How To Keep Your Job Forever

The economy is tough.

Companies are asking more from their employees while cutting costs.

Everybody feels that they are walking on egg shells.

In some States, rent is more expensive than a mortgage payment. Still, people are not buying. Why? Because they feel unsecure about their job. They would rather pay higher rent than have a mortgage payment just to be debt free. Just in case.

Do you feel like this? Do you think that you could lose your job any day now?

When I started my career in the financial industry nine years ago, I thought that I needed to secure my position. While it’s a well paid sector and jobs are quite volatile. I needed to find a way to make sure that I would keep my job forever… or at least keep my “employability”. This is what my first boss taught me: how to become irreplaceable in your sector. I know… no one is really irreplaceable. However, if you work hard on your employability, chances are that you will become an important player in your department and the cost of replacing you will be fairly expensive. When you think about it; companies are looking to reduce costs and increase productivity. If you cost a lot to replace and are productive, there is no reason why you would lose your job!

Find Your Niche

The first step to increase your employability is to find your niche. While doing your job, look for something extra to do during your work hours. Don’t work blindly adding more facetime to impress your boss. Find something that isn’t going that well in your company and start working to improve it. This will become your niche.

When I started my career, I was working in a brand new department. They were having a hard time to keep track of their performance and weren’t able to follow key elements to the business. The business was growing too fast for them and most managers were busy taking care of fires. On top of my regular tasks, I started to work on a stats system with Excel. I wasn’t an Excel Wizard  but I was able to play around with a few formulas. I asked for help from a buddy of mine that was an Excel crack to do the macro so I didn’t have to spend day & night working on the project. After a few weeks, I went to my boss with a reliable and “on demand” stats system. He was ecstatic. For four years, I was named to all the committees regarding projects and process implementations. I wasn’t irreplaceable, but my value within this sector increased a lot compared to my peers who were just doing their regular jobs.

Get Titles & Training

As soon as you see an opportunity to get some more paper to put in a nice frame in your office, jump on it! Personally, I don’t believe that diplomas are a guarantee of success. But I know one thing; employers love them like kids adore chocolate cookies! You will obviously learn new things during your training but the most important part is to be able to add something to your resume. If you are as good as your colleague but have a better resume, chances that it will be easier for you to keep your job, find a new one or get a promotion. You don’t need to go back to University either. Depending on your field, some short courses could be very interesting in order to improve your skills.

Once my Excel project was done, I was offered by my employer to register (paid!) for Excel courses. I was also offered to take English classes (I’m French) in order to improve my English writing skills. Then, I was able to get a professional title along with my MBA paid by the same employer. If you show your employer that you want to learn more things and that it’s profitable for him, he will help you out to become a “super employee”.

Shut Up

There is one very important thing I learned when I worked in a cube; shut your mouth. It doesn’t matter what you think or on which side you are. When there are employees doing some boss bashing or company bashing or even other employee bashing; just zip it. Don’t talk. And if they ask your opinion; simply answer back that you don’t engage such conversations.

Employers don’t like people with a negative attitude and bad mouthing employees will eventually get on your case if you enter in this game. Therefore, it’s a lose-lose situation. I understand that it’s hard to not “be part of the gang” but trust me; bashing people never got anyone hired!

There are definitely tons of other tricks to keep your job forever and become more employable. I’m curious to know what are yours; Can you share with us what you do at work to make sure that you keep your job?

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