Career

Let Me Bore You: Stability and Profit

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And let's get down to some more boring career advice!  You know you enjoy it, if only because it saves on sleeping pills!

Today's subject – stability versus profit at work.

Sure we all want high levels of pay, and a lot of us probably deserve them.  However one of the factors to consider in long term career planning, is that just because you get paid a certain amount a year on average, it doesn't mean that's what you'll make in the end.  You will face pay cuts, layoffs, etc.

That has to be taken into account in working on long-term plans and budgets.

What's the average rate of pay in your profession – and the average amount of time someone spends unemployed – and how often does it happen?  If you've found over eight years that you get laid off every 2 years and it takes you 3 months to find a job, that's not eight years of solid employment – that's 12 entire months of unemployment in 8 years – you really only worked 7 years.  In short, you made 7/8 of your pay rate (not counting unemployment and severance of course).

That little bit of math can be a lifesaver in long-term planning because it not only lets you project ahead and tells you about your unemployment prospects (for instance in some professions certain months and quarters are more likely for layoffs), but also lets you do some long-term budgeting.  You can, with just basic math skills, do a bit more planning ahead and calculations to stay on an even keep financially.

So, take an inventory of your past employment and see what you can see in layoffs, hiring, and how it might impact your budget.

– Steven Savage

Book Review: The Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search

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The Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search: The Proven Program Used by the Worlds Leading Career Services Company
by Orville Pierson

ISBN-10: 0071464042
ISBN-13: 978-0071464048

PROS: A sober, thoughtful, organized book that presents a definite plan for a job search, organizing many common elements of a good job search into one process.

CONS: Extremely dry writing style may put some off.  Despite organization, some of the book's organiation is odd.

SUMMARY: A must-buy book for the job search, presenting an organized plan you can use "out of the box" as long as you're willing to do some research.

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Convention Idea: SPECIFIC Career Tracks

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Continuing my series on ways conventions can provide more career-oriented events for attendees, let's take a look at specific career tracks.  You can find earlier posts on the subject here and here.

I've mentioned career tracks earlier, but want to focus on the idea of the specific career track.

Most implementations I've seen of this take several panels/workshops related to a particular career or skill, and ensure they take place in one location at different times.  This allows people to attend all or most of them, since they don't conflict with each other, and are easy to locate since they're in the same location.

This doesn't work for every event, and is probably best targeted for ones specific audience: a voice acting and/or animation track for an anime con, a writing track for a Science Fiction convention, etc.  Only large conventions could have the time, space, and need to do a large amount of tracks.

Targeting career tracks brings in several advantages and possible techniques:
* You reach a specific audience of interest, and maximize attendance while minimizing cost.
* You can "rank" the events/workshops/panels by experience of attendees – thus do the more introductory panels earlier and the more "senior" panels later.  This allows people to attend events fitting their experience level, or attend events in order, learning things from the basics to deeper knowledge.
* You minimize cleanup and equipment for events – you'll at least know what cleanup to expect, and can leave media equipment in the same room.
* You can "re use" guests/panelists and allow them to speak on multiple panels, leveraging their knowledge better.
* This can easily become a yearly event at the convention, constantly improved and tweaked.
* It's a reputation-builder – you show specific career support.

Specific career tracks are something I'd pay attention to convention-wise.  I think for many conventions they're just the prescription to maximize panels that people will want to attend, and build something long-term to educate attendees.

– Steven Savage