This week I will attend a workshop at school on how to recession-proof your career. The workshop is hosted by the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Professional Career Services office. From the event description: “Now is not the time to stay quiet, to stay under the radar, or hunker down and hope everything will be okay. Now is the time to assert yourself and take control of your career!” Agreed indeed.
This office’s events are consistently good and rarely include gimmicks, so I expect there will be substantive content. Typically, though, talk about “recession-proofing” careers tends toward superficial things (e.g. take on a new project!, warm call 10 clients a day!, print new business cards!, etc.) that you would not otherwise do. It would seem to me that one of the last things you would want to do if you were worried about your career is to start to be inauthentic.
Instead, maybe now is the time, as O’Reilly suggests, to figure out what really matters to you and get busy doing those things. Perhaps now is the time, as Leo suggests, to make a real impact at work, no matter how small.
If that sounds like happy talk, consider some more strategic approaches. How about seeing an opportunity in every threat, as Mike Masnick suggests. Another excellent and challenging strategy is to work to become known as a change agent. Recessions are awful, in large part because they bring change (and not the awesome kind). If you are the person who can manage that change effectively and efficiently then you are the person in demand!
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Just wanted to add a small tip on creating a recession proof career. It would be a good idea to plan out your career or business by considering government contracting. This is a very lucrative financial opportunity that can help you stabilize financially and increase your income flow if it is done the right way.
If this is something that you are interested in to put an end to your financial worries, get yourself registered with the Central Contractor Registry which is a federal clearing house for vendors and small businesses too. Also identify a product or service that you can supply to the government and which the government needs in order to get a contract.
You can win such billion dollar contracts and secure your career or business better even during this phase of recession.