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How do you know whether your job is at risk?
The increasing unemployment rate has heightened anxiety for many people. To help manage this potential stressor, you should assess whether this concern is a realistic one for you. There are three risk factors to consider when determining whether you are in danger of losing your job:
- Your organization’s stability: Are you seeing signs that your company is trying to preserve cash? Look around the organization for the signs. For example, is there a hiring freeze? Is there a freeze on nonessential travel? Are open positions not being filled and temporary contracts not being renewed? Are you seeing a cancelation of organizational perquisites (e.g., canceled picnics or sales incentive vacations)? Also, if your company was recently acquired, you may be at greater risk. Mergers and acquisitions will cause redundancies of positions – this is especially a concern if your firm was the one acquired.
- The criticality and uniqueness of your role: Is your job or role critical to the success of your organization --or are you in a support role? If you are in a support-staff or ancillary role in your organization, you are in the riskiest possible position because you may be downsized when organizational cuts are needed. Is your skill set unique? If your position is one that could be accomplished by many individuals effectively, then you are at greater risk of being downsized than someone who is doing a job very few people could accomplish effectively.
- Your job performance in your role: How have your employee performance reviews been? If they are consistently excellent, you have less to worry about. Are you a reliable person who shows up to work on time and does your work well? Are you the “go to” person in your work group when things need to be accomplished on tight deadline or the work is particularly critical? If you are consistently reliable and outstanding in your job performance, your risk for losing your job is lower.
If all three of these risk factors are positive, your risk of losing your job should be low. If all negative, you may have reason to be concerned and you should be doing some things proactively to look for another job while you still have one.
Paula
I heard about the possibility of being laid off before it actually happened. I looked for work, but was unsuccessful in finding anything in the clerical field. I was told that I had too much experience and they could not pay me what I was worth. Is that a nice way of saying 'We don't want to hire you'??? I have heard those excuses before and I have assumed that employers would think that because it is so difficult to find work right now that most individuals are willing to take something for less money and work their way up into higher positions.
Dear KL301 --
If you are making it as far as the interview and being told you have "too much experience", then it might be an ostensibly polite (but lousy) way the company interviewer is saying "no".
If you are not even getting the interview, then it could be that your resume is tailored for the wrong level. Personally, I hate giving the advice that you should "lighten" your resume because it means that the hiring managers aren't seeing the value that you are potentially able to bring to the position. Whenever unemployment is high, there is a "sale on skills" in that companies know they can hire talented individuals for less than they could during periods of low unemployment. You noted this in your comment as well.
Rather than omitting some of your experiences altogether when applying for a lower-level job, you could tailor your resume to highlight the skills you believe are needed for the job. (They may be different than the ones you would highlight for a higher-level job.) I would also suggest you highlight the experiences you believe would be most likely to demonstrate your ability to grow and contribute within the company.
If you get to the interview stage for a position for which you are overqualified, reinforce your interest in the company or industry and how you are looking forward to learning. Signal to your interviewer that you are willing to start again at a lower level for the opportunity to work up the ladder and why the company is interesting to you.
Good luck with your search.
Paula
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