I remember the Dot-Com Boom and the Dot-Com Bust. It wasn’t that long ago. The Dot-Com Boom didn’t last that long. During the boom good people were hard to find. Even those who hardly fogged the mirror wanted much more money than they were worth. However that came to an end and people were on the street and unemployment rose dramatically.
I won’t ever forget the Great Recession. It had lasted much longer that the Dot-Com Boom.
But things are getting better. Many LinkedIn Discussions on the groups I belong to have significantly more jobs postings than they did a few years ago. Immediate opening they say. The same sense of urgency as DR TV.
I was recently recruiting a JAVA Developer for a local digital firm. Six figure salary. Could work remotely. Could I find JAVA Developers? Sure. But it was very tough to find JAVA Developers that weren’t working. Most were happy and content where they were. It is a great time to be working in a profession when there are more jobs than people. Supply and demand still apply today.
I found the same demand recently when I was looking for a Technical Producer. Most people available wanted much more money that the position offered.
I am a little worried for JAVA Developers in that many of them had a poor presence on LinkedIn. They aren’t really for the future. Instant trouble if things change and the past decade have shown us that things change often and rapidly. But Americans are famous for one thing. A short memory.
I hope that one day they aren’t at the networking meetings where many talented people in transition are still relatively easy to find. They would love to be hired but they are invisible to many of the people making the hiring decisions in their skill set. I have seen too much of that.
So how do you find the jobs that will be in high demand in the future? Well you have to be astute enough to predict where the world is going. It isn’t always modeling on just what are high demand jobs of today. It isn’t found by looking only at what has worked in the past.
Things change. Even more rapidly in the New Normal. It is all about the predicting what will be hot a few years from now and training for the future today. Reading and following visionaries does help. You may not of heard of Marshall McLuhan but he predicted a global village when the only people who had sushi lived in Japan.
Constant learning and reinvention also help but many people invest more time watching TV than growing themselves. It’s easier. Change is hard even though it often pays the immediate benefit of the journey.
Some things are easier to see. I believe that in advertising that technology is as valuable a product to a client as an ad. Venerated as much as the selection of the right type face or the selection an up and coming director in the past. Thus technology people will be increasing valuable. Creative geeks will rule. Articulate ones will do better. A client may even pay more for their services. Just like in the past when clients would pay for insights into consumers that often only agencies had. Everybody will always pay a little more for what they don’t know and want to have. And the people with that voice will be highly prized.
You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom
Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank
Like Blank and Associates on Facebook
Read Why Ad People Need to Market Themselves Better
Read Why Young People Shouldn’t Try to Get a Job
Hank Blank: Thoughts on Networking, New Business & Agency Searches 
The real reason why talented people will “Never” get hired… Is because all of the existing workers “Aren’t” talented! As a matter of fact, those who already have the job(s) got them because they look good and sound good – not because they have any real talent to get the job done.
Talent ultimately has very little to do with who actually gets the job. Interviewers hire like-minded people. Do I like you? Can I get along with you? Can I be your friend/colleague?
The power of persuasion is 60% of the (talent) to get the job. If you “sound good” then your ability to convince someone to like you will be far greater than any talent and/or experience listed on your resume.
This is why people believe it’s all about who you know!
My new normal – as a talented African-American with a focused Financial IT Resume – I have No Problem getting interviews… I go on at least three-to-four per month! I’m on the phone all day, every day with recruiters because every Financial IT system available is listed on my resume, making me highly marketable!
My ability to convince people to like me is uncanny. So much so, that I now have to go through a 2nd, 3rd and even a 4th interview… Somewhere in that second, third or fourth – someone isn’t going to like Black people. Maybe they were mugged, or accosted by a racist black person that unnerved them, and the impression stuck, or, maybe they’ve read an article about some angry Black Man who attacked an innocent White woman, like the recent home invasion that went “viral” or the nightly news, or, this weeks’ deranged Black male with a history of mental illness who snatched a White woman’s child in a Oklahoma Walmart and held the child at knife-point!
Those images, albeit not reflecting of our entire community are often hard for the average white person to draw a line in the sand, look a Black person in the eye, and not think, ‘will this person be able to take direction well, will they be willing to accept constructive criticisms without becoming this (angry) person reflected on my nightly news broadcast? Despite all those claims, it still becomes difficult for many skilled African Americans to effectively compete in society and become gainfully employed in their field of expertise.
I have met many Black men who haven’t worked since 9/11 – in more than 10 years, and somehow it’s all (their) fault!
It is those skilled individuals that will never get sought out – even if they have the necessary training and educational credentials, they don’t have the “work experience” to catapult them beyond the color of their skin!
This is why society claimed that, we must Outsource – to seek out the best and the brightest…. The face of the “Best” isn’t colored…
The difference between me and everyone else is, I believe if one company doesn’t hire me, another one will – because nobody else is More Qualified – than I.
Similarly chronicled in more detail in the eBook Red-White AND Poor, how Economics & Outsourcing have Racially Divided America, via, Amazon.com
Despite the title – America needs to practice Americanism first and come together as the Human Race!
On Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 8:51 PM, Thoughts on Networking, New Business &
I would concur with cachae7’s observations, Hank: perception is king. Many decision makers at hiring time look to the answer the questions this Black gentleman (and here I displaying bias from my experience with financial people/men) points out. I will broaden his remarks to include others who are too competent to be hired. The only question is can this person uphold a perception of being right for the job regardless to, and perhaps in spite of, any listed requirement of competency?
The hiring question is how safe is my job with this go-getter candidate on a horizontal position to me or down my line? Will he be trouble? Cachae7, it does not have to be about race, although it can be. It is about insecurity. Hank mentions he amount of mirror foggers that found jobs. Well they are highly, socially adept at keeping them despite their incompetence. They inhabit choke points. If they do not know you, it really does not matter who you know.
I am in the soft sciences of behaviour modification, present on social media as well as the face-to-face circuit. And, 2 years ago, 10 years unemployed. I have had to decrease my expenses on job search to the point where I am stuck with either maintaining a perception of semi-retired success, which is sort of like line fishing, or the acquiesce to the reality that I am terminally unemployed (at 46) and increasingly unemployable as developments in my industry overtake my financial ability to keep up even appearances.
I have a strong presentation on LinkedIn of people I know including big names like Al Ries and Dave Aaker, and I can tell you for a fact we are all starving. Al a little less than the rest of us… He might say he’s better positioned.
There is no one going to hire someone who they believe might threaten their livelihood. As you know all too well, Hank, the days of loyal company men as done as evidenced in the number of resume/profiles on business sites like LinkedIn.