Job Going Off The Rails? You Know What To Do...

Having seen his share of on-the-job ups and downs, TONY PARSONS advises that in a time of trades, companies and entire industries collapsing, the way to avoid career catastrophe might be to jump the tracks entirely.

- Tony Parsons

IN EVERY CAREER THERE COMES A POINT WHEN YOU ARE all washed up. Your face no longer fits. Your stock is falling. Your friends and fans are gone. Career stall can strike at any time. And it does. I had early quarter-life career stall when I was a washed-up music journalist who had just turned 25. Then I had midlife, middle-career stall when I was a washed-up newspaper columnist with a new editor who was a budget-slashing bean counter. And then I had late career stall when I was a washed-up novelist whose last number one was 10 years ago. That is a lot of lows but fairly typical of these uncertain times.

‘The iron rice bowl’ is what the Chinese called a job for life. But nobody talks about iron rice bowls any more, not in China nor anywhere else. The old career flight paths no longer exist. Every job ends and probably a hell of a lot sooner than you were anticipating. ‘People are no longer working at the same jobs for 40 years, with the safety net of pensions waiting at the end,’ Jenny Blake writes in her book Pivot: The Only Move That Matters is Your Next One.

‘The average employee tenure in America is now four to five years and job roles change dramatically within those four to five years. Job security has become an antiquated idea, a luxury most people today do not enjoy, whether they are aware of it or not.’ And so you wake up at four in the morning wondering how you will pay the bills, and if you will ever find another job, and with the cocky certainties of youth kicked right out of you. When the way you have been working is simply no longer delivering the results you want, you have two choices: you can crawl away and die. Or you can make a career pivot.