For most of us, the concept of job security can join Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and global peace on the short list of warm and fuzzy things that exist in language only.
With the rare exception of tenured positions in education, the words "job" and "security" don't come together too often, unless you switch the order and aspire to a career in a security job (think Paul Blart, Mall Cop).
Yes, job security is dead.
But it used to be alive and well, though it has morphed throughout the years.
From the post war years in the late 1940's up until the early 1980's, job security was found by joining a large and stable employer and keeping your nose clean.
Show up for work at your not-so-strenuous 9 to 5 job, imbibe no more than two martinis at lunch, and you could pretty much count on a gold watch and a pension at the end of 30 years or so.
By the latter part of the 1980's, the winds of change began to blow.
Congruent with the shift to a global economy and with the rise of the power retailers (instead of power manufacturers), costs and quality began to matter a heck of a lot more.
No longer were consumers the "dogs" that would eat whatever "dog food" the manufactures decided to feed them at whatever cost supported double digit margins.
Toyotas and Hondas went from being jokes to preferred products.
The concept of "Japanese junk" which was a prevalent siren call when I was a kid in the 1960's, shifted to a perception of unmatched quality outgrowing Kaizen philosophy and processes.
Jobs for life came to a screeching halt.
Performance started to matter.
It mattered a lot.
Pay for performance philosophies sprung up like weeds, with a new cadre of human resources people pushing them hard as part of their effort to move from the "personnel office" to the executive suite.
Job security changed, but still existed.
If you did your job and did it well (or at least better than the people who you sat next to in the island of cubicles) then you were okay.
Some people believe that this is still the case.
But many, many more know otherwise.
Job loss is no longer stigmatic because so often it has little to do with the performance of the person losing it.
Contextual stuff comes into play.
Things like the cost of production workers or call center workers in China and India versus in the United States.
The rise of the Internet as a lightening fast and reliable pipeline over which engineering drawings can be reviewed in Bucharest and sent back to New York.
The growth of stock based compensation plans that put millions of dollars at risk when quarterly earnings come up short, thereby necessitating job cuts.
None of these things are intrinsically either good or bad, they just are.
Job security does kind of exist, but not in the same way.
It's not "job" security, but rather "job-getting" security.
Job-getting security is the comfort that comes from knowing that if you lose your job, you can always get another one.
It's not up to your employer anymore, it's up to you.
Job-getting security outgrows two things, the strength of your intellectual and relational capital.
Intellectual capital includes your native intelligence and the array of skills, abilities and experiences that you have acquired throughout the course of your life.
Relational capital refers to the breadth and quality of the relationships and contacts that you have developed in your working life.
Most people are much better at nurturing intellectual capital, because they think it's more important.
They are wrong.
Intellectual and relational capital are both essential elements of job-getting security.
To develop one without the other is sub-optimal at best.
Think of the "empty suit" with lots of contacts.
He may get a job quickly, but he'll likely lose it just as fast.
And that woman who is the "smartest person in the room" who has kept her head down on the job because she doesn't have time to network, is in for a long search as she has to demonstrate hers smarts again and again to strangers in the search process.
Intellectual capital has been critical for the job seeker for a long time now.
And the rise of social networking sites such as Linked In is proof positive of the growing influence of relational capital.
You need to build them both.
Invest in them selfishly and regularly.
In doing so, you will have taken your best shot to ensure your job security in these insecure times.
With the rare exception of tenured positions in education, the words "job" and "security" don't come together too often, unless you switch the order and aspire to a career in a security job (think Paul Blart, Mall Cop).
Yes, job security is dead.
But it used to be alive and well, though it has morphed throughout the years.
From the post war years in the late 1940's up until the early 1980's, job security was found by joining a large and stable employer and keeping your nose clean.
Show up for work at your not-so-strenuous 9 to 5 job, imbibe no more than two martinis at lunch, and you could pretty much count on a gold watch and a pension at the end of 30 years or so.
By the latter part of the 1980's, the winds of change began to blow.
Congruent with the shift to a global economy and with the rise of the power retailers (instead of power manufacturers), costs and quality began to matter a heck of a lot more.
No longer were consumers the "dogs" that would eat whatever "dog food" the manufactures decided to feed them at whatever cost supported double digit margins.
Toyotas and Hondas went from being jokes to preferred products.
The concept of "Japanese junk" which was a prevalent siren call when I was a kid in the 1960's, shifted to a perception of unmatched quality outgrowing Kaizen philosophy and processes.
Jobs for life came to a screeching halt.
Performance started to matter.
It mattered a lot.
Pay for performance philosophies sprung up like weeds, with a new cadre of human resources people pushing them hard as part of their effort to move from the "personnel office" to the executive suite.
Job security changed, but still existed.
If you did your job and did it well (or at least better than the people who you sat next to in the island of cubicles) then you were okay.
Some people believe that this is still the case.
But many, many more know otherwise.
Job loss is no longer stigmatic because so often it has little to do with the performance of the person losing it.
Contextual stuff comes into play.
Things like the cost of production workers or call center workers in China and India versus in the United States.
The rise of the Internet as a lightening fast and reliable pipeline over which engineering drawings can be reviewed in Bucharest and sent back to New York.
The growth of stock based compensation plans that put millions of dollars at risk when quarterly earnings come up short, thereby necessitating job cuts.
None of these things are intrinsically either good or bad, they just are.
Job security does kind of exist, but not in the same way.
It's not "job" security, but rather "job-getting" security.
Job-getting security is the comfort that comes from knowing that if you lose your job, you can always get another one.
It's not up to your employer anymore, it's up to you.
Job-getting security outgrows two things, the strength of your intellectual and relational capital.
Intellectual capital includes your native intelligence and the array of skills, abilities and experiences that you have acquired throughout the course of your life.
Relational capital refers to the breadth and quality of the relationships and contacts that you have developed in your working life.
Most people are much better at nurturing intellectual capital, because they think it's more important.
They are wrong.
Intellectual and relational capital are both essential elements of job-getting security.
To develop one without the other is sub-optimal at best.
Think of the "empty suit" with lots of contacts.
He may get a job quickly, but he'll likely lose it just as fast.
And that woman who is the "smartest person in the room" who has kept her head down on the job because she doesn't have time to network, is in for a long search as she has to demonstrate hers smarts again and again to strangers in the search process.
Intellectual capital has been critical for the job seeker for a long time now.
And the rise of social networking sites such as Linked In is proof positive of the growing influence of relational capital.
You need to build them both.
Invest in them selfishly and regularly.
In doing so, you will have taken your best shot to ensure your job security in these insecure times.
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