I had written an article on job security in Jan 2003 in a now defunct Return2India web forum. It was reposted on Sulekha same year by someone I don't know. It was from a discussion on whether to Return to India (R2I) or Live in America (LIA).
When I
read it today, I felt nothing really has changed. I am re-posting job security portion here. I also noticed that my writing style has hardly changed since then.
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First, let’s define the current meaning of job security. This is necessary because the meaning of job security has changed drastically since our parent’s generation. In our parent’s generation, job security basically meant the inability of the employer to fire you unless you screw up big time. Even if you worked for private sector, one never got fired for mediocrity or incompetence. Willful fraud or company bankruptcy was the only way to lose your job. Please note I am not taking about government, public sector, or even unionized jobs into consideration, they still remain the last bastion of the incompetent. These days job security means your ability to remain attractive or valuable to current employer and future/potential employers. And it has to be done in positive ways, not negatively as suggested by one forum member, which is bound to backfire with a smart manager. You can no more relax after bagging a job. Whichever field you are in, you have to constantly update your skills sets to remain competitive with your peers in the work place and job market. This can be done via self-study or continuous education courses or by attaining advanced diplomas or degrees. You can immensely improve your job security by being proactive in your work place, helping others instead of holding back, making yourself more valuable than you are paid. In addition, you should keep in touch with your friends from each of your former companies as much as possible. After a few years in a particular field, one does realize that it is a small world. You’ll have many former colleagues (managers/subordinates/peers) working in various companies in your field. When you do have to look for a job, these connections come in very handy. The impression that they have about your work ethics/competence/performance will be the key in getting your next job. You don’t want them to remember you as an incompetent, primaddona or a manipulative person. Finally, you should never burn bridges, because someday you may want to cross back or need a favor from somebody from the other side of the bridge. This is how one achieves job security in the current environment, and surely not by depending on the mercy of your current manager/employer or a future one.
There are two sides to the job security equation. The first one is what you can control, the one I explained just now. The second one is usually out of your control, which is the job market environment. You have worked in both India and USA, so you can judge for yourself which country has the better work environment for you. We don’t live in a perfect world. When jobs are plenty like in 1999, nobody minds when an outsider partakes in the bounty. However, when economy takes a dive, people won’t be that friendly anymore. I’ve known this all the time, but there was a research report recently which showed that most employers discriminate blacks based on the name on the resume. There was a 50% bias against the blacks, and these are against US citizens and blacks have lived in the country for centuries. The researchers did not include foreign sounding names in their study, if they had, it would have easily shown an 80%-90% bias against the foreign sounding names. Just like how manufacturing jobs left the country during the 80s, lots of service jobs are leaving the county these days.
Many IT companies are also moving Hi-Tech jobs to countries like India. As a technology provider to various BPO operations, I happen to be in a position where I get to see how companies decide where their BPO is done. If the reliability and quality requirements are met, price is the deciding factor. And no company can match the prevailing BPO outsourcing rates using American employees. This can happen to every service industry one by one. I don’t really see an opposing force against this, except some attempts by certain legislators to ban this practice. For example, none of the NJ state outsourcing contracts can be sent overseas. But the companies that benefit from outsourcing overseas have too much stake and fat budget for lobbying. Besides, Americans have gotten used to the low service costs. Therefore, I don’t think they can ever extend anti-outsourcing laws to non-government companies. Basically, in a few years most jobs would go overseas. You may have to compete with regular Americans for whatever jobs that are still left in this country.
Lots of people routinely make long term commitments based on short term situations. Such decisions can be advantageous only in the short term, and that may not remain so in the long term. In the company finance (asset management) area, they have a concept called maturity matching. According to this concept, you should finance short term requirement with short term liabilities (loans) and long term requirements with long term liabilities. You can apply this idea to life too. Just because you have job this year, you can’t plan next 30 years based on that. R2I or LIA is a long term commitment; you have to plan it out with a long term outlook. If you want to LIA, can you ensure your job security (not the old type) for the next 30 years? That’s the question you need to answer. I don’t know what you do and how well you do it, therefore only you can answer this question. When you are young and unmarried, you can be very mobile and take up jobs in any part of the world. As you get married, have kids, buy a house, your mobility grinds to a halt, your options become limited. When you were mobile, almost all of your commitments were short term. However, marriage, kids and house are all long term commitments, which demand long term planning. Therefore, you R2I decision should not be based on your current manager’s generosity to process your GC. Frankly, he can’t guarantee your job security anymore than he can guarantee his own. Can he guarantee you there won’t be any layoffs in a year? These situations are not in the hands of your Manager. It is highly depended on your company’s finances, unless of course one of you is working for the government or one of those tenured jobs. Even government jobs are not so safe these days. A year back Enron employees worked in a successful company with fat 401K funds, now many are jobless and no retirement fund. The old fashioned job security doesn’t really exist in USA unless you have a tenured job. I know a couple where the husband worked for a brokerage through a consulting company. The consulting company processed his GC, and the client company offered to take him as an employee once his GC was processed and once his current contract terminated. Once the GC was processed he bought a house and was all ready for the new job. When his contract ended, the client company decided to freeze all hiring. So, he is still with his consulting company trying to get a new assignment. But, the consulting company is not really interested to get him an assignment since he may leave anytime because of his GC. Therefore, now he has a house, mortgage and no job. He has offers from other states, but because of the house he is not able pickup and move. Therefore, be careful what promises you can depend on.
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