Your new post is loading...
I think in-house employees can make themselves forever employable within their organizations by being thought leaders in-house. They become not only the go-to person inside the org but the person people outside the org want to come work with. It’s tremendously beneficial to the hiring brand of the company.
Dave: I wrestle with the need for teams to be stable, experienced with customer/market and the rise of the gig economy. Companies need people who know their business, their customers, their culture so that they can deliver innovation and be effective. But it seems that the next generation of employees seems to be more focused on their own career rather than the company, team, and customer. Is this true, or is it just an old man looking at the world through those eyes? How do you balance the idea of company and individual?
Jeff: I think corporate loyalty is dead. No matter how hard you work for a company, if things turn south tomorrow you may find yourself out on the sidewalk holding that trademark box of your belongings. By building your platform and becoming a recognized expert you ensure that your time between gigs will be short. It doesn’t mean you’re not promoting the interests of the company but it doesn’t preclude you from promoting your own interests at the same time. The more successful you are, the better it reflects on your employer. It’s symbiotic. In this sense working toward becoming forever employable is in everyone’s best interests.
I find that having a focus -- planting a flag as I call it in the book -- is key to building a platform and an audience. You can expand that platform but, at first, being known as the person who knows a lot about “x” is a good place to start. This doesn’t mean that you hoard information in the hopes of being the only person who has that knowledge. On the contrary, you should be sharing broadly and expanding your audience as well as your own knowledge. Without that, you risk being perceived as a bottleneck to the flow of information rather than a source for continuous learning.
You have to look at your expertise as a “product.” From that perspective, who are your customers? What problem are you helping them solve and how can you be most effective?