Down to Food and TP?

I just received this note from a reader. Perhaps you can identify…

Hi, Joe,

Any hints for someone who has been out of work for the second time in 2008?

I was laid-off May 16th and have been on a roller coaster ever since. I am down to buying food and TP. I have two young adult children to provide for and an ex who says he cannot help them.

Thanks,

Kerri

You’re in a tough situation. You need to do some crisis planning at this point. You don’t mention the age of your two young adult children, but if they’re sixteen or older, they’re old enough to find  part-time jobs to contribute toward the bills. If they’re out of high school and not going to college, they need to work full-time to help you pay the bills.

In terms of your own employment situation, some additional crisis planning is in order here. You need to develop income to stay in your home and to put food on the table. If you have no income now, make a list of your strongest skills. Then make a list of jobs that you can find that would solve your immediate financial problems.

If necessary, contact a credit counselor to help you to see your situation more objectively and to identify resources and solutions, both short and long term, to your financial crisis.  They'll also describe the rights you have and present you with some options that will allow you to keep your credit rating intact.

Once you have a short-term job that’ll meet your immediate needs, take a deep breath, and start planning for the longer term. You’re in the same boat as a lot of other people out there seeking jobs. Your challenge is to rise above your competitors. To do this, frame your work history in terms that employers want to hear.

The operative term is “Return on Investment”. Forget trying to sell your skills and cite “results” instead. Sit down with a legal pad and go through your work history. Start to ask the “so what?” question after each role, project or task that you performed for your employers.

Track each role, project or task back to its relationship to money. We all touch money as employees. We do this by helping employers to either save money or make money. Make a list of examples of how you were effective in one of these two roles.

This is a way to start differentiating yourself from your competitors. It will help you to overcome the stigma of two layoffs this year. One part of your challenge with finding a new job is the economy. The other part involves your own perceived limitations. We feel we’re not worthy or that something is wrong with us, or we’re failures or “rejects”. The challenge is to stay positive and to always sell our achievements in the real world, a world that seems to be losing its head while our own clock is ticking.

This is no easy feat, but when you start to realize that you are an important part of the profit and loss picture, you can begin to articulate your value to the employer. You’ll start to gain the attention of potential employers.

Why? Because they don’t have job opportunities, they have “problems”. That open position means the company is losing money that they can’t afford to lose. When you can talk in these new terms (ROI, Save $$, Make $$, etc.) you become a Problem Solver, not just a job applicant.

Check out my free resume teleseminar workshop. I offer more detail about these points to help you to build a more effective resume to sell yourself in today’s economy.

Joe