Today, as we all know, work comes in two basic varieties. It may be a conventional employment arrangement, traditionally known as a “job”.
Or it may take the form of a contracted service, consulting assignment, preferred vendor status, etc., traditionally known as freelancing.
When I started out as a career counselor, the job was the coin of the realm, and the complicated rituals associated with getting and keeping one took place on a strictly person-to-business level.
On the other hand, consultants, subcontractors, and other types of freelancers have always built business-to-business relationships by providing services directly connected to the needs and goals of the clients they serve. By virtue of the value added by these services, they are granted “temporary” admission to the organization.
First, it needs to be understood that all types of work search are business development. Trying to find a job as a computer programmer or a marketing executive is fundamentally no different from starting an insurance agency or opening a catering business.
Nowadays, as it becomes more and more accepted that everyone is “temporary”, or at least needs to think of himself or herself that way, the line between employment and freelancing, so clearly marked as recently as a decade ago, is disappearing.
Yet even with the demise of long-term job security (the average term of employment today is three-and-a-half years), the idea that everyone is self-employed is still paid mostly lip-service, and the needed substantive shift in thinking and acting is widely lacking.
The reason is simple: it’s because many of those who suddenly find themselves needing to think of themselves as their own boss see the task as so overwhelming they revert to the familiar “how-to” rules of job-search.
WHAT CAN HELP?
First, it needs to be understood that all types of work search are business development. Trying to find a job as a computer programmer or a marketing executive is fundamentally no different from starting an insurance agency or opening a catering business.
Second, we need to understand that effectiveness in finding work depends on an independent set of essential business skills. And these skills require the same kind of effort to acquire and hone as it does to gain proficiency and stay current in a particular area of professional expertise. Just being good at what you do is no longer enough.
THE SKILL PACK
I am always amazed when I talk to people who think their professional credentials alone are sufficient to equip them for self-employment, and that it isn’t necessary for them to consciously develop the business skills they need to succeed in it. They don’t see that the expertise needed to interpret the results of a medical test or wire a computer network is independent of the expertise needed to run a business.
The same holds true for people who are seeking employment. The qualifications on a resume do not automatically guarantee a person is going to be able to use them. To accomplish that requires an altogether different set of skills which must be developed just as conscientiously as the ones listed on the resume.
We need to see things according to a new model under which what a person does to make a living belongs to the category of business operations, and what he or she does to make those operations possible comes under the heading of business development. There can be no business operations unless business development comes first.
The business development skill pack includes the tools of leadership, marketing, communications and negotiations.
Leadership. The kind of leadership I am talking about here is self-leadership—taking responsibility for your professional future, setting your own standards for productivity and contribution to the greater whole. It’s about accepting the reality of change and being willing to ride the wave of transition to a place of greater authenticity. Because authentic people know who they are and what they have to offer, their voices have a much better chance of being heard above the din of the marketplace.
Marketing. Marketing is the process of understanding your worth and communicating it to others. Both the discovery of your “market value” and its articulation are part of the constant refinement of your professional message, i.e., your product and your brand. It is what makes your skills real to the people who need them. Unfortunately for many, marketing has become just another name for sales, and this has caused the term to lose its potency. The more you understand the true nature of marketing, the more effective you will be in developing and finding markets for what you have to offer.
Communication. We’ve never before had better tools for staying in touch with the circle of people with whom we do business, but tools alone do not guarantee effective communication. Once we have clearly articulated our marketing message, we need to keep it out there. We need to remain visible to potential sources of work, to the people who can connect us to those sources, and to the colleagues and mentors who support us in our professional goals. We all know that a professional network is important, but few of us consciously maintain, in good times as well as bad, a career safety net. The kind of communications critical for today’s work world is purposefully structured and attentively maintained.
Negotiation. A shorter average term of employment means that everyone is going to have to negotiate more often. Neither internal (employed) or external (contracted) vendors can afford to undervalue the work they do, nor can they “bully” their way into an organization at the long term cost of injuring their relationship with the company. Becoming skilled in the application of a mutual gain (win-win) negotiation model assures you of being well-equipped to handle the final phase of the work search cycle, closing the deal, and allows you to do it in a way the underscores your professional worth and integrity.
