Blog » O'Farrell Career Management

Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush?

O'Farrell — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 19:27:00 +0000

Several years ago, I had a brand-new client who told me he would only be considering opportunities in Atlanta or Florida. A few days later he bounded into my office to say he’d accepted a position in St. Louis. Huh?

Hopefully things worked out okay for him and his family despite the hasty decision.

☑ One bird or two?
Sometimes a bird in the hand isn’t worth two in the bush. I’ve had several new clients tell me they knew they’d made a mistake before they even started their most recent position. Yet here they are, terminated less than a year after they began their ill-fated job.

Don’t panic. Don’t jump at the first thing that comes along.

Stick to your guns and find an opportunity that is a good match for you.

☑ Trade-offs?
When you get right down to it, you probably will have to make some trade-offs. Your finances, the length and difficulty of your search, and other factors might indicate pragmatism over an ideal job.

Separate the things you “have to have” from things that would be “nice to have.” If all the essential elements are present, then it may be advisable to move forward.

☑ How much am I worth?
One question that comes up for nearly every job seeker concerns #compensation. Although base #salary is what everyone seems to key in on, compensation entails a lot more than that.

One reliable site is www.salary.com. View this screen snip of the rich data you get about the comp and #benefits.

Basically, this shows you earn $7K per month in comp and $3K per month in benefits.

☑ It’s the benefits, baby.
Oh my goodness, there’s never been a time when benefits from one company to another were so disparate. Healthcare costs might range from $40 to $400 every two weeks. And commuting expenses have never been higher, so #WFH saves boatloads of money.

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This is just a tiny excerpt from my book Market-Ready in Minimum Time™. BIG NEWS… I’ll be releasing an eBook version of MRMT™ in the next few weeks! So keep your eyes peeled. I’ll be announcing the eBook’s availability via email and LinkedIn (as well as Facebook).

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#salary #negotiation #compensation #benefits #careers #careercoach #jobseekers #linkedin

Dave O’Farrell helps his clients shorten their search, earn more money, and get better results. He helps employers soften the blow when they have to let employees go by offering the very best outplacement service on the planet. Reach out to Dave through his LinkedIn page.

U.S. added 390,000 jobs in May; wages are UP! (kinda)

O'Farrell — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 14:58:03 +0000

A recent article from IndustryWeek indicates that the U.S. added 390,000 jobs to the economy in May. And the pay rate for these new jobs is 5.2% higher than it was in May 2021.

What that pay increase statistic does not take into consideration however is how that increase compares to the rate of inflation. And according to the U.S. Inflation Rate Calculator, the inflation rate for the 12 months ending May of 2022 is 8.6%.

Number of long-term unemployed down.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of long-term unemployed accounted for 23.2 percent of all unemployed persons in May 2022. In March 2021, the long-term unemployed were 43.2 percent of total unemployment. Long-term unemployed is defined as those who are jobless for 27 weeks or more.

Leisure and hospitality are still going strong.

Not surprising, the leisure and hospitality industries—which are still rebounding from closures and high unemployment in 2020—provided a healthy percentage of the surge in new jobs in May 2022. According to the BLS, 84,000—or about 21% of the total jobs added—belonged to this industry.

Professional and business services gained 75,000 jobs in May. Within the industry, “job gains occurred in accounting and bookkeeping services (+16,000), computer systems design and related services (+13,000), and scientific research and development services (+6,000).” And get this: Employment in professional and business services is 821,000 higher than in February 2020.

Healthcare, manufacturing, and wholesale trade also continue to be strong industries in the job growth area, combining for 60,000 jobs added last month.

Teleworking actually continues to go down.

While it’s true that the number of companies that offer remote working and work from home is up from the period pre-pandemic, the actual number of teleworkers is down from 7.7% to 7.4%. Please note this number represents those who telework because of the coronavirus pandemic. That does not represent the number of companies who decided to shift their workforce, shrink their office real estate, and encourage work-from-home for other reasons.

What will June bring? With the recent economic news, what trends do you expect in terms of employment, new jobs, industry, and remote working?

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#jobgrowth #inflation #economy #resilience #careers #careercoach #jobseekers

Why companies are staffing for “resilience”

O'Farrell — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 13:48:00 +0000

A recent Forbes article on workplace trends examined an increasingly recognized need for employers … staffing for resilience. Before the pandemic hit, the focus of organizations was to hire workers who create “efficient organizations.”

Think about the power of efficiency when the world is turned upside down, businesses are forced to close, and the masses are working from home. It’s hard to be efficient when, what you’re efficient at, has changed drastically or is no longer a reality.

As the Forbes article states…

“Ensuring a workforce is healthy enough to keep a business running is clearly a critical element of resilience, but it also covers the implementation of processes that are more flexible, with built-in redundancies to provide cover when disaster strikes, resulting in operational efficiency becoming compromised.”

This is why companies appear to be, according to uschamber.com, focusing on soft skills and knowing the right questions to ask while interviewing. These are just a couple ways they look to hire employees that are easily adaptable and open to change.

Now more than ever, job seekers need to be able to answer the “flexibility” questions in interviews.

Please describe how you led your team during COVID.
Tell us about a task or project that you took on in the past couple of years that was outside of your scope of work.
Give us an example of how you were especially creative in solving a problem that was unique to the pandemic.
Tell us about a time when you made a sacrifice to achieve an important goal during the lockdown.
Now tell us about a time when you were unwilling or unable to make the necessary sacrifice to achieve a goal.
No business wants to become obsolete, nor do they want to hire staff that will help them get to that obsolescence more quickly.
How have you become more flexible, and more adaptable, in the last couple years? What have you done to make yourself more personally resilient?

How can you demonstrate your flexibility and resilience to prospective employers?

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#flexibility #resilience #jobinterviews #interviewing #interviewtips #careercoach #jobseekers

Remote working trending upward?

O'Farrell — Tue, 17 May 2022 20:36:00 +0000

Last week, I shared some insights on 2022 workplace trends as predicted in a January article from Harvard Business Review. Among the things mentioned in the article “11 Trends that Will Shape Work in 2022 and Beyond” was last week’s focus of the shortened workweek. This week, I’d like to dive in to Trends #4 and #6 on their list.

Increased Turnover

Article writers Brian Kropp and Emily Rose McRae predict (in Trend #4) that employee turnover will continue to increase as hybrid and remote work become the norm for knowledge workers. As to WHY this will create more—not less—turnover is an astute observation: “Employees that work hybrid or remotely have fewer friends at work and thus weaker social and emotional connections with their coworkers.”

As to how this affects the job seeker, consider this also… “With hybrid and remote work as the norm, the geographic radius of the organizations that someone can work for also expands.” This means that companies who don’t have to provide workspace for everyday knowledge workers can expand their search beyond their geographic “center.”

This is also true for the prospective employee. You may not have to move to Silicon Valley for your dream job in big tech… The job may be hosted there, but it might meet you where you are.

Recently, I spoke to an HR manager who said their radius for a “local” candidate has expanded from 40 to 90 miles. This gives them the ability to reach well-qualified candidates on the northern perimeter of Atlanta. She said they can WFH almost every day. And she lives in Villa Rica – 37 miles and 52 minutes away.

When they have team meetings at HQ, all employees are close enough to arrive for a 9:00 AM start time, they bring in lunch, and send everyone home no later than 4:00 PM. This supports work-life balance, strengthens relationships, and builds an esprit des corps.

Improved Collaboration

As to why some companies are comfortable with this shift, Kropp and McRae offer this explanation in their predicted Trend #6. The tools we use to work remotely will become the tools that help measure and improve performance.

They put it this way, “Moving forward, the same tools that employees are currently using to work in a virtual environment will be used to assess the contributions that employees are making.”

In other words, a company that wants to expand its team doesn’t have to expand their physical office capacity. Likewise, replacing a staff position can mean they look in a wider geographic area than ever before—without the expectation for the candidate to relocate for the job.

What do you think about this? How does the trend of remote working, which appears to be on the rise, affect your job search?

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#wfh #workfromhome #4dayworkweek #humanresources #jobseekers #careers #jobs #jobssearch #careercoaching #remotework #remoteworking

Top workplace trends for 2022

O'Farrell — Tue, 10 May 2022 19:17:00 +0000

Back in January, the Harvard Business Review published an article online predicting 11 Trends that Will Shape Work in 2022 and Beyond.

For the #3 trend, the article lists “To compete in the war for knowledge worker talent, some companies will shorten the work week rather than increase pay.”

You may remember in my email to you last week that I discussed another source (TechRadar) that noted the 4-day workweek would be a top trend in the job market in 2022.

Here’s what HBR had to say about this trend back in January:

“While some companies are able to compete for talent through compensation alone, others don’t have the financial resources to do so. Rather than trying to win the war for talent by increasing compensation, we are seeing some employers reduce the number of hours worked by employees and keeping compensation flat”.

And if you’re wondering if this form of compensation is somehow short-changing the very talent they are seeking to attract, remember one hard-to-overlook factor: inflation.

In addressing that factor, the article states: “employers will find the compensation they offer will be worth less and less in terms of purchasing power for employees.”

So yes, while the increase in wages has doubled (4% versus the normal rate increase of 2%) the inflation factor makes the apparent increase worth a little less than in past years.

So now time is being given as another form of compensation. And if the HBR article title is any indication, the prediction is that this will last even beyond 2022.

What do you think of this?

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#4dayworkweek #employeesatisfaction #humanresources #jobseekers #careers #jobs #jobssearch #careercoaching #personalbranding #3dayweekend

Is the 4-day workweek a thing?

O'Farrell — Tue, 03 May 2022 13:10:00 +0000

I was recently on a Zoom call with a Customer Success Manager who declared he doesn’t schedule meetings on Thursdays because he has a 4-day workweek and Thursday is his during-the-week day off.

For physically demanding jobs, 4-day workweeks, even 3-day workweeks, can be common, since more time is needed to rest from the more grueling manual labor.

But white-collar jobs?

In case you think this is only the case with the most progressive companies, think again.

In an article published this year, TechRadar noted the 4-day workweek was among the 9 biggest work trends of 2022. Sure, work-from-home and better pay and benefits were among the 9… and that probably surprises no one. But the 4-day workweek?

The TechRadar article said that “while plenty of people love the idea of having a three-day weekend as part of their routine, trials and studies do show that moving to a four-day week can often prove beneficial for both staff and companies.

“Microsoft Japan,” Mike Jennings, the article’s author, went on to say, “trialed a four-day work week back in 2019 and found that it led to a 40% boost in productivity and 23% less electricity consumption.”

The article also cites studies in New Zealand and Iceland that found staff were both happier and more productive with a four-day week.

With an increase in productivity and employee satisfaction, it’s hard to argue with the results, but obviously the 4-day workweek wouldn’t be practical for every industry or company.

What about you? What do you think about the 4-day workweek? Where does it rank on your list of job priorities?

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#4dayworkweek #employeesatisfaction #humanresources #jobseekers #careers #jobs #jobssearch #careercoaching #personalbranding #3dayweekend

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Now is the Best Time to Look for a Job

O'Farrell — Mon, 11 May 2020 15:39:54 +0000

Unemployment rose to 14.7% in April. This is the highest rate since The Great Depression, although this specific statistic only dates back to January 1948. Over 33.5M people have filed an initial unemployment claim in the past seven weeks. With Fridays’ press release, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports there were 33M unemployed workers at the end of April (23.1M unemployed + 9.9M not in the labor force who currently want a job).

Nevertheless, let me be clear: look for a job now.

There are not 33M people actively looking for work right now. There are three groups of people who are not looking. First, there are 18.1M furloughed workers who hope to be recalled as the economy recovers. Second, there are 574K discouraged workers* who have given up hope.

Third, there are many people making more money each month on unemployment than they were making in January. They are collecting up to $365 per week from the State of Georgia, plus an additional $600 per week through the CARES Act. That’s a rate of more than $50K per year.

Many of you have asked me how long these benefits will last. In Georgia, if the seasonally adjusted UI rate is 9.0% or above, the maximum number of weeks a person can receive benefits is 20. The Federal benefit of $600 is scheduled to end on July 31. You will be competing for jobs with these folks beginning in August.

Of the 14.3M who are not furloughed or not looking, I estimate two-thirds of them are not yet looking because of the CARES benefits. So, don’t think you are in a job market with 33M seekers; it is more like 5M.

Do everything you can do to find a job now; and leave to God what only He can do.

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*Discouraged workers are those who have looked for a job in the past 12 months but not in the last four weeks.

Source: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

#unemployment #unemploymentclaims #resume #careercoach #outplacement

Sow Good Seed

O'Farrell — Fri, 01 May 2020 14:45:25 +0000

My dad smoked from the age of nine to 36; he died of lung, brain, and other cancers 46 years later. In fact, the second anniversary of his passing was two days ago. He died 39 days after the diagnosis. Despite the gap in time, his oncologist told my mom there was a cause-and-effect between the two.

We reap what we sow.

In addition to the two 63-year-old clients I mentioned last week, we’ve had other O’Farrell CM clients in the 55+ crowd land jobs. Last Friday, a client landed a job near her fair market value. Saturday morning, the first email I read was from a 65-year-old client who accepted a job at a former employer for 24 hours a week at an amazing hourly rate.

Monday, a client in her mid-50’s accepted a six-figure job. It’s a 25% increase over her old salary. And a 70-year old client accepted his third job in three months. He quit one because he didn’t like it; the other is on hold due to the quarantine.

All six (three men, three women) are in their mid-50’s and up. Two landed six-figure jobs. They have a few more things in common: they have world-class résumés, amazing LinkedIn and Indeed pages, and many hours of interview training. Pardon the shameless plug; they trusted in the Lord AND they worked with me.

Sow seeds by applying for jobs, building relationships, and learning new skills. Sow seeds by allowing me the privilege of recreating your résumé and building a custom-branded LinkedIn and Indeed page.

We will reap what we sow. Maybe in 46 days. Or maybe in 46 years.

Play to Win

O'Farrell — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 12:58:48 +0000

We had two 63-year old O’Farrell clients accept job offers this week. Both offers were in their area of expertise. And both were near their fair market value. One is a six-figure job; it took almost seven months to land that position. The other was less than four months, and that included taking February off to visit her daughter in Africa.

Both clients had something in common: they job-searched despite the dire headlines. Here is a report from yesterday, 23 April 2020: “The number of Americans filling for unemployment benefits was 4.427 million last week, bringing the total reported over the past five weeks to over 26 million, equivalent to 16% of the labor force.”

Remember: All you need is ONE job. You don’t need 26 million jobs. The unemployment rate in your home might be as high as 100% right now. It’s your job to solve that problem. You’ve got to play to win.

Many of you are hyper-focused on cutting expenses. Good idea; nothing wrong with that. In addition to reducing expenses, get focused on increasing income. When you solve your income problem, your expense problem improves dramatically. If you are really looking for work, contact me. I can help.

Do yourself and your family a favor: don’t sit around waiting for the economy to bounce back. Fast forward to several months from now when you are asked why you have been looking so long. How does this sound? “I was sitting back collecting those awesome unemployment benefits.”

This week I’ve been thinking about a slogan we use on the O’Farrell Career Management website and in other media. It’s what the two clients above did. It is my message to all of you today:

Get off the sidelines. Get back in the game. Play to win.

Blog » O'Farrell Career Management

Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush?

U.S. added 390,000 jobs in May; wages are UP! (kinda)

Why companies are staffing for “resilience”

Remote working trending upward?

Top workplace trends for 2022

Is the 4-day workweek a thing?

Now is the Best Time to Look for a Job

Sow Good Seed

Play to Win

Top 25 Employers According to LinkedIn Survey