Photo by Mike Licht, notions capital

Christine Livingston asked me where I thought the economy was going the other day. How long was it taking for people to get jobs?

I tweeted her question out to HireFriday and then used LinkedIn Answers to ask this question and targeted it to many of my career pro colleagues and friends:

Jobseeker / CareerPro survey: What is Average time it’s taking professionals to get new job now? US? UK?

Job Seekers:

• PK: 8 1/2 months and counting. Not happy.
• HT: I’ll tell you when I finally get there. This search is dragging on.
• Ed Han: If anyone’s collating this data in the US, it would be the BLS…ah, here it is. BLS (US federal Bureau of Labor Statistics) says 35.2 weeks as of end of June. I am unable to identify a current source for the UK rate. Links: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
• JB: 17 months and still counting.

Career Pros:

Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter —Career Trend

That’s REALLY a challenge to calculate, but what I’m seeing is ‘it’s all over the board.’ Those individuals transitioning their skill sets to NEW industries and specialties are often taking longer to land – perhaps twice what it took a few years ago, before the economy stalled. However, those individuals, whether changing industries or staying in the same industry, who get creative, take bridge consulting, part-time, volunteer or other jobs, focus on expanding and building their relationships, value, social media, career marketing and giving skills are moving ahead more quickly and methodically.

Those who see the search as a process versus just an end result ARE creating new career paths/lives that, though, circuitous, have pleasing (and pragmatic) results. It’s about traction, I believe – staying positive and keeping head ‘above the water’ while swimming to the new career world shore. Times and economy have changed forever, so expecting to pop a resume on a few job boards, contact a few companies with your value message and sit back to be recruited, are over. Accepting and embracing that fact will boost job-search momentum …and garner REAL results faster.

Laura Smith-Proulx – AnExpertResume.com

Great question! I bet you’ll end up with a lot of diverse answers. My clients are either having surprisingly short job searches (a matter of just weeks), or going through interviews where the process drags out. This is due to the company undergoing a change (such as an acquisition) during the time that the candidate has interviewed, or someone on the interview team waffling for a while. So, the candidates are piquing interest on the part of employers, but understandably frustrated at waiting while internal changes go down.

The volume of interviews also seems to be up, where candidates who typically might have went through 2 rounds are experiencing 4 different interviews, including phone screens.

The fastest hiring rate that I have witnessed seems to be (as always) among those who are being recruited away. This also depends on the industry, of course, although some of the faster hires I’ve seen lately are in fields that I thought had slowed (such as land development or construction).

I had more answers from my brilliant colleagues and from job seekers than fit in this space. Share your thoughts here. This is a topic that concerns all of us globally. It isn’t just the US economy. Christine is in the UK. I have friends, colleagues, and lately clients from throughout the world. We all need to understand this complex subject.

My clients are seeing more interviews and getting more offers. I get e-mails telling me that regularly. But as Jacqui and Laura said, it has much to do with how their search is positioned and how much networking they have in place.

Do you feel that we are going in the right direction, even if it isn’t fast enough?

Success begins with a single step, I believe in YOU!

I still totally believe that it does!

Saying I Can’t is easy, taking the first step is harder. I do believe in my clients and in the job seekers I interact with daily on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can do it!

Perhaps you think I sit in my comfortable office chair with not a care in the world?

How can I possibly know what you face if you are struggling in your career or presently without a job? I assure you that life has been bumpier for me than many people’s lives.

As someone who has faced many bouts of feast or famine because my husband and I have chosen to be self-employed for more than 20 years, believe me, I understand fiscal challenges.

In addition, I was blessed with two strong-willed sons, one who is still struggling with his choices at age 24 and the other who rebounded better but still hits his share of bumps.

As I admitted in last week’s post, I have had issues with the wrong kind of helping.

This year, my husband had hernia surgery that we procrastinated because we don’t have health insurance right now. The bills for that non-elective surgery (the hernia had grown to the size of a grapefruit) are starting to come in, looks like those will total $11,000+. We explored options for help and completed paperwork in advance but we don’t qualify. The bank called last week in a marketing call so I thought we would explore some new financing options there but in the end, underwriters don’t understand self-employment.

Oh, and son #2 was t-boned by an uninsured and unlicensed driver a couple weeks ago so now 3 of us share one car and it is gone from about 7am to 7pm 6 days a week as my husband cares for his dad. (sandwich generation)

All this fun news should have set me into a spiral of despair.

But I decided I am done with that. I was sharing some of this with Melissa Cooley yesterday on Skype and I told her:

I am just going to tough it out… find clients. keep writing. find passive revenue. build alliances. and then stick my tongue out when someday before I am 97, I am debt-free…

That may sound silly but I have decided that I am in control of my future. I may hit another hundred roadblocks but I believe that I can do it. I share all of this because I want you to know that when I tell you you can do it, I have walked in your shoes.

Let me leave you with my inspiration for the week, which hopefully will make you laugh as much as I did.

Photo by Duncan Harris

Recently, I worked with a young health care graduate referred by a family member who successfully used my services previously. The face-to-face appointment with the new client and my former client let my former client know how my services evolved and gave my new client new job search strategies.

The client had worked in health care for more than four years in the same facility and was perplexed that her supervisors suddenly seemed to treat her differently. I asked if anything in particular had happened. No, she said. Then I asked when this seemed to change.

She replied that it was around the time she completed her Bachelor’s Degree. This elevated her not only to being a nurse from a lower level staff member but her new degree is also more education than many of her supervisors have.

Jealousy?

I asked if it might be jealousy that was caused when she attained a higher level of success than others. The look of surprise on her face and the surprised comments from both parties was enough to tell me that this never occurred to them.

I reminded them that in this economy, any jobs are at a premium and shifting from a role as a staff member to a new graduate put her in a place that may be threatening people who previously saw her as just a young helper.

I see multiple problems here. First of all, my client is simply following her goals which should have been evident since she was going to school while she worked in the same department. I asked if she had treated anyone differently at work. This is a hard evaluation because we often don’t think we have. She may not have changed her behavior and let’s assume that for now.

Tough economy – more education

When we are in a tough economy, we want to do all we can to grow our skills, enhance our education, and follow through with our goals. This young lady graduated with high honors and worked hard throughout school to complete her degree. But our coworkers may now perceive new education as a threat.

The paradox of companies who want college graduates as employees and employees assigned to supervising staff members without the same degree can cause stress in the workplace. Adding the current economic stress to the mix and you have a potential for conflict.

Should you talk about it?

Sometimes if you are aware of the feelings of others at the workplace, you can modify your behavior to show that you just want to provide the best customer service / patient care possible and be a team player. You can ask to talk directly with coworkers when you sense there is a conflict.

When these feelings are there but not acknowledged, individuals like my young client may be clueless as to the issues and feel rejected or hated. The consequences to the workplace is that when no one is happy and no one is talking about why, it affects the work and sooner or later, someone will be blamed and jobs will be lost.

Communication could resolve this before it boils over into something bigger.

What do you think?

Photo by Monsoir Noir

Raise your hand if everything runs smoothly for you all the time.

Is your hand up? No, why not? Guess what? Neither is mine or any reader that is being honest right now.

When your world is not running smoothly, you think every else around you is in the perfect world. If you are unemployed, you think everyone else is happily employed in the best possible position. If you have trouble with paying the bills, you think you are the only one. If you aren’t getting along with a family member, you think every other family you know never argues.

our perspective is skewed by our present pain

Most of the time when we think that way, it is because our perspective is skewed by our present pain. We find it hard to get out of ourselves to see that everyone struggles with something. If a person is blessed by a great job and financial ease, often you find that someone they care about has a fatal illness. If a person is healthy, you might find that they are challenged by a strong-willed child whose choices cause family strife.

We all think that we are the only ones with whatever problem we face. And we bury those problems, fail to talk about them, and aren’t willing to let others know that we could use some help.

Guess what? We all can use some help. The perfect world doesn’t exist for anyone.

Help someone else today. Your problems will get smaller as you see what someone else is dealing with.