What is Jobpreneurship™?

Simply put, Jobpreneurship™ is how insiders and businesses get jobs. Or, to put it another way, it is the best practice processes that successful people use every day – but most people are never taught.  So, what is the difference?

First, recognize that getting a job in a business is different than selling an apple to a consumer. A consumer (individual) can look at the apple, decide that they want it, and then pay a small price to buy it. However in a business, hiring a person is far more complex. The job seeker may not be qualified for the job, may not fit into the culture of an organization, may not have good teaming skills, may not know how to communicate, may have red flags in appearance, personal history, or Facebook. They may tarnish the company brand, may steal company money or assets, may make million dollar mistakes, may create multi-million dollar lawsuits, may disrupt the organization, and may even cause a criminal investigation. An apple is cheap. A new hire employee is expensive and full of ongoing risks. Wise companies take the hiring of employees very seriously.

Second, because of the risks in hiring employees, companies utilize gatekeepers to help filter out unqualified prospects, comply with governmental laws, verify qualifications, and make assessments of “best fit” candidates for each job opening. These gatekeepers are usually found in Human Resources and can have various titles, including company recruiters. Even when the company uses a third party consultant to assist HR, HR ultimately is always part of the process and is responsible for the best interests of the company. These third party consultants are often referred to as headhunters, retained recruiters, executive recruiters, and contingency recruiters for full time openings. For part-time or contract labor, the third parties are usually called agencies, temporary firms, or contract firms. For the sake of our discussions, we will refer to company HR gatekeepers as “recruiters” and external hiring assistance as “external recruiters”. Essentially, they all focus on finding the “best fit” in qualifications and pricing to fill the job specification for either a full-time, part-time, or contract job.

Third, it is critical to understand that a company hiring process is similar to a procurement purchasing process for products or services. In both cases, the purchasing agent or HR recruiter is not the decision maker. In both cases, they are given a product, service or job specification that is written or approved by the hiring manager or her boss. Those hiring managers are usually found in non-HR functions such as sales, marketing, operations, finance, information technology, R&D, etc. That means the purchasing or HR agent is serving the interests of the typically non-HR decision maker while also ensuring that company policies and laws are being met.

Fourth, it is important to understand that each of these functions use standardized processes for hiring or buying decisions. Actually, if you think about it, a hiring process is really a buying process for a person’s time, labor, skills, and contribution. Depending upon the situation, Procurement utilizes a similar responsibility for third party services and consultants. In both cases, you have a financial approval to hire / buy, a decision maker approval of the hiring / buying specifications (job description or service description), a process to obtain interested party submissions (resumes or a request for proposal), and a process to evaluate interested party submissions (resume reviews, interviews, assessment testing, RFP reviews, balanced score cards, interviews, etc).

Why am I taking so much time to explain these roles? Simple. Unless you understand what is happening, you will not understand that trying to get a job in a business is far more complex than your buying an apple. The prettiest, best shaped, right type of apple is not always picked. The decision of which job seeker to hire is far, far more complicated and few understand the process or understand how to follow the process of how high achievers always seem to be getting jobs and getting ahead while others don’t. So, we will be giving you a high level overview of how winners are winning by using these same processes that businesses use to sell their products and services to HR, Procurement, and decision makers every day. We call these best practices “Jobpreneurship™”.

 

What are some tangible actions middle level managers can take right now to improve their odds of being hired?

First, STOP with the resumes, email blasts, job boards, and interviewing. 80-90% of jobs come from networking, not going through “official channels.”

Second, START looking at yourself as a business who needs to figure out:

·  What you are passionate about

·  What you really want to do from last week’s list

·  Where do you want to work

·  What that company is looking for in skills, cultural fit, character, etc.

·  What are the issues or gaps that you need to address before going to the company

·  What competitive value you can offer to a prospective hiring manager

·  How to brand yourself

·  How to communicate your message

·  How to network into influencers, trusted advisors, and decision makers who will see why they would “want” to hire you versus the masses waiting outside sending in their resumes.

If you cannot follow these simple points, why should they hire you?

Most of your competition is looking on job boards and sending out resumes. You can do better than that.

What sort of new skills and/or education should mid-life, middle management job-seekers consider to do to improve their prospects.

First, figure out what you want to do and where you want to do it.

Second, find out from that company or industry what skills and education you need to technically qualify for the job. You may not even need more training in your field.

Third, recognize that technical fit is the ticket to getting into first level cull list. 50% of the hiring decision assumes you are qualified, and shifts to your appearance, likeability, cultural fit, affinity interests, passion, trustworthiness, and a host of emotional feelings. A buyer (hiring manager) buys based upon gut feel (emotion), confirmed by facts (technical fit), and by politics (internal consensus). In most cases, a person who learns how to sell and market themselves can get a tentative job decision – and perhaps even get to write the job description before being sent down to HR to start the legal review and interview political process.

Think of this path as learning a new sport. You can watch football and think you know the rules. You can get up and learn the sport by playing it. You can get better through coaching and the bumps and bruises of experience. Who do you think will get to play on game day?

How long will the doldrums for this segment persist? Will more middle management positions for the 35’s and 45’s open up again in the near future?

No one knows how long this cycle will last. Some believe we are in an up cycle. Others believe we are about to experience a double dip. In my opinion, reactively doing what everyone else is doing may eventually result in a job. However, proactively learning the skills and process of how insiders and businesses get jobs can only help them get a job sooner. If they continue developing those skills, they will learn a new process that will last for a lifetime of job transitions and career growth regardless of the economy.

 

 

 

What are the special challenges that middle age job hunters face?

Special challenges, in addition to those mentioned earlier, include:

Increasing competition for jobs

·  Former executives and middle management who previously retired took a financial hit during the 2009 financial downturn. Now, they are either needing income to pay bills or they are concerned about not having enough money to live on when they can no longer work. Many are trying to re-enter the workforce.

·  Traditionally, there was an outflow of managers retiring whose departure opened the door for remaining managers to survive or for slots to become available. Cash needs, fear, and uncertainty have caused many managers to defer retirement.

·   The U.S. has encouraged immigration, especially of highly educated and trained foreign nationals. While a positive move in strong economic growth cycles, these high quality immigrants have increased the competition for U.S. jobs.

Perception of being more expensive

·  Older managers usually have higher salaries than younger managers

·  Older managers frequently have higher health risks and costs

·  Older managers may still expect to be on a pension or bonus plan that is no longer affordable

Perception of being out of date or too old

·  Many managers are professionally or technically out of date. One example is someone I know who still prefers pencils and paper for logistics rather than today’s integrated technology solutions.

·  Older people are perceived as not wanting to change or innovate – which runs counter to today’s business hyper-change environment.

·  Managers often feel their value is to manage people, but not necessarily produce results or add value. That was yesterday’s model.

Some might ask,  “Is it a case of being over-qualified for entry level-jobs but not sufficiently qualified/experienced for upper management, or is their situation more complex and nuanced than that?”

Being told that you are “over-qualified” is merely a polite phrase to avoid the deeper concern that, when the economy recovers, you will leave for another managerial position with another company. In most cases, you may actually be “under-qualified” to do today’s entry level jobs. Many managers are out of date technically or educationally to perform entry level work.  They may also have emotional challenges when demoted. Why hire a former manager when you can hire a lower cost, passionate, high energy, technically current, and recently educated young person?

For upper management positions the issue is often a lack of experience and proven results. The average tenure of today’s C-Level position executive is from 18 to 24 months. It would be hard to convince a similar size company that a former manager would be the best candidate for senior executive positions when many experienced senior executives are also looking for work.

What can these people do to improve their chances of finding a job? Is it a case of lowering their sights or aiming high for upper-management?

First, they need to face reality that the world has changed. It has become highly competitive with fewer available jobs. That means they need to learn how to compete in the same way that businesses compete for jobs. The unemployed is a product or service trying to market and sell oneself into a job. How are you competing with other products and services looking for placement?

Just implementing a few of these principles can help someone compete at much higher levels.

The first step is to review the many options that you actually have:

·  Try to get their old job back or a similar position in a similar company

·  Try to move into senior management in a smaller company. For example, a controller in a larger company may fit as a CFO in a smaller company.

·  Become a consultant

·  Become a fractional manager who works a day or more at each of several client companies who cannot afford a full-time employee

·  Become a contract worker. Companies will often look to contact solution companies, such as Tatum, to fill interim positions or to handle a specific project

·  Start your own business

·  Partner with others to start a business

·  Buy a franchise

·  Change careers

·  Work for non-profits…

In my opinion, any of these are better than targeting entry level or lower level positions.

 

Why are so many mid-life, middle-management employees finding themselves out of work?

We are seeing a Perfect Storm that has been building for 20 years.

With increased technology and industry consolidation, companies have centralized and consolidated operations. Two examples are the use of shared service centers and data center consolidations. Middle management becomes truly redundant and is usually eliminated.

Process Improvements have increased productivity resulting in fewer employees which means you need fewer managers.

Consultants have driven major cost cutting and competitive advantage initiatives, including de-layering, right sizing, outsourcing (discrete jobs), and offshoring (entire operations or manufacturing). Often de-layering and right sizing merely means having to do more with less, resulting in fewer people having to work longer and harder. With outsourcing and offshoring, many jobs are being filled from outside the United States.

There is more competition from true globalization and virtual employment, whether overseas, contract labor, or home based virtual employees who are willing to work for fewer benefits and a lower wage. This trend is likely to increase. Examples include fractional CFOs, part-time consultants, technology managers responsible for internet sites or the internet cloud, project management, and virtual call centers.

There is deferred demand for rehiring middle management. It was easy to let high salary managers who oversaw the producers go out the door. As the economy recovers, many of those positions may open up. However, companies are finding that they can get along with fewer people and they are reluctant to hire even when the need is critical. Why? Because they are afraid of not being able to forecast the risk of potential higher taxes, higher healthcare costs, increasing regulations, tighter credit markets, global instability, lower consumer demand, greater government debt, inflation, and the impact on their marketplace.

Unless there is substantial economic growth, the opportunities for middle age and middle management will remain tight for the next few years.