Yesterday, I wrote an unpopular piece reminding readers that anger against Islam for the actions of a non-representative few is a dangerous thing, a vicious prejudice that is not only contrary to the American spirit, but also works against American interests in the long term. I presented two contentions in that article, that prejudice against Muslims in general is immoral and foolish, and that Islam needs to recognize the need to define its creed and standards in order to prosper and grow in the long run. This article examines the possible courses available to Islam in the next decade.
Islam was created through the teachings of the prophet Mohammed in the 7th Century. The faith spread through conquest of territory and the coerced conversion of defeated Arabs. In its first century a major dissent rose in Islam after the death of Husayn in 680, and the creation of the Shi’a sect. Islam continued to invade and conquer territory, entering Africa proper and also Europe, the campaign stopped at the Battle of Tours in 732. A short age of prosperity began, but the conflicts between Sunni and Shi’a sects continued, and the Shi’a also split, with Isma’iliyaa extremists rising within the Shiites. The rise of the Fatimid caliphs in the 10th Century was soon followed with a schism between the Fatimids and the Umayyads, diluting Islamic political clout. The Crusades came after that, further fragmenting Islam until the reign of Saladin, which proved to be the exception to the decline of Islam’s potency. The Mongol invasion in the 13th Century ended significant Islamic power outside of a few regional pockets. Although Islam continued to expand as a faith, by the 14th Century the original Islamic territories became the property of the Ottoman Empire, which remained the case through 1918.
The 20th Century was noted for political instability and the rise of Fascism and Marxism. Islamic political theorists bought into both concepts to varying degrees, which is why Middle Eastern militants aligned with both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, especially Palestinian front organizations. At the same time, Muslim extremists tied religious fervor to political goals, especially through the proto-terror Muslim Brotherhood, which was connected to extortion, election fraud, and assassinations as early as 1924. This led to a shadow government effect in most regional governments through 1972.
Muslim extremists had pressed for the exit of all “colonial” powers from the region following World War 2, and after the United Kingdom began to withdraw from the Gulf in 1971, the United States became the focus of Islamic Nationalism, especially during the time of the short-lived United Arab Republic. Political and economic pressure mounted, along with escalations of violence against businessmen, but with negligible results until the Iranian Revolution. Islamic terrorism became more and more organized as the PLO’s mercenary strategy was replaced by groups like Islamic Jihad and HizBollah, and nation-sponsorship of terrorism became the norm. Withdrawal of US forces from Lebanon, and the futility of the campaigns in Sudan and Somalia encouraged Islamic Fascists to pursue aggressive strategies targeting any government or leader allied with the United States or Western democracy. The key to Islamic Fascism is that it represents the views of a small minority of Muslims, but achieves its goals through brutality and threats. Islamic Fascists promote their political agenda through a campaign touting nationalism and supposed piety, counting on the lack of a focused political identity among Muslims to preclude effective rebuttal. Democracy is anathema to Fascism, and so democratic parties and coalitions are the natural target for Islamic violence. The battleground for the past three decades has been cultural disinformation versus globalism.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Islamic Fascists played on the old myth of American Imperialism and the inconsistency of American policy regarding Islam. The Fascists have been able to play up the lie that Americans don’t respect Islam or Muslims to have equal rights. It was this thinking that inspired Al Qaeda’s campaign of 9/11; Osama bin Laden made no secret that he hoped to spur a US-led invasion of Afghanistan, in the belief that the US would fare as poorly as the USSR in that campaign. The Islamic Fascists have basically followed the same strategy for 85 years, which makes it simple, but not easy, to defeat them. The trick is to convince Islam to create its Renaissance.
Islam is a religion built as much on a cult of personality and on political ambition as it was on faith in a God of truth and righteousness. That said, most Muslims are peaceful and wish no harm to other people. The splintered organization of Islam, however, and the cultural suppression of dissent by lay people has allowed for the Fascists to gain an advantage in polemics and in control of the major political organizations. Damascus and Teheran may not look very much like Tammany Hall, but there is no mechanism for grassroots political movements in most Middle East countries, nor any venue for reform. Part of that comes from the lack of history in most political parties. People in the West too often forget that democracy is uncommon in Islamic countries. The royal families did not want to encourage parties they could not control, and Islamic-focused parties similarly expect to direct their members and voters, not answer to the public. A caste system continues to exist in many countries, and there is genuine fear of the potential chaos which might ensue if democracy were given free rein. The contrived support for Palestine, the drummed-up hatred of Israel and the Jews and America, the contempt for western-style protection of due process and law, and the imbalance between contemporary moral values and the harsh conditions under Sharia are artificial constructs likely to fail if given a true public choice. And despite the history of rigid control by Muslim hardliners, the trend since 2001 has been for reform. While by Western standards there is much work to be done, governments in most Middle Eastern nations have adopted a more pro-American stance. Students have shown public support for democracy and opposition to dictatorships and oligarchies. And most important, revenue from foreign organizations in support of terrorist groups has diminished, been cut off completely in some quiet but vitally important efforts. The reduced effectiveness of terror as a political instrument has freed an increasing number of government officials to make decisions freely on the basis of the commonwealth, the good of the nation and its people. The tide is shifting, but more fundamentally, the channel now exists for Muslims to decide where to take their religion.
The Christian religion has made its way through debate, dissent, schism, internal conflicts and more than a few wars. But the faith grew most steadily and achieved its best results when politics was kept separate from the doctrine. Islam may do well to learn that lesson.
But can Islam, which was founded on political goals as much as religious beliefs, accept a foundation of pure spirituality and ethics? The answer to that question is the essential directive for Islam. The evidence against the Dar-al-Islam campaign is overwhelming; the Islamic Empire reached its zenith less than a century after the death of Mohammed, but never came close since then. The Islamic standard of living, once praised as the highest in the world, has also fallen far behind many other nations and cultures. If governments are based on historic Islamist objectives, the most likely consequences are violence, instability, and poverty. From that perspective, it would be absurd and cruel to the world’s Muslims to pursue what is a hopeless strategy.
The problem comes from the belief among extremist Muslims that world conquest is the only strategy acceptable to Allah. While certain verses in the Quran have been used to claim holy direction for such a bloody plan, many more condemn the unjust and cruel practices of terrorists and Fascist regimes. Many of the arguments made by the Islamist Fascists are actually based on controversial interpretation of statements alleged to have been made by Mohammed or early Islamic leaders, such as Ali. This is significant, given how Christian militants during the reign of leaders like the Emperor Constantine or Pope Leo X tried to justify Christian conquest in verses from the Book of Daniel or Revelation. The Muslim quandary is more difficult, given the historical example of Mohammed himself, but the Muslim faith can adjust its goals according to its precepts. If peace and goodwill are incorporated into the faith through active discussion of the morals and plan of Islam, leaders in major mosques and madrasas can begin to lay a foundation upon which Islam can continue its growth, while at the same time accomplishing its secular goals through advancement of the human condition.
Why should the leaders of Islam choose to do this? In the first place, many imams have urged that a simple reading of the Quran leads the individual to accept Allah’s will, which is peaceful and just. Abandoning the historical excuse of violence and focusing on the healing and constructive teachings of Mohammed would strengthen that argument and make Islamic apologetics more effective, and defang many of the splinter groups which have hijacked major sects in the past. The hashasheen are a thing of the past; there is no reason why terrorism as a path to the will of Allah should not also be rejected.
Second, Islam remains splintered across the world. In addition to the continuing schism between Sunni and Shi’a, a number of extremist cults have poisoned many schools of theology. Just as there are Christians who do not agree completely with their denomination’s dogma and there are Jews and Buddhists who have not been temple in years because they find the stricter requirements burdensome, there are many Muslims whose commitment to the pillars is strong, but who have doubts about what their role is in Islam. A leader who advances the purpose of democracy as service to Allah may be able to gain a great deal of the public trust. Certainly even within Islam there are gen-Y people, who demand to be persuaded rather than accept orders without good reason.
And third, the huge growth in Islam comes from its promise to believers, that Allah’s will is made manifest in the faith. True imams and mullahs will recall that for most of history, the work of teachers in the faith has been to help families and communities, to protect the innocent and advance hope. Conquest has always been the aberration, and it only takes a charismatic leader at the right time to lead Islam to its rightful, peaceful, place in the world.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Saturday, November 07, 2009
The Balance Between Judgment and Hysteria
Thursday's shootings at Fort Hood have naturally evoked strong emotions. And the media and some prominent political leaders have taken all-too-predictable postures, two of which I feel compelled to address. The falsehood that Islam is aligned with terrorism and malice, and the falsehood that Islam is a victim in such situations as this, with innocents who worry about an unreasonable backlash. Both contentions are wrong.
First, about Islam. There are over 1.5 billion practicing Muslims in the world. So far, there have been 221 terrorist incidents in 2009 through November 2, so even if we say that every single one of those were committed by a Muslim (including attacks in Greece, Ireland, South Africa, and the Starbucks bomb in New York) and that two dozen Muslims were involved on average in each incident, that only implicates 5,304 Muslims and means that over 99.999% of Muslims worldwide had nothing to do with terrorism so far this year. Frankly, if even one percent of Muslims worldwide had it in for America, or even against Israel, we'd see an unprecedented level of violence and murders, because even one percent of Islam would be a force of 15 million terrorists, and no realistic estimate of terrorist activity has ever come close to a million total, much less 15 million. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, over 50 million Muslims have come into close and regular contact with U.S. troops. While there are places of hostility against the West and the U.S. in particular, and some spots rank with pure evil and hatred, the soldiers who have been there will tell you that it has much more to do with culture and politics than religion. For most Muslims, their faith is a private matter between them and God, a question of living honestly and by their best ideals, and hatred towards another human is a sin to be avoided. Most Muslims love their families and their nation, and have a generally tolerant outlook towards everyone else.
So what happens when someone like Nidal Hasan (allegedly) decides to kill innocents while screaming the name of his god? To me, once you get past the emotion and look at the facts, pretty much the same thing as any fanatic who goes psychotic. Hasan had no wife or girlfriend, he had no close friends, even his family and those at Fort Hood who had the most contact with him note that he was distant and aloof. While Hasan complained to some family that he was being mocked for his Muslim beliefs, other Muslims at Fort Hood emphasized that the military accommodated them at all times and they felt proud to serve with the men and women in the U.S. Military. When you dig down to the bottom of it, Hasan was a lot like another Islamist Loser: Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.
Does this look like a chick magnet? A guy who wants to raise a family and be a good husband and father, someone who thinks first about his moral duties and personal integrity?
No. In any culture, this guy is a loser, albeit a clever and dangerous psychopathic loser. He and the real world were quits, so he joined up with a group of other losers who tried to compensate for their personal failures by blaming everyone else. And that is what hapened with Major Hasan. He became bitter about his place in the world, and decided to punish everyone else. That's really the only way to explain how someone could decide to kill a roomful of innocent people, most of whom he had no grievance whatsoever, including a 21-year-old pregnant soldier, a band member, two soldiers who had just returned from Iraq, and two others who were being deployed to Afghanistan just as Major Hasan was scheduled to go, among others. This was not a blow against some imperial power, it was the impotent scream of a coward.
Islam has its share of such cowards, to be sure, but so has Christianity and other religions. Remember the cowards who bombed abortion clinics in the name of Christ? Anti-war protesters who think nothing of attacking soldiers in the name of peace? Look at the troubles in Northern Ireland for nearly a century - there is nothing in either the Anglican or Roman Catholic dogmas to excuse the kidnappings, torture, bombings, and murders that happened there for so long. Consider the tribal conflicts in Rwana and Burundi not so long ago, or the cold-blooded extermination practices of Miloslavic and his Serbs. Even Buddhism, founded on clear commitment to reverance for life, has its share of extremists, including Triad groups who see conflict in murdering people then going to temple to be 'spiritually cleansed', so they won't feel bad about their crimes. My point is that some people will abuse the tenets of any religion.
So why do Muslims not march in outrage over the hijacking of their faith? For one thing, I don't believe they feel they should have to state what they think is obvious. Even though most serial killers are white males, I have never felt it necessary to point out that most white males would never commit murder. Even though many crimes were committed in the name of Christ over the years, most notably during the various Inquisitions, even atheists and Muslims recognize that Christianity in its essence had nothing to do with the spirit of evil which tortured and killed in the name of the Prince of Peace.
It is true that certain teachings of Mohammed are troubling to non-Muslims, but let's not forget that other beliefs have had similar problem areas. Most Mormons today live exemplary lives of charity, tolerance and humility, and so have very little in common with the racist, xenophobic Joseph Smith. Many Scientologists are open-minded and just want to live by their creed, and so have almost nothing in common with the arrogant and greedy L. Ron Hubbard. Come to that, I am a Southern Baptist but have little in common with most of the denomination's leading ministers. I'm not saying they aren't fine men and honest, but a man whose career focuses on only one creed and point of view has trouble seeing things the same way as a working man who sees real life from the perspectives of the street and the diversity of a truly global community.
Also, Islam is rooted in the culture of the Middle East. While American Muslims live in the modern world, their faith comes from a place where women and the young are expected to give way to the men and the elders, where criticism is uncommon because it so often leads to conflict and escalation, and where challenging those in authority is seen as rebellion rather than reasonable doubt and skepticism. Even the Roman Catholics have their Jesuits to challenge assumptions; Islam has not yet reached the point where theologians can help the faith become relevant to changing social and cultural conditions. Whatever he was, the prophet Mohammed did not prepare his people for a world of cultural diversity and demographic trend shifts.
That brings us to the second problem. Islam likes to play the victim card, even when a Muslim is the criminal. It is very difficult for a Mullah to explain why a man like Osama bin Laden, educated and from a good family, would countenance the murder of innocents on a Hitler-like scale. So they evade the question and try to leverage a sense of guilt from the victims, because the United States is a generous and open-minded country, one of very few willing to examine its own behavior in a critical way. No one in the Saudi royal family, for instance, has ever shown an interest in criticizing their own policies and behavior in the past, and the Palestinans are even worse. These guys have made the wrong choice in every major decision, since they chose to back the Nazis in World War 2. But rather than consider the foundation of so many bad choices, Palestinian leaders chose instead to insult and attack Isreal, precisely because Israel is careful of its behavior and considerate of the rights of Pelstinans in most cases.
In the Unted States, Islam has always shown that it sensed its place in America as a tolerated segment of the population, rather than a welcome member of the community. This comes to some degree from a certain discomfort with the way Muslims speak and act and dress, but it also comes from Muslims' self-chosen segregation. Muslims do not eat the same foods as most Americans, do not attend the same entertainment and recreational events as most Americans, and do not treat Americans as close friends in most cases. Islam is not liberal in the traditional sense, many Muslims act as if Americans carry a kind of infection, and so it is difficult for a non-Muslim to be close friends with a believer. Even in the heart of America, Muslims often act is if they must live apart. This happens with other faiths, of course. Hasidic Jews, for example, also cordon themselves off from contact with Gentiles and they have strict dress and dietary codes which set them apart. Some fundamentalists also dress, eat, and behave in ways that seem strange to most Americans. But there are many more Muslims than Hasidic Jews or fundamentalist Christians, and so the segregated culture becomes more obvious.
The acts of a Hasan or other psychotic Muslims is an issue that has no easy answer, but it is important for non-Muslims to recognize that such behavior is anomolous to Islam, just as it is important for Islam as a whole to recognize that these extremists must be denounced in the interest of understanding what makes someone a Muslim, and what does not.
First, about Islam. There are over 1.5 billion practicing Muslims in the world. So far, there have been 221 terrorist incidents in 2009 through November 2, so even if we say that every single one of those were committed by a Muslim (including attacks in Greece, Ireland, South Africa, and the Starbucks bomb in New York) and that two dozen Muslims were involved on average in each incident, that only implicates 5,304 Muslims and means that over 99.999% of Muslims worldwide had nothing to do with terrorism so far this year. Frankly, if even one percent of Muslims worldwide had it in for America, or even against Israel, we'd see an unprecedented level of violence and murders, because even one percent of Islam would be a force of 15 million terrorists, and no realistic estimate of terrorist activity has ever come close to a million total, much less 15 million. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, over 50 million Muslims have come into close and regular contact with U.S. troops. While there are places of hostility against the West and the U.S. in particular, and some spots rank with pure evil and hatred, the soldiers who have been there will tell you that it has much more to do with culture and politics than religion. For most Muslims, their faith is a private matter between them and God, a question of living honestly and by their best ideals, and hatred towards another human is a sin to be avoided. Most Muslims love their families and their nation, and have a generally tolerant outlook towards everyone else.
So what happens when someone like Nidal Hasan (allegedly) decides to kill innocents while screaming the name of his god? To me, once you get past the emotion and look at the facts, pretty much the same thing as any fanatic who goes psychotic. Hasan had no wife or girlfriend, he had no close friends, even his family and those at Fort Hood who had the most contact with him note that he was distant and aloof. While Hasan complained to some family that he was being mocked for his Muslim beliefs, other Muslims at Fort Hood emphasized that the military accommodated them at all times and they felt proud to serve with the men and women in the U.S. Military. When you dig down to the bottom of it, Hasan was a lot like another Islamist Loser: Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.
Does this look like a chick magnet? A guy who wants to raise a family and be a good husband and father, someone who thinks first about his moral duties and personal integrity?
No. In any culture, this guy is a loser, albeit a clever and dangerous psychopathic loser. He and the real world were quits, so he joined up with a group of other losers who tried to compensate for their personal failures by blaming everyone else. And that is what hapened with Major Hasan. He became bitter about his place in the world, and decided to punish everyone else. That's really the only way to explain how someone could decide to kill a roomful of innocent people, most of whom he had no grievance whatsoever, including a 21-year-old pregnant soldier, a band member, two soldiers who had just returned from Iraq, and two others who were being deployed to Afghanistan just as Major Hasan was scheduled to go, among others. This was not a blow against some imperial power, it was the impotent scream of a coward.
Islam has its share of such cowards, to be sure, but so has Christianity and other religions. Remember the cowards who bombed abortion clinics in the name of Christ? Anti-war protesters who think nothing of attacking soldiers in the name of peace? Look at the troubles in Northern Ireland for nearly a century - there is nothing in either the Anglican or Roman Catholic dogmas to excuse the kidnappings, torture, bombings, and murders that happened there for so long. Consider the tribal conflicts in Rwana and Burundi not so long ago, or the cold-blooded extermination practices of Miloslavic and his Serbs. Even Buddhism, founded on clear commitment to reverance for life, has its share of extremists, including Triad groups who see conflict in murdering people then going to temple to be 'spiritually cleansed', so they won't feel bad about their crimes. My point is that some people will abuse the tenets of any religion.
So why do Muslims not march in outrage over the hijacking of their faith? For one thing, I don't believe they feel they should have to state what they think is obvious. Even though most serial killers are white males, I have never felt it necessary to point out that most white males would never commit murder. Even though many crimes were committed in the name of Christ over the years, most notably during the various Inquisitions, even atheists and Muslims recognize that Christianity in its essence had nothing to do with the spirit of evil which tortured and killed in the name of the Prince of Peace.
It is true that certain teachings of Mohammed are troubling to non-Muslims, but let's not forget that other beliefs have had similar problem areas. Most Mormons today live exemplary lives of charity, tolerance and humility, and so have very little in common with the racist, xenophobic Joseph Smith. Many Scientologists are open-minded and just want to live by their creed, and so have almost nothing in common with the arrogant and greedy L. Ron Hubbard. Come to that, I am a Southern Baptist but have little in common with most of the denomination's leading ministers. I'm not saying they aren't fine men and honest, but a man whose career focuses on only one creed and point of view has trouble seeing things the same way as a working man who sees real life from the perspectives of the street and the diversity of a truly global community.
Also, Islam is rooted in the culture of the Middle East. While American Muslims live in the modern world, their faith comes from a place where women and the young are expected to give way to the men and the elders, where criticism is uncommon because it so often leads to conflict and escalation, and where challenging those in authority is seen as rebellion rather than reasonable doubt and skepticism. Even the Roman Catholics have their Jesuits to challenge assumptions; Islam has not yet reached the point where theologians can help the faith become relevant to changing social and cultural conditions. Whatever he was, the prophet Mohammed did not prepare his people for a world of cultural diversity and demographic trend shifts.
That brings us to the second problem. Islam likes to play the victim card, even when a Muslim is the criminal. It is very difficult for a Mullah to explain why a man like Osama bin Laden, educated and from a good family, would countenance the murder of innocents on a Hitler-like scale. So they evade the question and try to leverage a sense of guilt from the victims, because the United States is a generous and open-minded country, one of very few willing to examine its own behavior in a critical way. No one in the Saudi royal family, for instance, has ever shown an interest in criticizing their own policies and behavior in the past, and the Palestinans are even worse. These guys have made the wrong choice in every major decision, since they chose to back the Nazis in World War 2. But rather than consider the foundation of so many bad choices, Palestinian leaders chose instead to insult and attack Isreal, precisely because Israel is careful of its behavior and considerate of the rights of Pelstinans in most cases.
In the Unted States, Islam has always shown that it sensed its place in America as a tolerated segment of the population, rather than a welcome member of the community. This comes to some degree from a certain discomfort with the way Muslims speak and act and dress, but it also comes from Muslims' self-chosen segregation. Muslims do not eat the same foods as most Americans, do not attend the same entertainment and recreational events as most Americans, and do not treat Americans as close friends in most cases. Islam is not liberal in the traditional sense, many Muslims act as if Americans carry a kind of infection, and so it is difficult for a non-Muslim to be close friends with a believer. Even in the heart of America, Muslims often act is if they must live apart. This happens with other faiths, of course. Hasidic Jews, for example, also cordon themselves off from contact with Gentiles and they have strict dress and dietary codes which set them apart. Some fundamentalists also dress, eat, and behave in ways that seem strange to most Americans. But there are many more Muslims than Hasidic Jews or fundamentalist Christians, and so the segregated culture becomes more obvious.
The acts of a Hasan or other psychotic Muslims is an issue that has no easy answer, but it is important for non-Muslims to recognize that such behavior is anomolous to Islam, just as it is important for Islam as a whole to recognize that these extremists must be denounced in the interest of understanding what makes someone a Muslim, and what does not.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
The Good Grudge
Job hunters are under a lot of stress. In the first place, few people are looking for a job as a luxury, and almost as few feel that they have most of the control in getting the job they want. For all the books, seminars and classes in pursuing your ideal career, I’d venture to say that while most people like their jobs for the most part, fewer than one in forty would say they are in the job of their dreams, and that they accomplished their job through a disciplined job search. Luck plays a role, for bad as well as good fortune. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to me that people whose job search is slow or less than satisfying may display indications of their discontent. It’s only human to reflect the stress of the endeavor, exasperation of the bull-headed bureaucracy, and anger at a system which seems to reward appearance over substance, and style over real ability. Oddly enough, many hiring managers also suffer the same stress, of trying to find truly qualified candidates in an ocean of poseurs. But it’s more difficult for the individual than the business.
The people trying to help job seekers, pretty much unanimously, emphasize the need for an upbeat, positive attitude. Generally, they are right. It is important not to be negative about your past work experience when speaking to recruiters and at interviews, it is essential to be positive about your skills and what you can do for your company if they offer you the position. But at the same time, a lot of things get attacked as “negative” when they are actually important, in more than one way. For one thing, the people offering advice are sometimes wrong. One discussion board I joined had an administrator telling everyone that they needed to join groups, then make sure to use their groups as a network to find leads towards jobs. Having been part of a number of groups apart from professional societies, I can promise that such behavior is a very poor idea, and would likely kill your credibility and poison your network. That’s because special interest groups exist for the specific purpose of the group, and members don’t like or respect people who join just so they can advance their own interests, especially when those interests have nothing to do with the group’s purpose. For example, I spent a number of years as a high school official in three sports, and each sport had a local chapter with weekly meetings to go over events, rule changes and interpretations, game films, and anything else related to the sport. A member of any of these chapters is expected to come to the meetings to learn about how to be a better sports official. While it’s fine to discuss informal and personal items, even then those topics tend to be related to sports; loving the sport is why these guys become officials in the first place. So some first-year member who starts trying to find out if the chapter members can help him find job leads, is not going to be considered legitimate; the topic is just plain wrong. And many groups I have belonged to have demonstrated a similar attitude. So the administrator of that job-seeker group was absolutely wrong, and was actually hurting members with her advice. So while positive attitudes and finding inventive ways to expand your professional network are good things, it is also important to rein in wild, untested theories and assumptions. It’s also necessary to deal with your grudges.
With very few exceptions, everyone in a job search situation has some bad feelings lurking around. While I agree that you should focus on your skills, experience, and positive attitude when applying and interviewing for a job, it is also important to deal with the things which cause you anger, resentment, or other negative emotions. After all, in most cases the person who lost the job did not deserve to lose his job, and even those employees who could blame themselves for their job loss often have good qualities to their work which they may feel should have been considered. Also, the way in which the company lets employees go is often a cause for unhappiness, and then there is the difficulty of the job search itself. Put it all together, and you have a condition where the stress and frustration needs an outlet, ideally in a way where it helps the individual move forward in their work search. Rather than tell people to suppress or hide their grudges, assistance groups should help people find ways to turn their grudge to good purpose.
As I mentioned earlier, I agree that when making an application or in an interview, the focus must be on how your skills help the company and how your attitude is positive and team-centered. But you need to deal with the weight and fire of your negative side, and find ways to use that to your advantage. For instance, I once had a boss, pretty high up in his company, who was afraid that his managers would discover they were underpaid and quit on him. His solution was to attack, harass and demean those managers at every opportunity, really rip them up so they would be in constant fear of being fired for some trivial (or even nonexistent) mistake, and never realize their rights, even though any one of us would have been fired on the spot if we had treated our staffs the way we were ourselves being treated. At first, I and the other managers just took the abuse, but years later I reflected on the behavior and used it to remind myself of the importance of actively listening to my people, to make sure my behavior was as ethical and courteous as I believed it to be. This not only helped my relations with my staff in my next three jobs, it also helped me get promoted when my consideration earned me credibility as someone who did what he preached.
Finding positive uses for negative experiences is one way to deal with your grudges. Another important use, however, is to talk about them in a confidential setting. Let’s be clear, I am not saying you should ever give potential employers indications that you might be a malcontent at their company or that you can’t let go of bad experiences, but it’s important to recognize valid events, and frankly just as every company sooner or later suffers from a bad or dishonest employee, so too most of us have had the misfortune to work for a company which was unethical and dishonest. Imagine someone who quit working at Enron in 2000, before it came out how corrupt its officers were. Imagine someone who left WorldCom, or someone who was an auditor for Arthur Andersen, who quit because of how those companies did business. Looking back, not only would it make no sense to praise a former employer whose business practices are now documented in ethics textbooks as egregious examples of criminal behavior, it would also make perfect sense for these individuals to feel that they had been badly used for staying true to higher ethical standards.
When you have to find a new job, you also look at the horizon in every direction, and that includes things you did not like about past jobs, things you hope to avoid the next time around. In a best-case situation, you can apply those lessons at your new job, avoiding the damage done in the prior experience. Recognizing that high-level bosses tended to berate and ignore the floor staff at one job helped me focus on selling bosses on opening informal feedback channels at another, beyond the usual ‘open door’ claim that is made so often. The experience of support for a project evaporating because the superior forgot about it, reminded me to include update reports on pending projects to superiors, including reference to their prior written support, to keep the idea fresh and familiar. Almost any bad experience can be useful in building tools to prevent it from happening later on. So even a grudge can be a good thing, if you use it to positive effect.
Finally, it needs to be said that humans are not machines. The facts of a situation can be handled rationally, but the effects carry emotional weight. There needs to be a way to deal with mistreatment and injustice suffered in a job, even if it’s just that you were sometimes under-recognized or happen to be one of the employees in your group laid off in a company reorganization. I notice that the help groups always point out that there is no “stigma” in being let go these days, which is a help on one level, but being laid off always has impact, and while you may intellectually understand that there was no personal insult meant, being laid off when you have been doing good work and were relatively happy at your job will always carry the emotional weight that you were selected to be let go, a sense that the work you did was not recognized the way you hoped it should be, that your skills and experience were not valued enough to be kept on board. If you’re like me, at some point you may even wonder why your value to the company was lower than the old furniture in the reception – there are chairs that have almost no value anymore, yet they are kept forever, yet in any downturn there are many good employees let go. Understanding the economics of the variable cost of human capital does not satisfy the sense of injustice which comes from being considered not only not indispensable, but as disposable assets of little consequence. We all like to believe that we matter, and being let go is an assault on that sense. It is only reasonable, therefore, that while the sense should be managed in a productive way, there is a valid need to address that grudge. The grudge is authentic, even if the help groups say it must be suppressed. I would argue that it is far healthier to recognize that the grudge is real, that it exists for valid reasons, and that it can and should be applied to good purpose in personal reflection and planning for the future. The short version may be as simple as 'don’t get fooled again’, but in a less cynical sense it also carries the value of hard-earned experience, unique lessons that can be applied to real world situations, and which may have specific value to your new company and team.
The people trying to help job seekers, pretty much unanimously, emphasize the need for an upbeat, positive attitude. Generally, they are right. It is important not to be negative about your past work experience when speaking to recruiters and at interviews, it is essential to be positive about your skills and what you can do for your company if they offer you the position. But at the same time, a lot of things get attacked as “negative” when they are actually important, in more than one way. For one thing, the people offering advice are sometimes wrong. One discussion board I joined had an administrator telling everyone that they needed to join groups, then make sure to use their groups as a network to find leads towards jobs. Having been part of a number of groups apart from professional societies, I can promise that such behavior is a very poor idea, and would likely kill your credibility and poison your network. That’s because special interest groups exist for the specific purpose of the group, and members don’t like or respect people who join just so they can advance their own interests, especially when those interests have nothing to do with the group’s purpose. For example, I spent a number of years as a high school official in three sports, and each sport had a local chapter with weekly meetings to go over events, rule changes and interpretations, game films, and anything else related to the sport. A member of any of these chapters is expected to come to the meetings to learn about how to be a better sports official. While it’s fine to discuss informal and personal items, even then those topics tend to be related to sports; loving the sport is why these guys become officials in the first place. So some first-year member who starts trying to find out if the chapter members can help him find job leads, is not going to be considered legitimate; the topic is just plain wrong. And many groups I have belonged to have demonstrated a similar attitude. So the administrator of that job-seeker group was absolutely wrong, and was actually hurting members with her advice. So while positive attitudes and finding inventive ways to expand your professional network are good things, it is also important to rein in wild, untested theories and assumptions. It’s also necessary to deal with your grudges.
With very few exceptions, everyone in a job search situation has some bad feelings lurking around. While I agree that you should focus on your skills, experience, and positive attitude when applying and interviewing for a job, it is also important to deal with the things which cause you anger, resentment, or other negative emotions. After all, in most cases the person who lost the job did not deserve to lose his job, and even those employees who could blame themselves for their job loss often have good qualities to their work which they may feel should have been considered. Also, the way in which the company lets employees go is often a cause for unhappiness, and then there is the difficulty of the job search itself. Put it all together, and you have a condition where the stress and frustration needs an outlet, ideally in a way where it helps the individual move forward in their work search. Rather than tell people to suppress or hide their grudges, assistance groups should help people find ways to turn their grudge to good purpose.
As I mentioned earlier, I agree that when making an application or in an interview, the focus must be on how your skills help the company and how your attitude is positive and team-centered. But you need to deal with the weight and fire of your negative side, and find ways to use that to your advantage. For instance, I once had a boss, pretty high up in his company, who was afraid that his managers would discover they were underpaid and quit on him. His solution was to attack, harass and demean those managers at every opportunity, really rip them up so they would be in constant fear of being fired for some trivial (or even nonexistent) mistake, and never realize their rights, even though any one of us would have been fired on the spot if we had treated our staffs the way we were ourselves being treated. At first, I and the other managers just took the abuse, but years later I reflected on the behavior and used it to remind myself of the importance of actively listening to my people, to make sure my behavior was as ethical and courteous as I believed it to be. This not only helped my relations with my staff in my next three jobs, it also helped me get promoted when my consideration earned me credibility as someone who did what he preached.
Finding positive uses for negative experiences is one way to deal with your grudges. Another important use, however, is to talk about them in a confidential setting. Let’s be clear, I am not saying you should ever give potential employers indications that you might be a malcontent at their company or that you can’t let go of bad experiences, but it’s important to recognize valid events, and frankly just as every company sooner or later suffers from a bad or dishonest employee, so too most of us have had the misfortune to work for a company which was unethical and dishonest. Imagine someone who quit working at Enron in 2000, before it came out how corrupt its officers were. Imagine someone who left WorldCom, or someone who was an auditor for Arthur Andersen, who quit because of how those companies did business. Looking back, not only would it make no sense to praise a former employer whose business practices are now documented in ethics textbooks as egregious examples of criminal behavior, it would also make perfect sense for these individuals to feel that they had been badly used for staying true to higher ethical standards.
When you have to find a new job, you also look at the horizon in every direction, and that includes things you did not like about past jobs, things you hope to avoid the next time around. In a best-case situation, you can apply those lessons at your new job, avoiding the damage done in the prior experience. Recognizing that high-level bosses tended to berate and ignore the floor staff at one job helped me focus on selling bosses on opening informal feedback channels at another, beyond the usual ‘open door’ claim that is made so often. The experience of support for a project evaporating because the superior forgot about it, reminded me to include update reports on pending projects to superiors, including reference to their prior written support, to keep the idea fresh and familiar. Almost any bad experience can be useful in building tools to prevent it from happening later on. So even a grudge can be a good thing, if you use it to positive effect.
Finally, it needs to be said that humans are not machines. The facts of a situation can be handled rationally, but the effects carry emotional weight. There needs to be a way to deal with mistreatment and injustice suffered in a job, even if it’s just that you were sometimes under-recognized or happen to be one of the employees in your group laid off in a company reorganization. I notice that the help groups always point out that there is no “stigma” in being let go these days, which is a help on one level, but being laid off always has impact, and while you may intellectually understand that there was no personal insult meant, being laid off when you have been doing good work and were relatively happy at your job will always carry the emotional weight that you were selected to be let go, a sense that the work you did was not recognized the way you hoped it should be, that your skills and experience were not valued enough to be kept on board. If you’re like me, at some point you may even wonder why your value to the company was lower than the old furniture in the reception – there are chairs that have almost no value anymore, yet they are kept forever, yet in any downturn there are many good employees let go. Understanding the economics of the variable cost of human capital does not satisfy the sense of injustice which comes from being considered not only not indispensable, but as disposable assets of little consequence. We all like to believe that we matter, and being let go is an assault on that sense. It is only reasonable, therefore, that while the sense should be managed in a productive way, there is a valid need to address that grudge. The grudge is authentic, even if the help groups say it must be suppressed. I would argue that it is far healthier to recognize that the grudge is real, that it exists for valid reasons, and that it can and should be applied to good purpose in personal reflection and planning for the future. The short version may be as simple as 'don’t get fooled again’, but in a less cynical sense it also carries the value of hard-earned experience, unique lessons that can be applied to real world situations, and which may have specific value to your new company and team.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Regional and Industry Recession Effects
Patrick Jankowski, the Vice-President of Research for the Greater Houston Partnership, spoke Tuesday about the recession and its effects, both nationally and in Houston. His lecture was informative and fascinating, as it reminded our group of an important point about economics – local economics are influenced by national economics, but are not directly controlled by it. That is, while the entire nation is in a recession, different regions, industries, and demographic classes are effected by that recession, and the recovery from that recession is of varying lengths and difficulty, as well.
Take Detroit, for example. Detroit stands out among U.S. cities because, according to economic data, the city has been losing jobs (that is, fewer jobs have been created than have been lost in consecutive months) since May 2000, and currently suffers a 22.2% unemployment rate, one of 13 metropolitan areas with unemployment of 15% or higher, and 117 with unemployment at or above 10%.
This gives Detroit the unfortunate distinction of having one of the highest unemployment rate among metropolitan areas in the United States, as well as the longest recession specific to a metropolitan area. El Centro, California, has the worst unemployment at 30.1%, but El Centro is about one-three-hundredth the size of Detroit and has been in a condition of recession only since 2008.
It’s interesting to note that El Centro’s job base is agricultural, with significant retail and service sectors, while Detroit’s job base was heavily committed to the auto and truck building industry.
The flip side would be to consider those metropolitan areas which are not suffering badly from the recession. 12 metropolitan areas have unemployment rates ranging from 4.8% down to 2.9%, which would be envied by most of the nation. Three cities in North Dakota, two in Nebraska, two in South Dakota, two in Iowa, and one each in Utah, Kansas, and Montana make up that happy club.
It is reasonable, on the available data, to say that smaller towns have handled the recession with lower unemployment and shorter duration of job loss than have the major cities.
Industry matters in unemployment, as well. The highest unemployment by industry is in construction, durable goods manufacturing, leisure and hospitality services, business services and information technology, in that order. As a sector, government workers have by far the lowest unemployment rate, at 4.2%.
The landscape from the industry unemployment shows that all businesses are cutting non-essential costs, including research and development, growth activity, and service activities. Government, following its historical pattern, is making no effort at all to scale back costs or headcount. The problem there is that as foreclosures rise and tax revenue from income and sales falls, an inevitable shortfall will occur at most government levels, creating an incentive to raise tax rates at the time when taxpayers would most resent such actions. Possibility of a political backlash increases significantly for the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.
Mr. Jankowski also presented his forecast for economic recovery from the recession. In general, the recession will technically be over for most of the country by mid-to-late 2010, meaning that the economic conditions which define a recession will no longer be in place, but the effects of the recession will linger for some time afterwards. Specifically, Mr. Jankowski warned that it will take from one to four more years for the jobs lost in the recession to be replaced in full, to the extent that each metropolitan area will produce GDP equal or greater to what it was prior to the recession. That means it will be anywhere from 2010 to 2013 before the jobs lost in this recession are replaced at the same professional and wage level. And that cheery projection does not address the loss of career growth; the projection is that people who lost/lose their jobs in 2008-2012 will spend between 12 and 48 months finding a position equal to where they were when they lost their job; the savings lost while unemployed and the career growth which ordinarily would have happened in that time will be permanently lost, which may have significant meaning when the individual retires. Young workers will be competing with people still younger and cheaper than themselves, but with no superior experience or position to use to their advantage, and older workers will have to delay retirement or forget it altogether, as their savings decay from the cost of being unemployed. As a result, the effects of this recession will be felt by many people for a long time to come. In many situations the damage may be permanent.
Take Detroit, for example. Detroit stands out among U.S. cities because, according to economic data, the city has been losing jobs (that is, fewer jobs have been created than have been lost in consecutive months) since May 2000, and currently suffers a 22.2% unemployment rate, one of 13 metropolitan areas with unemployment of 15% or higher, and 117 with unemployment at or above 10%.
This gives Detroit the unfortunate distinction of having one of the highest unemployment rate among metropolitan areas in the United States, as well as the longest recession specific to a metropolitan area. El Centro, California, has the worst unemployment at 30.1%, but El Centro is about one-three-hundredth the size of Detroit and has been in a condition of recession only since 2008.
It’s interesting to note that El Centro’s job base is agricultural, with significant retail and service sectors, while Detroit’s job base was heavily committed to the auto and truck building industry.
The flip side would be to consider those metropolitan areas which are not suffering badly from the recession. 12 metropolitan areas have unemployment rates ranging from 4.8% down to 2.9%, which would be envied by most of the nation. Three cities in North Dakota, two in Nebraska, two in South Dakota, two in Iowa, and one each in Utah, Kansas, and Montana make up that happy club.
It is reasonable, on the available data, to say that smaller towns have handled the recession with lower unemployment and shorter duration of job loss than have the major cities.
Industry matters in unemployment, as well. The highest unemployment by industry is in construction, durable goods manufacturing, leisure and hospitality services, business services and information technology, in that order. As a sector, government workers have by far the lowest unemployment rate, at 4.2%.
The landscape from the industry unemployment shows that all businesses are cutting non-essential costs, including research and development, growth activity, and service activities. Government, following its historical pattern, is making no effort at all to scale back costs or headcount. The problem there is that as foreclosures rise and tax revenue from income and sales falls, an inevitable shortfall will occur at most government levels, creating an incentive to raise tax rates at the time when taxpayers would most resent such actions. Possibility of a political backlash increases significantly for the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.
Mr. Jankowski also presented his forecast for economic recovery from the recession. In general, the recession will technically be over for most of the country by mid-to-late 2010, meaning that the economic conditions which define a recession will no longer be in place, but the effects of the recession will linger for some time afterwards. Specifically, Mr. Jankowski warned that it will take from one to four more years for the jobs lost in the recession to be replaced in full, to the extent that each metropolitan area will produce GDP equal or greater to what it was prior to the recession. That means it will be anywhere from 2010 to 2013 before the jobs lost in this recession are replaced at the same professional and wage level. And that cheery projection does not address the loss of career growth; the projection is that people who lost/lose their jobs in 2008-2012 will spend between 12 and 48 months finding a position equal to where they were when they lost their job; the savings lost while unemployed and the career growth which ordinarily would have happened in that time will be permanently lost, which may have significant meaning when the individual retires. Young workers will be competing with people still younger and cheaper than themselves, but with no superior experience or position to use to their advantage, and older workers will have to delay retirement or forget it altogether, as their savings decay from the cost of being unemployed. As a result, the effects of this recession will be felt by many people for a long time to come. In many situations the damage may be permanent.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Defensive Staffing
Many job seekers get frustrated by the time and effort it takes to get a response from potential employers. Many times it seems that the HR departments of most companies exist only to prevent applicants from actually speaking to people who need new employees, and the nature of the process is not unlike a minefield – you have to find out about the position, successfully apply and make your way past the computer screener, the phone interview, the initial interview in person, to make it to the point where you are speaking to someone – perhaps – who would actually be making the hiring decision, all the while risking immediate elimination if someone inside the company is given the job, someone reaches the hiring manager personally, or the company decides not to fill the position after all. But for all of that, companies have worries as well, and the big one is the fear that someone may interview well enough to win the job, but prove a bad choice when they have locked in the position. It’s difficult for a company to let someone go once they have hired them without committing to a period of training and review, and even then the position has to be opened and applicants considered all over again, losing time and spending resources. Most companies would love some way to insure their choice, especially for a position that needs to be filled quickly but which needs both competency and a good fit with the company. And that brings me to the professional contract-to-hire position.
Many companies use contractors, but most often for low-level responsibilities and without the option for permanent hires. That is, a contractor often has to be exceptional to be offered a permanent position. This comes from budget concerns and the types of jobs filled, as many of them are seasonal or specific to a limited project. However, in recent months that thinking has changed a bit, as recruiters have offered a more enticing option – a sort of ‘no long commitment’ contract for managers and skilled professionals. The contractor in these cases would be hired for a specific project, usually lasting six months to a year, but the company would fill not only staff positions but management positions as well, and if the contractor performs up to a certain level, they might be offered a permanent position at the same level or even higher. For instance, a contractor might be hired to head a strategic project lasting six months, but if he surpasses a certain level of proficiency and ability, he might be offered the role of managing the whole department. This can be done most often in companies where managers have shifting responsibilities, and a new manager may be brought on to ease the workload of existing managers. While specifics have been closely guarded by the companies involved, informal accounts exist of even senior managers being hired in this way at some companies. While the practice is too new to be judged on its strategic value to the companies, the concept demonstrates a way by which a firm may take on high-level talent without committing for a long term until the new hire proves his or her worth.
Many companies use contractors, but most often for low-level responsibilities and without the option for permanent hires. That is, a contractor often has to be exceptional to be offered a permanent position. This comes from budget concerns and the types of jobs filled, as many of them are seasonal or specific to a limited project. However, in recent months that thinking has changed a bit, as recruiters have offered a more enticing option – a sort of ‘no long commitment’ contract for managers and skilled professionals. The contractor in these cases would be hired for a specific project, usually lasting six months to a year, but the company would fill not only staff positions but management positions as well, and if the contractor performs up to a certain level, they might be offered a permanent position at the same level or even higher. For instance, a contractor might be hired to head a strategic project lasting six months, but if he surpasses a certain level of proficiency and ability, he might be offered the role of managing the whole department. This can be done most often in companies where managers have shifting responsibilities, and a new manager may be brought on to ease the workload of existing managers. While specifics have been closely guarded by the companies involved, informal accounts exist of even senior managers being hired in this way at some companies. While the practice is too new to be judged on its strategic value to the companies, the concept demonstrates a way by which a firm may take on high-level talent without committing for a long term until the new hire proves his or her worth.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Career Building: A Look from Reality
Every so often, I have read up on the latest books and articles on the subject of career building. The idea seems simple enough; we all understand that the ideal job situation is much more than just getting a job somewhere and hoping for the best. We all would like to believe that we can improve our opportunities and find, if not the perfect job, a position which meets our ideal or at least where we enjoy the work and its benefits. Trouble is, most of us are working somewhere where we dislike something about the job. It may be the pay, the company culture, the office politics, or maybe it’s the location or some of the specific duties, but for most of us there’s always something. Speaking for myself, I have always been able to enjoy my work and I have great loyalty to all the companies which brought me onto their teams, but even then I could not ever say the position I had was “ideal”.
Some of that was education. My BA was in English. That’s a long story, but generally it came down to indecision and a counselor who assured me that I could do “anything” with an English degree. The real world, it turns out, differed in that opinion. So, it became clear to me that I needed a better degree. Since I love Accounting, I decided I wanted to earn a CPA license, and to do that required not only a slew of Accounting courses, but also a set of Business courses as well. So, I pursued and earned an MBA with a concentration in Accounting. Did it with a 3.94 GPA too, which got me into an honor society, Beta Gamma Sigma. I felt pretty good about my progress.
The plan at the time I graduated with my MBA was this: One reason I love Accounting, is that every business needs accountants, good ones. But more, a successful business needs accountants with management experience, for the plain reason that you have to see first-hand the effect of accounting decisions. You can talk about Activity-Based Costing, or Managerial Accounting strategies, but they need to be understood at the pointy end of the business to really grasp how the decision will affect the company. That’s something I knew I could provide for any employer, the ability to connect real-world effects to theoretical decisions. So, I figured that after earning my MBA, I would try to transfer to the Accounting department at my company, maybe work as an internal auditor while completing my educational requirements to sit for the CPA exams. My manager at the time was very supportive and genuinely wanted me to succeed in this track. However, when my company was bought out by another company in May of 2009, that all changed. The new company has its own accounting staff, and they do not plan to expand the Houston staff. That left me in a sort of drift for my career plans. Until reorganization and layoffs came in late September. Being laid off changed my career search from keep-this-job-until-I-get-a-better-fit to must-find-work.
That was more than a month ago. In job search terms, five weeks is not so very long. But when you go that long without much success in even getting interviews, you begin to get tired and frustrated. Part of it is the economy; in a down economy, professional positions are not usually filled in the last quarter. Part of it is the nature of a professional job hunt; if you have higher-than-average salary expectations or specialized skills, there will be fewer positions available that match what you are looking to find. And part of it is the stress of just having to find a job; many companies which have had to fill an opening complain about how hard it is to find qualified applicants, while job seekers similarly complain about the difficulty in finding a suitable position. Since the day I was laid off, I have searched every day for jobs, read about more than two hundred positions open for employment (and screened out more than half which either demanded qualifications I did not have, or offered unreasonable compensation – who seriously expects to get an experienced Credit Manager for $30k a year?), applied for more than eighty positions, and had a total of three phone interviews and two face-to-face interviews, counting the one I have tomorrow morning. It’s not a strong return on the effort.
That’s not to say that you should not do everything you can, when searching for work. You never know when, where or just how your next job will turn up, but the one thing I can say for sure is that it won’t show up looking for you while you sit around waiting for it. You have a degree of control in your search, in that you choose what area of work, which companies to apply to, and which jobs to try for. However, unless you happen to have a pile of money from your lottery winnings sitting around, you have a limited amount of time in which to find your next job. Also, the psychological weight of not knowing exactly when your next job will begin makes the passing of time feel longer and more ominous. Intellectually, you understand how long your savings can last, but emotionally the uncertainty is poisonous to your confidence. As a result, after a month or two you begin to question whether your goals are too high, whether you are being too picky in how much you want to be paid, or whether you should accept a position that you would earlier have rejected as a bad choice for your skills and experience. As time passes, the likelihood that you will hold out for a ‘perfect’ fit decreases until, unless you are lucky or very well-connected, it becomes just another thing that would have been nice but does not happen in real life. We all want a perfect job, but we have to pay the mortgage and the bills, and for most people the idea of building a career is not really feasible.
Some of that was education. My BA was in English. That’s a long story, but generally it came down to indecision and a counselor who assured me that I could do “anything” with an English degree. The real world, it turns out, differed in that opinion. So, it became clear to me that I needed a better degree. Since I love Accounting, I decided I wanted to earn a CPA license, and to do that required not only a slew of Accounting courses, but also a set of Business courses as well. So, I pursued and earned an MBA with a concentration in Accounting. Did it with a 3.94 GPA too, which got me into an honor society, Beta Gamma Sigma. I felt pretty good about my progress.
The plan at the time I graduated with my MBA was this: One reason I love Accounting, is that every business needs accountants, good ones. But more, a successful business needs accountants with management experience, for the plain reason that you have to see first-hand the effect of accounting decisions. You can talk about Activity-Based Costing, or Managerial Accounting strategies, but they need to be understood at the pointy end of the business to really grasp how the decision will affect the company. That’s something I knew I could provide for any employer, the ability to connect real-world effects to theoretical decisions. So, I figured that after earning my MBA, I would try to transfer to the Accounting department at my company, maybe work as an internal auditor while completing my educational requirements to sit for the CPA exams. My manager at the time was very supportive and genuinely wanted me to succeed in this track. However, when my company was bought out by another company in May of 2009, that all changed. The new company has its own accounting staff, and they do not plan to expand the Houston staff. That left me in a sort of drift for my career plans. Until reorganization and layoffs came in late September. Being laid off changed my career search from keep-this-job-until-I-get-a-better-fit to must-find-work.
That was more than a month ago. In job search terms, five weeks is not so very long. But when you go that long without much success in even getting interviews, you begin to get tired and frustrated. Part of it is the economy; in a down economy, professional positions are not usually filled in the last quarter. Part of it is the nature of a professional job hunt; if you have higher-than-average salary expectations or specialized skills, there will be fewer positions available that match what you are looking to find. And part of it is the stress of just having to find a job; many companies which have had to fill an opening complain about how hard it is to find qualified applicants, while job seekers similarly complain about the difficulty in finding a suitable position. Since the day I was laid off, I have searched every day for jobs, read about more than two hundred positions open for employment (and screened out more than half which either demanded qualifications I did not have, or offered unreasonable compensation – who seriously expects to get an experienced Credit Manager for $30k a year?), applied for more than eighty positions, and had a total of three phone interviews and two face-to-face interviews, counting the one I have tomorrow morning. It’s not a strong return on the effort.
That’s not to say that you should not do everything you can, when searching for work. You never know when, where or just how your next job will turn up, but the one thing I can say for sure is that it won’t show up looking for you while you sit around waiting for it. You have a degree of control in your search, in that you choose what area of work, which companies to apply to, and which jobs to try for. However, unless you happen to have a pile of money from your lottery winnings sitting around, you have a limited amount of time in which to find your next job. Also, the psychological weight of not knowing exactly when your next job will begin makes the passing of time feel longer and more ominous. Intellectually, you understand how long your savings can last, but emotionally the uncertainty is poisonous to your confidence. As a result, after a month or two you begin to question whether your goals are too high, whether you are being too picky in how much you want to be paid, or whether you should accept a position that you would earlier have rejected as a bad choice for your skills and experience. As time passes, the likelihood that you will hold out for a ‘perfect’ fit decreases until, unless you are lucky or very well-connected, it becomes just another thing that would have been nice but does not happen in real life. We all want a perfect job, but we have to pay the mortgage and the bills, and for most people the idea of building a career is not really feasible.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The New Reality
Sorry for the hiatus. Turns out being unemployed is hard work, at least if you’re serious about trying to get your next post and, like me, are made aware of the many things you always knew you should catch up on but now are compelled to address. Career foundation preparation is a lot like going to the doctor, physical conditioning, or preparing your own tax return – you always knew you should have been working on it all along, that it was best done in a smooth, consistent manner, but somehow it was always put on the back burner, until of course you suddenly discovered you need it right now.
Ouch. In my case, the pain comes from networking. I am, as you may suspect, pretty old school in a lot of ways. I don’t twitter, I don’t even IM, in fact I need to start up my cell service again, I stopped using a cell when I realized no plan offered what I really wanted – a simple way to make and receive phone calls about 8-10 times a month. No texting, cameras, no calling everybody I ever met in a single month, just simple means for emergency calls and accessibility when I’m out of the office or home. So now I have to catch up on that. Yes, I know about pre-paid plans, but my general opinion of them is not much better than the kid-centered packages most services offer.
So anyway, I updated my LinkedIn account, started my WorkInTexas searches, updated Monster of course, started service with Jobfox, and started up with SimplyHired. I am also taking courses from an outsourcing company on my resume, interviewing, and naturally I am learning about networking as well. I have also been working on my references. Odd, that. As a manager I know how important references can be, but despite my blogging I am pretty much a private person, so the number of people I know well is limited to family and recent work colleagues. The fun part there, is not just that no potential employer is going to be impressed by a reference from your wife and kids, but the company I spent the last decade working for has a policy against specific references; they will release general data confirming your department, title, and dates of employment. So the people I have known for the last nine years in my work are not allowed to offer a recommendation for me. So that means I am chasing down some folks I know who left the company years ago. Hardly optimal, but better than an empty page on that score.
It’s also hard coming up with a really good resume. What I mean, is that while I can post my skills and what I have been doing, it’s not easy to convey what I have done that sets me apart. I’ve always been a team player, not least because rarely does one person do the whole job in a major project, so I have not spent a lot of effort looking for ways to brag about why my role made a key difference. Resumes, of course, are built on such accomplishments, so I have had to think and write about those places where my efforts and work created real results. There have actually been many situations where I am justifiably proud of my work, through leadership, initiative, or just plain being willing to do what was needed to get the job done. The hard part is explaining that in a way that still respects my team and colleagues. That takes a while and a bunch of rewrites.
So here I am. In case you did not already know, job hunting means a lot of effort for no real apparent return. I’ve sent out about a hundred applications and resumes so far, with almost no response. Part of that is the economy, I am told, but part of it is just the continuing problem that any job seeker finds; there are always a lot of people applying for any job, especially if the company and/or the position appears to offer career potential. You come to feel like a salmon swimming upstream after a while.
And then there are the sharks, the people who offer job-hunting assistance, especially the resume writing companies, who make promises just vague enough to be legal but whose ethics are clearly absent. Also present are companies which try to hire at wages far below industry scale, which seems extremely short-sighted to me in terms of strategy. I had a laugh early on, as I received an email invitation to interview for a sales position at a Saturn dealership. It sounded like an ad to join the crew of the Titanic, you know?
More later, and hopefully something more interesting than my personal career pursuit, but I owed an update to a few friends who had asked. And to those friends, thanks for thinking of me.
Ouch. In my case, the pain comes from networking. I am, as you may suspect, pretty old school in a lot of ways. I don’t twitter, I don’t even IM, in fact I need to start up my cell service again, I stopped using a cell when I realized no plan offered what I really wanted – a simple way to make and receive phone calls about 8-10 times a month. No texting, cameras, no calling everybody I ever met in a single month, just simple means for emergency calls and accessibility when I’m out of the office or home. So now I have to catch up on that. Yes, I know about pre-paid plans, but my general opinion of them is not much better than the kid-centered packages most services offer.
So anyway, I updated my LinkedIn account, started my WorkInTexas searches, updated Monster of course, started service with Jobfox, and started up with SimplyHired. I am also taking courses from an outsourcing company on my resume, interviewing, and naturally I am learning about networking as well. I have also been working on my references. Odd, that. As a manager I know how important references can be, but despite my blogging I am pretty much a private person, so the number of people I know well is limited to family and recent work colleagues. The fun part there, is not just that no potential employer is going to be impressed by a reference from your wife and kids, but the company I spent the last decade working for has a policy against specific references; they will release general data confirming your department, title, and dates of employment. So the people I have known for the last nine years in my work are not allowed to offer a recommendation for me. So that means I am chasing down some folks I know who left the company years ago. Hardly optimal, but better than an empty page on that score.
It’s also hard coming up with a really good resume. What I mean, is that while I can post my skills and what I have been doing, it’s not easy to convey what I have done that sets me apart. I’ve always been a team player, not least because rarely does one person do the whole job in a major project, so I have not spent a lot of effort looking for ways to brag about why my role made a key difference. Resumes, of course, are built on such accomplishments, so I have had to think and write about those places where my efforts and work created real results. There have actually been many situations where I am justifiably proud of my work, through leadership, initiative, or just plain being willing to do what was needed to get the job done. The hard part is explaining that in a way that still respects my team and colleagues. That takes a while and a bunch of rewrites.
So here I am. In case you did not already know, job hunting means a lot of effort for no real apparent return. I’ve sent out about a hundred applications and resumes so far, with almost no response. Part of that is the economy, I am told, but part of it is just the continuing problem that any job seeker finds; there are always a lot of people applying for any job, especially if the company and/or the position appears to offer career potential. You come to feel like a salmon swimming upstream after a while.
And then there are the sharks, the people who offer job-hunting assistance, especially the resume writing companies, who make promises just vague enough to be legal but whose ethics are clearly absent. Also present are companies which try to hire at wages far below industry scale, which seems extremely short-sighted to me in terms of strategy. I had a laugh early on, as I received an email invitation to interview for a sales position at a Saturn dealership. It sounded like an ad to join the crew of the Titanic, you know?
More later, and hopefully something more interesting than my personal career pursuit, but I owed an update to a few friends who had asked. And to those friends, thanks for thinking of me.
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