THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 5, 1994 TAG: 9409020641
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, BUSINESS WEEKLY STAFF
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
``We've had this notion ingrained in ourselves that if you're out looking for a job, you're being disloyal. And that's just foolish in this job market.''
- Peter Weddle
Peter D. Weddle knows a bit about resumes.
The chairman of Job Bank USA, a recruiting firm, he recently completed writing the book ``Career Fitness: How to Find, Win and Keep the Job You Want in the 1990s.''
Weddle discussed the book and the job market with the Hampton Roads Business Weekly. The book describes a tough environment for job seekers. Weddle advises employees to have resumes in circulation at all times. Here's an edited transcript of the interview:
Business Weekly: Part of the book makes the business world seem cutthroat.
Weddle: I don't think it's cutthroat at all. I chose the term career fitness because I thought it was the best metaphor about the change going on in the job market.
In the 1980s we learned that the way you build physical fitness was you took responsibility for your own health and you had to work on it every single day. To manage your career successfully in the 1990s, you have to take responsibility for it and you have to work on it every single day.
There's a whole host of skills and knowledge that one has to acquire to manage a career. It's not enough to just be an expert in your profession. Now you also have to have a set of skills in a second job. The second job involves coaching yourself and getting yourself on a career path that has some meaning to you.
Business Weekly: Haven't savvy people been doing this for some time?
Weddle: What's different about the 1990s is, according to the latest research, you're going to experience 15 to 20 job changes. Warp speed job changes.
And with all the downsizing and right-sizing that's going on, the old-fashioned career ladder is gone forever. What the world really looks like is a career jungle gym.
I still remember the jungle gym as one place in school where the teacher didn't tell me where to go. I got to decide whether I was going to move straight up, or off to the side, or sometimes even backwards to get where I wanted to go. That's what it's like to manage your career in the '90s.
Business Weekly: Some people don't like colleagues who are openly ambitious. They say, ``She's angling for that job.'' Are there better ways to go about it?
Weddle:: Well I think there is a certain element of, ``I wish I had that moxie,'' behind those criticisms. It's going to be a very troubling and in many cases disconcerting new job market for just that reason. People are going to have to do things that in the past were viewed as incorrect.
Business Weekly: This sounds like an even harsher me-first environment than the 1980s.
Weddle: The book talks about this in the section on loyalty. What I'm trying to explain to people is that the definition of loyalty has been diffused. You still want to be loyal to your employer, that's key.
But you're being loyal to your employer by doing the very best job you can do. It's not being disloyal, therefore, by being loyal to yourself as well. I think for the first time ever people need to be loyal to themselves and their families. That's a new coat to wear.
Business Weekly: The book suggests people who work to earn a living and have hobbies for their enjoyment are going about it wrong. You put a stress test in the book. Why?
Weddle: Work is where you feel challenged, stretched, pulled to do things you never thought you could do. The tragedy is far too many people go to work only for what happens afterwards: the car you can buy, the vacation you can afford.
My premise is, stop, take this career stress test, remove the limits and figure out what you really enjoy doing.
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW by CNB