Mike Gardner, president and cofounder of PerselGardner, has been providing Capitol Communicator readers with his thoughts on today’s job market. In this article, he discusses the importance of a silver lining.
Today, I sat down to read the newspaper with my morning coffee. I took one look at the headlines, folded up the paper and put it away. I turned on my Mac, and pulled up Yahoo. The first news story that appeared was about Williams-Sonoma, whose profits dropped a whopping 90% in fourth quarter. I logged off. In the distance I could hear the morning news blaring on the TV, and it was just more bad news about the state of our economy and its inevitable impact on the job market. I wanted to crawl back into bed, pull the covers up over my head and wait until all this passes. But, as my mom once told me, sometimes clouds have silver linings, so I decided to heed her advice, and put the spotlight on the positive.
Granted, today’s job market doesn’t look all that great. We see all kinds of cuts, layoffs, and general uncertainty—but, the good news is that despite all this, there still remains hope. In a 10% unemployment world, there still remains 90% of opportunity. The president recently passed an economic stimulus plan- of epic proportion, if we look at the current situation from the glass is half-full perspective, we’ll hopefully soon experience the benefits of such an expenditure. From here, we have the opportunity to have front-row seats in our Nation’s Capitol, during a time of national transformation. Many of us will have opportunities to play an active role in making things better, just because of where we are located geographically.
While the loss of a job is incredibly traumatic, it also presents an opportunity to exercise a little carpe diem. There’s a silver lining in that you might have a rare opportunity to take stock of what’s important in your life, and to rebuild it with your own personal requirements at the forefront. Successful jobseekers have reported using the downtime to find ways to give back to society, build relationships, skills, and attain personal goals that they otherwise might not have achieved. In the process they have learned a great deal about what is important to them while maintaining a positive attitude - a critical factor in landing a new position.
Lastly, as marketers, we should consider ourselves more fortunate than most jobseekers. We have the natural ability to promote the benefits of a product or service, build powerful brands and do it in a way that causes people to notice. However, most marketers looking for jobs tend to overlook this natural talent. We simply don’t think of ourselves as powerful brands, complete with key differentiators, a solid messaging platform and bullet-proof plan to promote ourselves. Most of us are aware of a well known fact - during tough times, great brands can actually move ahead, gaining a competitive advantage by investing solidly in self promotion when others tend to pull back. The result: strong brands survive. As jobseekers, our personal brand is a powertool, and another silver lining.
At the end of the day, mom was right.
(Mike Gardner is president and co-founder of PerselGardner, (www.perselgardner.com) an innovative staffing firm specializing in superior advertising, marketing and public relations talent based in Washington, DC. PerselGardner has a method of drawing out from candidates and clients exactly what their mission is, work style, preferences, and passions. The firm then carefully match-makes with those who share similar points of view. Reach him at mikegardner@perselgardner.com)