Episode 36: Creating career continuity in a recession

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you! 

It’s a distressing economic time out there, folks. Whether you’ve been laid off, you’re worried about layoffs, or you know someone who’s at risk for losing their job, these economic markets are changing faster than the blink of an eye.  

Let’s do some real talk: no matter how you look at the numbers, this current economic situation is icky. The last time you blinked in February 2020, unemployment in the United States was approaching a record low at 3.5%. But in the month of March, nearly 10 million people applied for unemployment in the United States ALONE, and the unemployment rate nearly doubled. To make bad feel worse, April is not shaping up to be any better. 

We do not know who this virus-driven recession will affect. There are certain industries where you’re more likely to be safe (healthcare, digital products/software, learning management systems, companies that were already remote, and local/federal government workers). The chief economist at Glassdoor.com predicts that tech, professional services, and consulting will be able to be more resilient, too. Because overall market trends may or may not affect you or your specific role, department, or sector, do some Google-ing on your own to look at the trends that most directly affect your situation. But note that nobody is completely immune to feeling the effects of this dip.  

Earlier in 2020, a lot of employers were looking for talent and couldn’t find it, so they were paying higher salaries than more competitive or “typical” market rates. The currently rising unemployment rate means that a larger number of talented, qualified workers are going to be competing with you for possible jobs — and jobs may be harder to find — so if you want a role, you need to be willing to play all out, and go all-in. You cannot be lazy in this market, or rest on your previous job search laurels. If you aren’t measuring whether your job search tactics are working, you are going to pay for it in slow and low results over the coming months. 

So there’s reason to be on high alert: if you haven’t been affected by the recession, you (or your partner) probably will be. 

But high alert doesn’t mean you have to be panic-striken. The more you choose to take control and prepare with a plan (instead of freaking out), the easier it will be to weather any storm ahead.

Why is preparation so important? Last year, in the Harvard Business Review, Walter Frick wrote, “During the recessions of 1980, 1990, and 2000, 17% of the 4,700 public companies…fared particularly badly: They went bankrupt, went private, or were acquired. But just as striking, 9% of the companies didn’t simply recover in the three years after a recession—they flourished, outperforming competitors by at least 10% in sales and profits growth. A more recent analysis by Bain using data from the Great Recession reinforced that finding. The top 10% of companies in Bain’s analysis saw their earnings climb steadily throughout the period and continue to rise afterward. A third study, by McKinsey, found similar results. The difference maker was preparation.” (Emphasis added.) 

Resilience and adaptation are going to be the name of the game, and focusing on the things you *can* control. 

That means it’s time for some continuity planning.

It’s continuity, not contingency, because our words matter. Contingency planning is thinking: “On the outside chance that this thing happens, here is what we’d do.” It’s reactive and based on maintaining your current behaviors but crossing your fingers. 

Continuity planning starts with changing behavior right now. It’s: “Here is what we do today to ensure we can weather anything that comes our way tomorrow.” 

Wouldn’t it feel good to say, “I’ve thought through a plan so I can weather anything that happens” in this season of uncertainty?

Here are five ways to prepare yourself for whatever’s around the corner in the weeks and months to come — and an editable career continuity planning worksheet you can use to walk through these five steps for yourself:

1: Create my initial Continuity Plan outline: 

To create a continuity plan, we need to map out the possible continuity-disrupting scenarios we’re preparing for. This part of the plan is the least fun and possibly the most important, because knowledge (and looking at things with eyes wide open) is power.

Let’s get comfortable with the discomfort of looking at the scary stuff. Walk through each of these scenarios and ask yourself, “If I knew this was GOING to happen, what changes would I wish I’d made today to make that as easy to deal with as possible?”

• When I lose my job
• When my partner loses their job
• When we both lose our jobs
• When an unexpected large expense (medical, car, etc) comes up
• When childcare is not available
• When someone close to me (have a parent who isn’t taking coronavirus seriously?) is hospitalized
• When someone close to me dies

My students of manifestation are probably pulling out their hair reading this, saying: “Lisa, don’t say ‘when,’ say ‘if’ or something else more tentative!”

The problem with thinking about these as “if” possibilities means that we come up with plans we are not actually willing to do. We intellectually weasel our way out by thinking: “this will never *actually* happen, so I gues if it did I would…” and then you make a shitty plan. You create plans you’re not actually willing or committed to do.

If you believed that these scenarios were inevitable — instead of edge-case contingencies — you’d create plans you’d be willing to execute on, and get started on them today. Plans like knowing exactly where your parents’ wills and power of attorney documents are, and who’s in charge of executing them. Or saving up emergency fund cash. Or moving back in with your parents. Or opening a 0% APR emergency credit card. 

This is not a time for fantastical escapism. This is your life, and you can either choose to live in head on, or choose to hide from the realities out of fear. But the realities will come for you either way. So, decide whether you want to meet your problems face to face, or stick your head in the sand.

And, remember that the shame or discomfort that comes with any of these ideas is a product of your brain and your social acculturation — shame or embarrassment feels real, but it’s not the truth. Plenty of societies across the globe are totally groovy with living in multigenerational homes, or living a spartan life to save up cash to weather a coming storm. 

Don’t forget: This career continuity planning worksheet will help. 

2: Evaluate current risk exposure management and stabilization: 

After creating the above situational continuity plans, you probably noticed places where you’re overexposed to risk. Maybe you realized you’re house-poor. Maybe you don’t have any savings. Maybe you haven’t been building and nurturing relationships with family as a social support safety net. Now that you’re seeing some gaps, your next step is to figure out how to manage your risk exposure. 

This doesn’t mean don’t take any risks — it means think about ways to take smart risks that have asymmetric upside (meaning you’d gain more than you’d lose in any outcome). A great place to start with this is at your current job (if you still have one). 

If you want to make your current role as secure and safe as possible, make yourself as valuable as possible. Note that this doesn’t mean working 80 hours a week! It means identifying the most important things you (and your team) can be doing to create value. What are the biggest levers 

Got an idea for a project or program that the company could start that would save money — or, better yet, generate revenue without huge financial risk? Pitch it! Ask yourself this brain twisting question: What does this situation make possible in new or different ways? 

If you’re not currently employed, pay attention to ways you could help in the short term. What are things people are needing right now? Delivery services like GoPuff or DoorDash. Digital products. Healthcare services in-person and related goods. Amazon’s reported to be hiring 100,000 employees, so not everyone is suffering right now. (Bloomberg reports that since 1929 (yes, the same 1929 as the Great Depression), stocks have produced a 9% annualized return as measured by the S&P 500 Index, even taking recessions into account.) How might you be able to contribute, even in a more humble capacity than you’d imagined? 

3: Prepare yourself for possible financial risk:

If you haven’t read through my full financial planning article series, it’s a great space to start. 

Here, in the career continuity worksheet, I’ve also created a financial mapping exercise at the end particularly designed for recession continuity planning. 

Get your head around your current financial situation. Is it more hopeful or more dire than you thought? 

Either way, right now is the time to “deleverage” yourself: make sure that your debts have the lowest possible interest rates. Can you refinance your house in a way that saves you money both now and in the long haul? If you can’t pay off your credit card balances immediately, ensure that they’re on the lowest APR cards possible. Same goes for car payments. The fewer large overhead costs you have to worry about, the more options you have.

Then, reduce your overhead expenses. Newly working from home instead of driving an hour each way? Call your car insurance company and change your usage data to shave potentially hundreds of dollars off that bill. 

It’s also the time to make sure you have cash on hand. Having a cash emergency fund that’s at least 3 months worth of expenses (and, ideally, more) will help put your mind at ease. There are plenty of ways to do this: selling your stuff, picking up a part-time job, starting a side hustle business, or decreasing your expenses. To get more inspiration and to create your action plan for how to do this, check out the first article in my 4-part article series on Money + Happy here.

Hiring and firing are expensive and time-intensive for companies, so you may not be at risk of being laid off, but could still be subject to other mechanisms like losing bonuses, receiving a pay cut, work hours reduction, or being furloughed. Having an emergency fund turns these kinds of changes from being a crisis into an inconvenience, as Dave Ramsey would say.    

So to that point, don’t be buying a new Xbox right now. Be careful and prudent about “luxury good” purchases. Do your kids absolutely need private school this year? Could you sell your SUV and downsize to a used sedan? Any moves you can make to give yourself more financial optionality would be smart. People who have been living a more fiscally conservative life are going to be feeling more secure in a time of uncertainty, so if that hasn’t been you thus far, now is a great time to start. 

4. Add to your arsenal of skills: 

In 2018, the Washington Post said, “the skill sets of graduates — rather than their major — might matter most in hiring.” They had no idea how right they were. Organizations like Praxis have sprung up to help candidates showcase their skills and hack the job search process to get better results. 

Do you know what your skills and strengths are? Do you know how they create value for your employer? If not, you may want to be a part of a Recession-Proofing Your Career webinar I’m doing next month to help understand why this is so important, and how to do it for yourself. 

If you know what your strengths are, but also know you have gaps in your skillset, finding a way to gain more capabilities right now could be smart. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to do so: thanks to platforms like edX, Coursera, and Udemy, there are free or inexpensive classes and trainings you can attend to help boost your knowledge and add another impressive line to your resume. 

5. Ensure you’re nurturing strategic relationships: 

They say that the best time to have friends is before you need them. The hundreds of students who have worked with Career Clarity agree: the faster you start building (or, reviving) your professional connections, the easier it is to use them when you’re starting a job search. Nobody likes to receive a transaction and desperate networking email from someone they haven’t thought about in a year, so your mission is to think about strategic relationship building and warming in a way that feels more friendly than formal. 

One message I heard back when I was doing interviews for my Money + Happy article series was a brilliant quote from Grace Pomroy. She said, essentially, that when a crisis strikes, there is absolutely no way to be 100% prepared. You will never have all the emergency fund money, time, pain medications, canned foods, Clorox wipes, and diversified streams of income that you would want. You absolutely must be willing to lean on your relationships: to offer help when you have it to give, and to ask for help when you need it…even if that means moving your family of 4 into the basement of your mom’s house. You must be willing to ask for, and receive, support. 

Continuity planning is SO important. Why? There is a possibility that markets don’t fully recover for 2-5 years. 

Surprised it could be that fast? After the Great Depression, the New York Times’ study says it took 4 years and 5 months to recover the equivalent purchasing power to the 80% of market value that it lost. Not convinced? After the financial crash in 2008 that closed several banks, it took 22 months to get back into the same performance ballpark and 4 years to achieve higher market peaks. 

The stock market has never not bounced back, given enough time. 

We will have to wait and see how quickly things turn around: it could be a lot faster than even 2008. However, two things are certain: living your life stuck in uncertainty and fear isn’t truly living, and history says things will eventually turn around. 

So make sure to create a continuity plan to get you through any bumps in the road. 

Being prepared and ensuring you’re available to help (or be helped) are the best things you can do for your career — and life — in the face of economic uncertainty. 

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

SHOW NOTES:

• Editable career continuity planning worksheet
• Recession-Proofing Your Career webinar
• Money + Happy article series
• Email Lisa at Lisa@GetCareerClarity.com
• Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career eBook

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