Futurize Your Career : 5 Career Security Strategies

2.  Risk Assessment: Is A Lay-Off Likely?

• Shows you how anxious you really should be.
  
• Teaches you how to research your industry, your company, your job, and 3 other important areas, so you know what's up.
  
• Gives you criteria to evaluate the viability of future job offers.
  
• Eliminates surprises. You’ll be prepared, unlike 80% of people who say, "I didn't see this lay-off coming. Why didn't someone warn me?"
  
• Gets you off your duff and into action – before it's too late. 
• See sample questions below!

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Job Risk Assessment

How nervous should you be about job security?

How much risk of layoff are you shouldering in your current job? To determine the risk level of your particular situation, consider the questions under each heading -- your industry, your company, your job type, your own job, your geographic location, and your personal attributes and assets. As you answer the questions, you’ll get a sense of how vulnerable you are and how imperative it is that you begin today to use the resources in the FireProof Your Career ToolKit to create more career security for yourself.

Your Industry (i.e. manufacturing, retail, professional services, healthcare, academics, government, etc.)

1. Have there been layoffs in other companies in your industry? (Layoffs are catching; once one company downsizes, others will copy.)

2. Are there mergers or acquisitions going on in your industry? (Consolidation means job redundancy.)

PLUS NINE more when you get the Job Risk Assessment as BONUS #2.

Your Company or Organization

1. What are your executives and leaders saying -- or not saying?

2. What were your company's profits last year? (Most employees don't know the answer to this simple question.)

PLUS ELEVEN more when you get the Job Risk Assessment as BONUS #2.

Your Job Type

1. Are you a member of any group likely to be affected by a downsizing? (“Human resources people are like tree surgeons,” someone once said. “Once the damaged limb is gone, they are too.”)

2. Could the kind of work you do be outsourced? (A growing trend is to send work overseas or rent professionals, such as lawyers or accountants, from an agency.)

PLUS NINE more when you get the Job Risk Assessment as BONUS #2.

Your Own Job

1. How enthusiastic was your boss about your performance in your last evaluation?

2. How did your last raise compare with the raises of your colleagues in your department? In other organizations? (Keeping salary information confidential has been the norm. It’s in your – and your colleagues’ – best interest to share this information.)

PLUS TEN more when you get the Job Risk Assessment as BONUS #2.

Your Geographic Location

1. How healthy is the economy in the city and region where your headquarters is located? Where are key units of the company located? Are they being affected by local or regional layoffs in other industries?

2. Is your company located in an area with a diversified economy? (The safest locations are ones with several employers in different industries who hire people with your expertise.)

PLUS EIGHT more when you get the Job Risk Assessment as BONUS #2.

Your Personal Attributes and Assets

1. How's your morale? (Research indicates that "survivors" of layoffs tend to become self-absorbed, depressed, and risk-averse. How's your attitude?)

2. Are you over 40? (Older workers may have received automatic salary increases for many years, making them prime candidates to be replaced by younger, cheaper workers.)

PLUS NINE more when you get the Job Risk Assessment as BONUS #2.

[We also tell you how to find the answers to this entire list of 68 questions.]

Extra! Watch for the Warning Signs

Part of your Risk Assessment must be to look around you and make sense of what you see.

In a cartoon, a man is sitting at his desk. Behind him on his office wall, scrawled like graffiti, are the messages, "Get out, you loser" and "You're a bum." The caption reads, "Near the end, Lloyd could read the writing on the wall."

Many people miss the messages. Be observant. Look for these signs:

1. Vacant jobs are being left unfilled.

2. There has been an increase in the number of new hires. (Employees at a telecommunications company were confused: the company was downsizing and offering "early outs," but it was still hiring young people. Employees figured that either management was crazy, or everything was okay because the company was still hiring. One person who was later laid off said, "We should have seen that the new, younger people cost the company less. We also should have noticed which areas were growing. Most of those new employees were going into the overseas divisions.")

3. Your company has instituted a hiring freeze.

4. Rumors about your company offering an early retirement program are circulating.

5. Work hours have been reduced. (In some organizations every employee at every level has been told to take a day or several days off without pay.)

6. Overtime is prohibited.

7. Field offices are being closed or consolidated.

PLUS TWENTY more when you get the Job Risk Assessment as Bonus #2.

Be Prepared

If you take the time to carefully assess your own situation, and if you tune in to the warning signs, you will be more prepared to acknowledge the risks you face right now. Start today to use all the tools in your Futurize Your Career ToolKit to secure your career future. Order it now.