see how yours can be improved
    2- Participate in discussions
    3 -Look at your home page every day – use CTRL-F to search for       relevant postings.
  • Email your ISP contacts every 6-8 weeks to remind them you are still looking.
  • Keep the faith – you will find work again.

And here are some tips from a different source on how to stay positive while you’re looking.

67 pieces of advice for small businesses and start-ups

I have a magpie habit of spotting stuff online and parking the link to it, intending to come back later.  Things have been particularly bad recently as I’m working on a new project, to be launched on an unsuspecting world in the next couple of weeks, so I’ve been hoarding advice aimed at start-ups and micro-businesses.

As a way of clearing the decks, here are 67 tips for new, small businesses gathered during my research.  And no, I’m not doing them all myself.  Yet.

Business planning and starting from scratch 

Social networks

Communications – the right words and the pictures

Consultancy and freelancing

  • A Q&A from The Guardian about the pros and cons of becoming a consultant.  This is specifically about the voluntary sector but lots of the issues are universal.
  • Is there life after freelancing? Questions to ask yourself if you’re thinking of trading up from being a freelancer to setting up a small agency
  • Freelance Adviser general advice on a range of subjects for freelancers

How do you prove you’re resilient? Work in the public sector

A depressing entry in the Guardian’s cutsblog suggests that the image of public sector workers as plodding, risk-averse jobsworths will count against them when it comes to taking some of the  2 million jobs that the private sector is poised to deliver any day now.

Enough recruitment consultants have been quoted in PR Week saying that public sector-ites will be at a disadvantage in the jobs market to have spooked me into attending a CIPR/VMA event looking at how hard it might be to move from public to private sector.   Inevitably the hardest thing to prove when you’ve worked in the public sector is that you have the commercial acumen to make it in private business.  Otherwise, it seems  the skills that employers are looking for are, encouragingly, the ones that you develop as a means of survival in the public sector –  resilience,  managing change, leading teams, influencing stakeholders,  a willingness to push back against difficult managers (Lord, have I got some stories to tell…)

Transferable communications skills

Having worked in comms in both sectors, I’d say that the skills you need to succeed are pretty much the same for either.  My starter list would include  a continuous focus on the audience, a sound understanding of the market you’re working in,  imagination, flexibility, tenacity, a sharp eye for managing budgets and people, an understanding of strategy (and how it differs from tactics),  a willingness to get stuck into delivery (and the practical know-how), a healthy respect for deadlines,  the political nous to navigate  layers of management, good writing skills and an eye for detail.  I see no reason why having the skills to work in one should somehow bar you from working in the other.

The importance of social networks

I was struck by how few people at the event said they felt confident  using social media as part of their job-hunting armoury.  Sadly, opting out isn’t an option.  Research suggests that 100% of recruitment consultants use LinkedIn as a tool to identify (and weed out) candidates for posts, and that the size of your network is important.  Something like 85% of them use Twitter for the same reason.  Not having an online presence suggests that you haven’t updated your skills in a decade and aren’t really playing the game – not having a LinkedIn account now is like not having an email address was ten years ago.

Barbara Gibson – our social media guru – recorded this  on her phone at the event I went to, demonstrating a neat way of gathering content for a blog or website at the same time as cementing a link with a potential contact – wouldn’t you be flattered if she asked to interview you?  And wouldn’t you put the link on your site too and link back to her?  Genius!