Author: Lavie Margolin, Career Coach
There are a few strategies employees can take to help solidify their job status and stand a better chance of keeping their jobs in difficult times. Here are four to get you started:
1) Be visible. Take your area of expertise and look for opportunities to increase your visibility by representing the company to the outside. One could pursue opportunities to speak at conferences in your area of specialty or publish scholarly articles bringing prestige to the company.
2) Take on additional roles at work. Increasingly companies have been posting jobs with a duality of roles for a position. Why not let the company know what else you are capable of accomplishing in expanding your role? If you are a PR or Editorial Assistant and can help maintain the website by coding in HTML, great. The more responsibility you can take on, the greater your value will be.
3) Help the company make and/or save money. If you can suggest and/or implement ideas that help the organization to make more money or save money, your value to the company and its bottom line will increase. Suggestions can include finding government grants appropriate to the organizations business, new sources of revenue or better ways of doing business. Creating reports and finding contacts to help facilitate these ideas will prove your seriousness to helping companies succeed.
4) Go with the flow and flow with the go. Tough economic times are an easy excuse for managers to get rid of employees who have been a thorn in their side. Be as open and agreeable as possible to do what you are asked to do, especially when the company is understaffed.
Don’t just be an employee. Be dynamic in your job. Be open to suggestions. Help the company to do more with less. Consider how you can contribute not only within your defined role but outside of it as well. Your career will thank you.
About the Author: Lavie Margolin is a New York-based Career Coach and the author of Lion Cub Job Search: Practical Job Search Assistance for Practical Job Seekers. To learn more, go to Lavie’s website, Lion Cub Job Search:www.Lioncubjobsearch.com