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  Category: Articles » Careers & Jobs » Article
 

Wake Up and Learn Something New




By Daniel Sitter

The US Government has just released last month's job creation figures. It was the lowest number in two years. This is a revealing and disturbing snapshot of what is actually happening in the real economy, not the one artificially created for the headlines. Our US GNP or Gross National Product is based upon manufactured durable goods. Unfortunately, the manufacturing economy in the US has not yet recovered from the devastating collapse it saw commence in the spring of 2000. The recent improvements in jobs and growth are substantially confined to the service sector. Manufacturing is what drives the US economy and it is suffering.

Do you work in this market segment? Are you comfortable? Do you feel stable? Have you yet realized that there is no such thing as job security anymore? That concept is gone. Unlike our parents and their parents before them who could count on working in a selected field for a given employer for life and then retire, we of this generation, working in any aspect of manufacturing have no such luxury. Our job or even the company we work for could change overnight or possibly be gone in a heartbeat. The face of the Fortune 500 is drastically different than it was just 10 years ago. Many companies are gone forever or have been acquired by another firm or holding company. Many have split up and others are now manufacturing off-shore in China or India. So where is your security?

What is it that you can count on during this period of instability? Where is your value? Unlike our ancestors who relied on a strong back to work the fields or do heavy labor, we rely on our knowledge and skills. Our value, what we have to offer to our employers, is located between our ears.

Aside from your intrinsic value as a human being, a creation of God, do you offer enough real value to your employer so that when the tough employment decisions have to be made, you are one of the people who stay? Do you offer enough value to demand that a new employer will hire you if you are not so fortunate? These are tough questions. We do not really like to examine these possibilities, but examine them we must, for there is no more job security.

I recently spoke with a man I had not seen in some time. He is the Quality Assurance Manager for a large, well-known manufacturer. He said that business was great, but he was fearful of his long-term prospects with his employer of 8 years because scuttlebutt had it that the company was quietly building their first plant in China, due to open in late-2006. He realizes that even though their products are technical in nature and superbly crafted, the plant's operations were basically assembly and packaging, and those functions could be done as well overseas at a much lower cost. Over the past year, he wisely reviewed his options, studied for and acquired his real estate license, and has begun selling homes part-time. He saw that he had little choice but to take action now, well in advance of what may occur to the plant next year.

He woke up and decided to learn something new. Such a need exists for almost everyone else as well. This manager decided that if he was to maintain his lifestyle and have a promising future, he had to take charge now. He had to learn new skills, because the particular skills he had developed over the past several years could soon be rendered somewhat useless, at least to his existing employer.

Could he locate another position in a similar capacity at another company somewhere nearby? Possibly, but what guarantee would he have that they same thing would not happen at that firm. There are no guarantees. He was forced to take deliberate action and expand his skills.

Some people are not as fortunate, and we hear about them everyday in the news. "This plant is closing their doors. That company is reducing employment by 60%. Another company is expected to only hire 15 people instead of the 45 that they originally planned." It goes on and on. What do these people do now? They have to act fast. They may need to quickly learn additional new skills, offering sufficient value to interest a new employer somewhere else.

The bottom line is that since we no longer have any real job security, life-long learning is more important than ever. What is this life-long learning? It is the concept of continuous learning over your entire lifetime. Many people go through primary and high school, possibly college, and then declare that their education is over. It does not work that way anymore. We must at least be continuously learning additional skills in our chosen field and possibly even expanding our skills into new fields. In this manner, we offer maximum value to our employer or possibly a future employer who may operate in a different industry. We maintain our continued employability.

Wake up and learn something new. Sitting idle and dormant will surely prove costly to you. There is no other real alternative. Learning is critical. Learning at an accelerated rate is necessary. You need to get busy.
 
 
About the Author
Daniel Sitter is the author of the popular, award-winning e-book, Learning For Profit. Designed for busy people, his new book teaches simple, step-by-step accelerated learning skills, demonstrating exactly how to learn anything faster than ever before. Learning For Profit is currently available at the author's web site http://www.learningforprofit.com/ and from numerous online book merchants. Mr. Sitter, having expertise in sales, marketing and personal development, is a frequent contributor to several publications.

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  Some other articles by Daniel Sitter
Learn Faster, Change is Coming
Challenges posed by recent economic and market shifts, though predicted for some time, have instigated chaos in the lives of many business professionals and factory workers alike, not to mention just about everyone else who ...

Branding; You Are The Brand
What's in a brand name? Everything! Think of these brands: Coke, Barbie, Hershey, McDonalds, Madonna, Pepsi, Bono, Microsoft, Kleenex, Xerox, Steven Spielberg, Dell and GM. Did you notice that brands can be things, replicas of people and ...

Sales 101: Learning About Price vs Cost
For as long as there have been documented records, there have been merchants, or as we are called in modern vernacular, salespeople. People want things. People need ...

Sales 101: Asking For The Order
"Ask, and you shall receive", a biblical principal that offers some of the best sales advice for beginning salespeople and experienced sales professionals alike. The best sales presentation imaginable generally will not yield ...

Expect the Best and Get It
The famous prayer of Jabez, where Jabez prayed for prosperity, is a model of expectant thinking that we can all benefit from. "And Jabez called upon the God ...

  
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