COVID Made Me Do It: 2 Predictions on How You'll Handle Your Career During CoronaTimes
"So, I had COVID last week."
So began a conversation with an old college classmate who slid into my consult calendar two weeks ago.
He described entering a four week fugue state, fever dreams, paralyzing breathlessness and in the rare lucid moments between dry coughing and zonking out, the recurring swirling thought:
'What am I doing with my life?'
Less than a week since his recovery he was sorting through what to do next:
Was the finance career he'd built really what he wanted?
Now that he had a new lease on life, what was he to do with the rest it?
How did that translate to the work he was meant to do in the world?
My calendar has never been more stacked. I think there's a number of things going on, chief among them a Harvard Business Review article I wrote about How to Tell Your Story on LinkedIn But that's just the spark to the tinder of isolation.
Even if you haven't had COVID, you've spent over a month in forced introspection around your work, your habits, suddenly given a break from the busyness of business and confronted with a disease that may or may not kill you or barring that, uncertainty that may be driving you to an early grave...
Yeah. You're going to get a little existential.
And while everyone is bracing themselves for economic downturn, I'm observing a surge in people taking a hard look at how they've been spending their time (which, frankly, in your mid-career is generally work-related) and thinking: this is not enough.
The global workforce will experience another Great Recession. But what are the consequences of the Great Reevaluation?
Here's 2 predictions for how this crisis is going to effect the job market (and one recommendation):
1. A HUGE number of people are going to change jobs (and not just because they got laid off)
I've been doing this enough to know that few people change their job because it's time for them to grow. Humans are creatures of comfort - ready to push beyond our boundaries because the pain we're in is worse than the pain of change. Emotion drives behavior. Every major change is caused by some inflection point.
You're that much closer to a landmark birthday, and you're worried you don't have enough to show for it.
It's the 2-year anniversary of your MBA, and you have yet to be promoted.
Your ex got married before you, so your best revenge is making the C-suite first.
A global pandemic hits, working mankind's deepest fears of death & insignificance. (Sorry, so morbid!)
If, in fact, 300 million American citizens alone need to get this thing to get through it, that's a LOT of Dark Nights of the Soul ahead. It's a lot of decisions about relocation, slowing down or speeding up at work, following your dreams, or getting into a pandemic-proof industry.
Coming out of COVID is going to be like surviving a heart attack and deciding to get that convertible we always wanted -- as a country.
This is incredibly normal. It's also going to be a LOT of cover letters.
2. More competition for roles than ever
As anyone who's ever called a call center is aware, exponential population growth + globalization + the Internet means more job competition. Given that the US alone has lost 26.5M jobs in just one month, there's already a lot more competition for the jobs that remain.
Add to that the discoveries companies will make when they realize remote work can yield high productivity while bringing down overhead costs... it won't just be customer service or web based work that can be outsources.
Now that all office work lives in the cloud, you won't just be competing against the best candidates willing to move to Cincinnati -- you'll be competing against the best candidates with willing to make a few Zoom calls during Cincinnati hours.
So what's a girl to do?
No one can change the fact that we're living through a once-in-a-lifetime global health crisis. Not even Oprah, and she is SUPER powerful.
But, as Oprah would sagely observe (I assume): you can only own your own actions, which given that we're all supposed to stay indoors for the next month at least, are pretty limited.
If you do find yourself in a career pivot now or later, the thing you own is you - your thoughts, words, deeds, experiences, skills and how you share those with others you might be able to help.
What's next? If this speaks to you and you're in a Great Reevaluation. Let's chat. I offer chill 15 minute consults to get to know each other better and see if it makes sense to continue the conversation. Book yours here.