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Are You Prepared?

 

If you’re like most people, taking certain measures to protect your future is critical. You participate in a 401(k) plan in preparation for retirement. You carry health insurance in case you fall ill. Your vehicle is insured in case of a collision. So, wouldn’t it be equally wise to show the same foresight regarding your career?

One of the most common rebuttals Jackson & Associates receives when discussing career planning is the misbelief that change will never occur. This is most common among those who are too young to remember the last recession and those who miraculously made it through unscathed. Both camps consist of admirably loyal construction professionals, many of whom have been with the same company for their entire career.

On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with that. We live in a candidate’s market in which most people change jobs before they’ve even settled into a given role. So, those who contently wave their company banner are to be applauded. At the same time, though, they need to be prepared. Change can occur at any time, often when we least expect it.

Take Jackson & Associates’ recent placement “Chris” for example. Like many of our candidates, Chris had a rock-solid work history. He’d been with the same company for more than a decade; he even did his internship there. When we first approached him about the possibility of a career move, he wasn’t having any of it. He was content to the point of saying he’d retire from his company.

Like clockwork, we stayed in touch with Chris, making sure we followed his career closely to stay up to date on his increasing skill set. You see, our relationships with candidates allow us to help them much quicker if they ever need to make a change.

Then one day, he called us.

You see Chris’ company, the one to which he’d shown unwavering loyalty for so many years, the one to which he’d adhered himself despite every opportunity we’d presented, was making him relocate. For more than 10 years, he’d lived in the same city, watching his children succeed in school and supporting his wife in her career. And now, he was suddenly faced with the cold reality that he was going to have to disrupt their lives by moving them four states away.

Fortunately for Chris, we’d followed his career closely. Because of our connections, Chris didn’t have to wade through a “big company” hiring process or hope HR or internal recruiters got his information to a decision maker. More importantly, we were able to give him options to explore without jeopardizing his current job. We were able to quickly secure a position for him with one of our top clients, getting him a raise and a promotion in the process. He didn’t have to move, and he was left in a better place than where he started. Had we not maintained contact with him over the years, we wouldn’t have known his history and skill set well enough to quickly start advocating for him.

Chris’ story is reflective of countless others we’ve heard over the years and, career-wise, he’s  representative of the type of people we typically assist – dedicated construction professionals desiring long-term homes. You see, speaking to us doesn’t make you disloyal; it doesn’t even mean you’re looking. It simply means you’re prepared.

Jackson & Associates has been assisting companies in engineering, construction and other related industries with the implementation of executive search and recruiting strategies since 2000. Our clientele includes startups, mid-size companies and Fortune 500 companies across the U.S. and abroad.

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