Tech Jobs Come Calling

While the Great Recession drags on, not all sectors are getting hit equally hard. In fact, technology is doing rather well on the jobs front. Employers shed 85,000 positions from November to December of last year. But they added 5,200 tech jobs during the same month. Seems like technology is the place to be.

That doesn’t mean that having technology credentials is guaranteed employment. Just ask anyone working in a factory. U.S. manufacturing was moving out of the country even during the good times. With weakened demand for products, most companies are feeling the pinch and many have responded by laying off people. Even the best employers may have to thin the ranks when survival of the company is at stake.

Aside from the depth of this downturn, there’s really nothing new going on here. Business has always been somewhat cyclical. Some years you can have your pick of several good opportunities. Other years the employment section of the newspaper is bare. But, in general, you are better off with marketable skills in the current technologies than without them. During tough times, companies will tend to keep the people that are essential to delivering the product or service that is core to the business. If they need to bring in outside talent, they’ll be scanning resumes for specific skills that exactly match the job that needs doing. Even as business starts to pick up, employers want to selectively add talent that can be productive immediately. Only in the boom times of full employment will they settle for the best of whatever’s available.

Know what’s really booming right now? Technical and skills training of all types. The trade schools and junior colleges are flooded with students who want to learn everything from computer networking to nursing to welding to truck driving. The junior college nearby recently added a truck driving school and now I see their students driving the big rigs around town. Another community college in a nearby town offers a wind turbine technician program. Talk about preparing for the future jobs!

So, here’s your strategy. If you like technical things and are considering entering a certificate or degree program, I’d enthusiastically encourage you to do so. What the job market will be like on graduation day is always a coin toss. But chances are that if you start a two or four year program now, employment prospects will be better when you are ready to start work than they are at the moment. Even if that timing is off, there will still be some really good jobs that go begging for the right skills and someone willing to go where they are.

You can improve your prospects by investigating what technical fields and what businesses are growing at the same time you are busy learning your lessons. Green energy is almost certainly a growth field. So is health care. E-commerce has been hot for a decade. What’s beyond Web 2.0? You need to know and learn the skills that employers want and will pay for.

How about if you’ve been out of school for a long time or are even between jobs? Find out what skill set companies in your area would hire if they could find someone qualified. Thirty years ago it was people who knew something about microprocessors. I picked up a couple of courses at that community college in town and landed a good engineering job based on having just the right flavor of training at the right time. Somebody needs something accomplished even in this economy. Find out what it is, and if you can fill the requirements with your background plus some specific coursework... there’s your opportunity.

A Time for Entrepreneurs

Job security has become something of an oxymoron lately. Guaranteed employment situations are very rare. Even the usual assurances that if you do a good job there will be a place for you are rarer than they have been in years. This isn't the first recession that we've experienced. But this one is so remarkable it may get a name. I've been hearing the title "The Great Recession" being bandied about.

Like the similarly named depression of our parent's and grandparent's generation, there's nothing great about going through a severe business downturn. Losing a job without the prospect of replacing it is a reality for a growing number of people. You see the stories in the papers and on TV. Companies are laying off workers. It's a few thousand here and twenty or thirty thousand there. But it's every day. How soon before the grim reaper comes to visit your desk?

Unemployment is a disaster for 1 of 10 working Americans in some areas. But fear of unemployment, so wrenching and persistent that you can hardly focus on the work at hand, is an everyday reality for millions more. I've been through slowdowns, downsizings, and corporate mergers for decades and seen first hand the morale destruction that happens even to the top tier of employees. When no one can be told definitely when the next round of layoffs will come, what areas will be affected, or how deep the cuts will go, it's just human nature to fear the worst.

Probably the worst source of anxiety is the feeling of helplessness, the loss of control of your own destiny. That, I'm afraid, is the working bargain for so many people today. In exchange for providing you with a place to work, a defined hourly wage or salary, the structure of a job so you know what is expected, and a benefit package with vacation pay and at least some health care benefits, you give up autonomy and expectation that you have any equity in your position. You can go home at night and not have to worry about what "they" have to do to run the business. But your job may or may not be there in a couple of weeks.

Contrast that with the life of the independent business person. These people do have to worry about what it takes to run the business including where the money is coming from, whether or not a profit is being generated, how the bills are getting paid, and what needs to be done to keep the business viable. The entrepreneur has no more guarantee of success than an employee has a guarantee of employment. Much less in fact. But the entrepreneur does have one thing an employee doesn't. That's at least some influence over one's destiny.

The entrepreneur decides what avenues to pursue, what things to drop or do less of, what expenses to take on or avoid, whether or not to hire or let go of employees and how much effort to expend. In good times, employees heading home after 8 hours may shake their heads in disbelief at entrepreneurs who burn the midnight oil and never take a holiday. But when employees are told to go home early because there is less work to do and less pay to do it, those crazy hours of the entrepreneur start to look a bit more attractive.

Neither the situation of the employee nor the entrepreneur is the proverbial bed of roses in this environment. Both have their anxieties and their rewards. But during periods when traditional jobs are harder to find and less secure, there are an increasing number of people who start thinking about going into business for themselves. For many would-be entrepreneurs, the best way to see how the "other half lives" is to give it a try on a part-time or moonlighting basis while they still have a job. That way if you find that the demands of having to define your own work and make yourself do it is way more stressful than having a boss lay everything out for you, you'll know that you should spend your time looking for jobs rather than looking to start a business.

Basically, if you can approach business people with the idea that you can save them money on their voice and data services, or promote things like VoIP telephone, cell phones, satellite TV and broadband Internet to residential users, you are a good candidate to start generating commission checks. Of course, the more you enjoy this type of work and the harder you work at it, the more successful you are likely to be. Creative business and technical writers and developers of successful web sites are also good candidates for success in this field. So are people who already have sales or consulting experience.