Corporate Belt Tightening

It happens on occasion, and more often these days. Your company has a bad quarter, and senior management gets nervous and decides to trim the fat. Or the revenues don’t quite meet projections, the investors get antsy, and the burn rate needs to be reduced. Either way, you may get the sense the axe is about to fall.

At a larger company the warning signs are more evident, at least if you’re in management. The company cuts back on travel, expenses get clamped down, job reqs are trimmed, and finally a hiring freeze is put in place. Those are all pretty good signs that layoffs are just around the corner. Another is if mangers are asked to stack rank their employees when that’s never been done before in the company.

The signs are more difficult to spot at a smaller company (unless you work in sales), and the belt tightening often comes without much warning. Still, there should be clues you can pick up on to tell you whether the company might soon be downsizing.

Are the senior managers constantly huddled in all-day meetings, perhaps with outsiders? Do they avoid contact with employees and start cancelling regular staff meetings? Do the executives stop openly discussing company financials or prospects? And are key people suddenly leaving the company, voluntarily or otherwise?

If you pick up on any of these signs, it’s definitely time to polish up your resume. Of course, if you’ve been reading my blog you know that you should already have a current resume out there, anonymized if necessary. And as the financial advisors recommend, you should have at least six months of expenses saved up, more if possible. These days you really shouldn’t be surprised at all if the axe falls suddenly and without much warning.

Should I Re-Apply at a Company?

Some people wonder if a company turns them down after an interview, whether they should ever apply there again. Or are you Persona Non Grata forever?

Even in the extreme case most companies will have forgotten about you after a while. Turnover in the tech department and HR, along with recordkeeping difficulties, means that resumes have a half life of about a year. Much longer than that and they most likely won’t even remember that you had applied previously.

If you do decide to reapply within a year or less, you may be challenged to show that your skills have substantially improved since the last time. In most cases just another year of the same work experience won’t cut it, but some organizations may be more accommodating and let you interview again anyway.

My point? It’s perfectly okay to re-apply at a company where you’ve been turned down in the past. However, you should wait at least a year before doing so, and make sure you can demonstrate some growth in the meantime.

Interviewing with Multiple Companies

If you are actively looking for a new job, it’s likely that you’ll be interviewing with several companies at the same time. You’ll also likely have a preference for some jobs over others. So how should you handle it if talks progress significantly with more than one company? Should you drop discussions with the companies you’re less interested in and focus on the ones that look more attractive?

My advice is to never do this. I can’t count the number of times when it seemed like I had several companies itching to make me offers at the same time, but then none of the leads panned out. It’s not necessarily the candidate’s fault when this happens; most often it occurs because there were other qualified candidates in the running.

Hence if you are deep into the process with multiple companies, even ones you aren’t necessarily crazy about, you need to do everything you can to get the offer(s). Once the offer is in hand you can decide whether it’s something you want to accept. But then at least then the decision is yours, not the company’s.

Can We Talk?

This is not a reference to Joan Rivers’ favorite line, for those who can remember that far back. Instead, it refers to what happens when a recruiter calls you during the day at work.

At some companies I’ve been fortunate enough to have an office with a door I could close when I needed some privacy. Unfortunately, that has been the exception rather than the norm in my recent career. I’ve even been in so-called ‘open’ environments where there were not even any partitions between desks. Obviously in such situations you can’t freely talk with a headhunter at your desk.

So what are your options? Well, you might walk outside if that’s something you can do readily. Or you could duck into a conference room if one is available. Or you could step into a quiet hallway. And of course there’s the option of not answering the call and sending it to voicemail so you can reply at a more convenient time. That’s usually my preferred approach. The other options can make you look a bit suspicious when you rush away from your desk cradling your cell phone to your ear.

In fact when I post my resume online I usually leave out my phone number altogether. I’d much rather be contacted by e-mail so I can reply back to the recruiter at my leisure if I’m interested. Otherwise with my phone number out there in the open I’ll get lots of calls about positions I have zero interest in. If those inquiries come in via e-mail it’s easy enough to just delete them, but if I have to field a call for each one I’d quickly go crazy.

But whatever you do, I recommend that you absolutely NOT use your company phone or e-mail system for communicating with recruiters. I’ve known people who were lax and cavalier about this rule, even when they knew their phone calls and e-mails were being recorded as a matter of company policy. This policy may exist at your company as well, even if it's not explicitly stated. And as the saying goes, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

When to Look for a New Job

The best time to look for a new job, or at least to be on the lookout, is when you are happily employed. The absolute worst time is when you’re being pushed out the door.

For me, the best approach is to always be open to new opportunities. That doesn’t mean you should have one foot out the door at all times, nor does it mean you should spend an hour each morning scouring the job boards. Rather, it means that you should be a passive candidate and have your resume out there, anonymized if necessary, as I discussed previously.

The next question then is when you should go from being a merely passive candidate to kicking it into high gear and going active. This decision to switch into active mode is one that each person makes deliberately by choice, and when it happens it’s pretty obvious. They mentally check out of their current job, and their focus switches to finding a new position.

Mentally checking out of your job however is not a good thing. You may tell yourself that sure, you can still do your job while keenly searching for a new position, but the reality is that your heart is no longer in your work, and the quality of your output will inevitably suffer.

Hence you need to mentally force yourself to stay focused on your current job. This is especially important since a job search can take a year or more (and considerably longer in a down economy), and you can’t stay mentally checked out of your job for that long. Your boss will definitely notice, your reviews will suffer, and it’s possible that you might end up being separated from your job – and not on your own terms.

Employee-Company Loyalty

Does such a thing exist nowadays? Most people would say no, and they’d probably be right.

A company’s loyalty to its employees would imply a “No Layoff” policy. IBM was a famous example of this approach, at least until they started laying people off in the ‘90s. AMD is another example of a company that had to eat their words. But nowadays very few companies explicitly tout no layoff policies since they’re so difficult to uphold, especially in this economic climate.
In the absence of a company’s loyalty to its employees, is it reasonable for employees to be loyal to their employer? I think not. Loyalty has to be a two-way street; one-way loyalty is called blind faith.

So as an employee does this give you carte blanche to continuously job hob, renege on job offers, and use offers from other companies to demand raises from your boss? No, this does not justify any of those behaviors. But what it does mean is that you should not let your employer guilt you into staying due to some misplaced sense of company loyalty.

Your employer might pull the “I hired you when no one else would…” line. That only means that the company got you for a bargain, and now they realize your true value in the marketplace.

Keeping an Eye Out for New Opportunities

When should you post your resume on the job boards and when should you take them off? My advice is to always keep your current resume online. You never know when that killer opportunity might come along. And even if you are happy in your current job, you might be even happier in a new one.

If you are concerned about your current employer finding out, you can always keep your contact information anonymous. You can also list your current employer as “Major Company” or something similar and tweak your responsibility descriptions to be somewhat vague.

Also, if you are contacted by a recruiter and are not looking to make a move at the moment, don’t simply delete the e-mail or dismiss the phone call; instead reply courteously and let them know that while you are not currently looking, you may be open to other great opportunities in the future.

In addition to keeping your resume online you may want to keep other channels open. Let your friends know that you’re open to referrals for great jobs and companies. Also keep up a virtual presence online. If you have the time, write some articles or at least keep up a blog. Participate in technical message boards and discussions. Acquire lots of contacts on LinkedIn and Facebook. Eventually if your public profile is prominent enough, someone may come calling.