CAREERS NOW 07-28-10

Persistant Job Hops -Ticking Time Bomb?

DEAR JOYCE: Supposedly I've held too many jobs in the last five years (not my fault) and I am running into brick walls. What can I do? - L.P.S.

Decide what your best skills are and which ones you wish to market. Start with a comprehensive skills audit. Research the job scene. What growth industries could use your preferred skills package? Here are four important tips, pay particular attention to the last one:

1) Entrepreneurial firms are more likely to gamble on you than are old-line bureaucracies.

2) Yours is a classic example of the need to "go direct," as I mentioned recently. That is, you have to learn to get through to hiring decision makers; HR recruiters are apt to turn a blind eye to your candidacy because you're a risk and they're not paid to recommend chancy people.

3) Develop a convincing elevator speech noting that your recent career as a quick-change artist was forced upon you by circumstances, that you've done deep analysis on what you do best and what you want to do - and this is it!

4) You say the bouncing-around effect on your history was not of your making. I believe you. But think about this:

As surely as night follows day, you are building a ticking time bomb if you desperately rush to grab the first offer without thinking it through each time you're jobless. You're weighing yourself down with additional jobs you'll have to explain away in the future.

If you do choose the non-strategy of saying yes to anything that pays right now, be sure to analyze at least one accomplishment for each employer. Your record of accomplishments will help you claim that you've acquired a valuable portfolio of talents and wisdom, rather than merely jumped from one panic attack to another.

"Lifeboat jobs" are sometimes necessary. But, when you've already got a history to defend and you're up against the brick wall, consider taking contract and temporary jobs until you're fairly sure you've got a good fit in a regular status position at a company that has a decent chance of survival.

The older you get and the more jobs notched in your work belt, the tougher it is to market a history of job hopping - even at companies that treat good employees as disposable goods.

DEAR JOYCE: Do companies still pay for your college studies? - Y.C.

Yes, but you should quickly contact your member of Congress and urge support for H.R. 5600, the Employee Educational Assistance Act of 2010. The act would make permanent the tax-free status of employer-provided educational assistance.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), American business' major HR professional society, has issued an action alert to its members, urging them to move fast to get this bill passed.

SHRM says: "Section 127 of the Internal Revenue Code allows an employee to exclude from income up to $5,250 per year in assistance provided by his or her employer for any type of educational course at the associate, undergraduate and graduate level.

"If an employer chooses to offer education assistance, the benefit must be offered to all employees on a nondiscriminatory basis that does not favor highly compensated employees.

"Congress has extended Section 127 eight times since it was first established in 1978, most recently in 2001. Section 127 will expire at the end of this year unless Congress acts to renew it or make it permanent."

Consider this information my action alert to readers who stand to greatly benefit from employer-provided education money.

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