Tuesday night this week brought a band of violent storms up through Texas and beyond.  In and around the Dallas area, emergency sirens blared as the weather radar glowed red and purple with hail and high winds.  Ripping through to the north and east, the storm spawned at least one tornado which claimed the lives of 8 people in Oklahoma.

Instead of being in control of the storm, the storm happened to them. Life happens. The job market happens. Recently I took a look at Beyond.com’s Career Trends Analysis Report (4th Q 2008).

There are many dynamics at play to be considered.  In weather, there is wind, moisture, and temperature.  Depending upon the mix, there can be rain, hail, tornadoes.  Storms can even change or reverse course.  We try to predict and prepare for what is often unpredictable.  But is there something you can do besides just “letting life happen” to you?

[adsensetop]

Life favors the prepared.  Today’s modern job hunters and career builders understand that success in their career progress requires a well-thought strategy.  If they don’t understand, then they better figure it out quickly.

My own realization of this has resulted in my actively practicing various job hunting activities every week of the year.  And it also means including a mix of various types of income generation methods:

• Permanent employment
• Contract/temp/consulting work
• Freelance and odd jobs
• Residual income (ad revenues from blog posts)
• Even buying items on sale and selling them on eBay

A friend of mine recently received his career wake-up call.  After 10 years in the same job with EDS, he was let go right before Christmas along with many others in a sweeping layoff.  Having started as a consultant in a unit that originally served EDS as consultants, his being brought into EDS formally indicated the idea of permanency.  But such notions simply are not true any more.

Over the past years, we would always discuss jobs.  He’d had the same one, and I always had a new one.  He probably thought I was a nut job going from gig to gig, and always talking about job hunting.

He and I are actually in the same boat – and have been.  His problem was that he did not know it because “it” had not happened to him yet.  Now he is shaking off the initial shock of not getting the one and only job that has interviewed for since his last one.  On the other hand, I have had at least half a dozen interviews for promising opportunities and have corresponded with over 300 recruiters, and I still have not landed a position yet.

[adsense]

Talk about stormy dynamics, consider this quote from the Beyond.com report:

For business professionals, the job market became extremely competitive. The weakened economy created an influx of business professionals out of work and searching for jobs, creating a more qualified talent pool not seen by employers in years. Some employers even chose to turn over their workforce in order to tap into and employ these talented employees to help take their business to the next level in the New Year. Although these are difficult times, professionals remain hopeful and are taking necessary steps to secure their future by becoming an active job seeker sooner than later, increasing professional and social networking and improving their education to get an edge over other candidates.

How about that!  Some employers who might not be economically-compelled to to make layoffs, still announced workforce reductions.  Their purpose being to hire back in high-performing candidates who were let go by companies that had to due to the economic downturn.

What do you think about this statement: “When there is an economic downturn and workforce reductions, there will be lots of recruiting and hiring activy going on in the marketplace”?  Crazy talk?  Or do you see the logic?

The truth is that it makes perfect sense to the prepared.  Are you among them?  I can say that I am.  And you can be too.  If I have to say it a hundred or a thousand times, I’ll say it again.  The successful Internet Jobs professional understands that contract work is now a standard part of the workforce/jobmarketplace mix.  Get used to it.  The sooner the better.

I know this is a difficult concept for many people to accept – for those who have had only 1 or 2 or 3 jobs in the past 5 or 10 years.  But when you start working for 4 different clients each year, after a couple of years, you get it.

Stay tuned here at Internet Jobs.

What are your thoughts and experiences?  How many jobs have you had in the past 5 years.  What are your plans to navigate the stormy job market seas?