The economy is getting better and hopefully you’ve mostly survived the bloodbath that has been the last year. Most businesses have used this time to “trim the fat,” “refocus,” and “expand their expertise.”
I was recently asked by a job seeker about what he could do to make himself more marketable. The reality is, at least in most firms, that there aren’t going to be a lot of jobs for a while. My firm has reduced everyone to four-day work weeks. So, even if the economy does completely rebound, we’ve got a built-in ability to expand our workforce 20% without hiring anyone. My advice to him: treat himself as a small business—do a lot of the things that smart small firms are doing. Use this time to: clean up and reorganize, retrain & learn new things, and volunteer and do the things you never had time to do before.