How to keep your skills up if you are laid off
MSNBC reports on the essentials of keeping your skills sharp if you are laid off of your job.
“Maintaining your skills and advancing your skills is critical to advancing if you’re employed, and getting a new job if you’re unemployed,” ….. But how do you stay on top of your field when you’ve been downsized? Tracy and other career counseling experts identified three potential avenues: continuing education, professional organizations and volunteering.
The ideas for using the first two of these avenues are unfortunately weak at best. You lost your job so spend lots of money taking classes. Become the membership chairman of your professional organization.
They do make two great points in this article which I’m wanted to share with you. First, tap into social networking.
Social networking, he said, is a good place to get acquainted with the expanding possibilities online. It’s an area that is easily self-taught, and one that can have numerous applications once you’re back in the workplace. As a bonus, establishing a network of contacts can also help during a job hunt. Pointing to a 24-year-old staffer at his company who has 4,000 “friends” on MySpace and 300 connections on LinkedIn, Straits said, “He will never have a problem connecting to a position.
This is an excellent idea that I hadn’t really thought of before. I’m going to have to make a point to learn how to become a Linkedin power user. To be honest with you, I’d like to keep my Myspace and Facebook accounts purely personal. If there is any risk that your friends will be posting goofy pictures of you, keep potential employers away. One potential problem with this is that if you don’t already have much of a social network, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to build one in a timely enough fashion to help land a new job.
Second, volunteer in ways that put your professional skills to use.
If you’re searching for a suitable spot, look for organizations that connect volunteers with nonprofits needing expert help. The Taproot Foundation is one national group that provides pro bono help with things like strategic planning, annual report preparation and marketing.
This sounds like a great way to use your skills helping out a non-profit while adding to your resume at the same time. And here’s a link to the Taproot Foundation if you are interested.
I’m also interested in finding out whether volunteering outside your area of expertise is a good idea. For example is joining the Peace Corps for a year an acceptable way to deal with a layoff. Would potential future employers look positively or poorly at your decision to ride out the economic suckfest by doing meaningful volunteer work abroad? I don’t know. If you have any insights, please comment.
