We talk about "job security," but in fact the only long-term career security you have sits between your ears. Even if you land the greatest job in the world, you must live your life in a world in which nothing, ultimately, is guaranteed. In this chapter we will cover some of the important truths that underlie any attempt to endure and prosper in a time of rapid technological and economic change. 

Before we get into the specifics, a few words on mindset are in order. You will be happier if you do not view your career as an even tradeoff--your unquestioning loyalty for the employer's promise to require your services always. This unwavering relationship may have been the standard twenty or thirty years ago, but it is not so now. People should certainly have a measure of loyalty to the firms for which they work, but these days lifetime commitment is for altars, not cubicles.

After all, companies only have loyalty to the bottom right-hand corner of the quarterly profit and loss statement. (If they didn't have that loyalty, your paycheck would bounce.) It may seem harsh, but the fact is that you are a plentiful and renewable resource. You are, in a word, expendable.  

But if a company has a responsibility to survive, you do too. This fact has not been lost on many of today's career writers and counselors, who have advised the development of a single area of high performance, one that transfers easily from one company (or industry) to another. Slogans such as "Become a specialist" and "Develop an expertise" have been offered as answers to the rapidly changing career picture so many emergent careerists face. Yet these are only partially correct responses to the problem.

Recognition in your "specialty" can actually get you pigeonholed and damage your future employability. The problem is that "specialists" all too often repeat a single year's experience, year in and year out. With the rapid technological changes in our world, the "specialist" may, ten years on, have the marketable equivalent of one year of experience repeated ten times--in an obsolete area of expertise, no less! This is not positioning yourself in a seller's market, not by a long shot.

No matter how stellar your performance, no matter how shrewdly you focus your efforts, you remain open to the risk that economic and technological changes will undermine your career. Of course, the "specialize" crew is right in pointing out that you can no longer expect the modern corporation to guarantee your employment. But there are seven important ways you can protect your employability over the long haul, ways you don't usually hear or read about.

1. Join the Inner Circle
I have written in other books about the inner circles that develop in every department and in every company. These are the people whose input is requested on key decisions, and who are likely to have the best sense of why a given initiative is being pursued, rather than just what steps are being delegated to carry them out.

How do you get the invitation to that inner circle-which carries with it visibility, raises, plum assignments, and, most important for our purposes, the greatest possible relevant experience, stability, and future employability? There is a step-by-step approach you can follow.

During your first few days on the job, sit down with your boss and explain how much you want to make a success of your new position. Add that you are prepared to do whatever it takes to make your goal of becoming a valuable member of the team a reality (and mean it). There isn't a manager in the world who wouldn't like to hear this. 

Continue by stressing that you want to maximize your strengths and minimize any weaknesses related to your inexperience by turning them into strengths. With this in mind, ask whether it would be possible for you and your boss to sit down on a regular basis over the first few months to make sure you are on the right track. 

It should go without saying that, having begun in such a remarkable fashion, you must follow your plan to the letter and assiduously follow up any suggestions or guidance you receive. (Be forewarned: This plan is not recommended for members of the "4:59-and-I'm-outta-here" club!) Once the first three months have passed, tell your boss that you are so appreciative of the help you've received that you would like to continue the process on an informal basis by sitting down for a few minutes every two or three months to get feedback on your performance.  

Several very interesting things happen when you take this approach. If you've been working for any length of time, you've probably noticed that, once a year, you have a formal performance review meeting with your manager-who typically knows little or nothing about the actual quality of your work. If you follow the advice I've just given, that same manager will be meeting with you six times more frequently than with anyone else in your department. You will also be the beneficiary of a great deal of one-on-one attention and positive feedback, not to mention the possibility of exposure to important information that might not otherwise come your way. As you travel down the road, you'll be picking up points and protecting your future at the same time.

2.  Achieve Twenty-first Century Literacy
If you expect to be employable a decade from now, you had better set about achieving basic computer literacy. The bare minimum for anyone aspiring to a professional position will be an ability to execute daily communications at the terminal.  

There is simply no excuse now for inability to function with a computer. Note that, by taking the minimal time to learn how to operate, say, a popular word processing program such as Microsoft Word, you will experience the added benefit of having a far more efficient and professional job search the next time you are out of work.

3.  Mend Your Patchwork Quilt
The typical working professional is still clinging to an "updated" version of the same resume created to meet the needs of that first professional job hunt. After five, ten, or fifteen years of carefully adding subsequent jobs, the resulting document is less a resume than a patchwork quilt. Quilts don't win jobs nowadays.

 Take the time to update your resume by rewriting it from scratch to reflect the dictates of the current employment environment. You never know when you will need it; don't procrastinate! Prudence dictates that we expect the best in our lives and prepare for the worst. Do it now.

4.  "The In Crowd"
Have you noticed that all the really top-notch people in a given field seem to know one another--or at least are no more than a handful of phone calls from anyone in the business they have to contact?

 How did these people get in the enviable position of being "in with the in crowd"? It's a little far-fetched to delude ourselves that they are all sons and daughters of Fortune 500 executives!

The truth is more prosaic. The top people in every field got that way by concerted long-term effort, and by making a point of communicating with and learning from their peers. These people have done many inspired things, and maintaining membership in at least one professional association is virtually always one of them. The theory is simple: If you can't have the opportunity to get to know everyone within the context of your job, you can get to know just about everyone of consequence by working with them at the same association meetings and functions.  

When an employment need arises at a company, the first thing management does is scratch its collectively balding head and mutter, "Who do we know?" Then, apart from everyone management has worked with in the past, a mental spotlight shines on those extra special professionals, those folks who go that extra mile, the people who demonstrate their commitment and dedication to the profession with big infusions of time and effort. The people who come to mind are those met at association meetings.

Fortunately for you, finding and joining appropriate associations requires little more than thirty minutes in the local library. There you will examine a big fat book called the Encyclopedia of Associations, which details thousands of national and regional associations with appropriate contact information. Don't get discouraged by that old saying, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." That only goes halfway. It should really end like this: “. . . it's who you get to know."

5.  Reach Out and Touch Someone
Having amended the saying we discussed in Secret #4, let's do it again: "It's not just what you know, it's who you get to know and who you stay in touch with."

Have you ever had someone call you for career help, someone you've stayed in touch with over the years? Isn't your instinct to try to move heaven and earth to help that person? Now think of someone who calls just to ask you for help--that's the only context in which the two of you communicate. If you're like most of us, the assistance you offer in this situation is cursory at best.
The idea here is to make as many professional contacts for their own sake as you can over the years. Make it a daily priority. Collect business cards from everyone you meet during the general run of business: at conventions, during sales presentations, at seminars, and so on. Note on those cards, for future reference, the circumstances under which you met the person.  

Talk to each of your contacts at least once a year just to stay in touch and see how things are going. The dividend comes down the line when you need help, or when you receive a call from someone who says, "Carol, we're starting a search for a [position], and we wondered whether you could refer us to anyone." Make no mistake; the caller is discreetly asking if you are interested.   Reach out and touch lots of people so they can reach out and help you. It's called safety networking.

6.  Work on the Day of Rest
Every Sunday, remove and file the Help Wanted section of your major metropolitan newspaper. You may not need it today or even this year, but at some point you will be in need of job leads, and this collection of want ads will provide you with an essential road map of where the jobs are in your area. A company that needed an accountant a year ago could just be starting a search for another one today.  

Even aged want-ads give you specifics about exactly what kind of experience a particular company looks for. The "hidden job market" should perhaps be renamed the "forgotten job market," since a review of advertising in a national or metropolitan daily will give you the skinny on virtually all types of jobs in your field. For you, however, it won't be a forgotten market at all. It will be nestling safely in your bottom drawer.  

7.   Say Hello to Harry the Headhunter
My career began with a long stint as a headhunter, and a couple of things about daily life in that particular salt mine have always amused me. I noticed that entry-level professionals tended to be offended that a headhunter would try to lure them away from a current position for another one with better opportunities and rewards, while more senior people appreciated the opportunity to keep their options open. I also noticed that line managers and human resources professionals would have conniption fits on finding a fox in the chicken coop--but that those same managers would change their feelings entirely when it came to their personal career options.