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.