Making the Old, New

Let me first say thanks to Cindy Kraft, a leading career & personal brand strategist for corporate finance executives for much of the information in this blog. A career and personal brand strategist is someone who teaches you how to differentiate yourself from the pack to a prospective employer.

According to Cindy, if you have been unemployed for more than 6 months you are considered low hanging fruit; in other words, not desirable for employment. So what do you do to move yourself higher up the chain?

Getting into school is one way. When you do this you are repackaging yourself. What you are trying to do is justify why you have been out of the work for this period of time. Obviously college students are not unemployed, they are seeking an education.

What you need to pursue in college, if your interest is in finance, is something that is trending. Outsourcing is going to continue, for instance. The greatest percentage of outsourcing in technology seems to be directed towards India. If you can mix a portfolio that would give you a knowledge of Indian culture, language, religion with finance, this is a reinvention which might make you more attractive to future employers. Careful research and analysis with an expert is essential though so your learning is not superficial. The bottom line in getting a job is the bottom line of the company with which you are seeking employment. What you did in the past is a Babe Ruth home run. You could hit, but can you hit today?

Employers are looking for employees who can fill more than one role. A diversified employee is someone they can plug into more than one gap if need be. This is especially true because of the anti-business environment of the Obama administration. If businesses have to hire, they want to hire as few people as they can because they have no idea what regulation will come next from Washington to increase their cost per employee.

One area of employment that presently has been devastated by the Obama administration is energy production. Coal power plants are under siege. Texas drillers found a vast new oil field only to have it declared off limits by the government because of the discovery of an endangered lizard. Ten drilling platforms have left the Gulf of Mexico to drill in places where governments are friendlier.

This anti-energy trend can be a source of employment for you if your financial experience is in this area. If you were to re-educate yourself, for instance, so that you developed an educational strategy that incorporated learning about Indonesia, a large populated country which is energy friendly and has large petroleum and coal reserves, you could improve your value. Again, real knowledge is needed, not "I read an article in a magazine" knowledge.

Now I cannot tailor strategies for every person, of course, but these suggestions may give you ideas which when you tailor them for yourself, pursued at a Masters level, may be winning employment opportunities. I realize that the idea of new debt is unattractive to people struggling, but even financial experts agree that school debt is acceptable if it leads to a good job.

Also realize that relocation may be involved, even foreign travel. It is funny that many of us love reading about Lawrence of Arabia and adventure. Few of us, however, want to even walk much further than a sandal print out of our living rooms.

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