Skills & Jobs: Lost in Tandem

The average duration of unemployment in the U.S. jumped to a record 35.2 weeks in September, up from 16.5 weeks when the recession began in December 2010, according to the Labor Dept. Today, almost half of unemployed Americans have been out of work for 47 weeks or more (the official definition of long-term unemployment), vs. 30 percent in June 2009.

PERISHABLE SKILLS 

Industries with highly perishable skill sets include health-care technology, telecommunications, and finance, where regulations have changed dramatically in the past year. The toughest, though, may be information technology. Companies in that sector have cut payrolls for 32 of the last 33 months, through June, for a cumulative loss of some 312,000 jobs, or about 10 percent. In technology, "if you've been out of work for a year or two, you're probably somewhat outdated," says Shami Khorana, president of HCL America, the U.S. arm of New Delhi-based HCL Technologies, which employs about 5,000 workers in the U.S. He plans to hire at least an additional 600 people as the economy improves and anticipates retraining some candidates with obsolete skills.

Unemployed workers in construction, retail, low-level health-care jobs, and teaching are more likely to be attractive to employers once hiring picks up because such jobs don't change as quickly, experts say. "You don't get the sense that residential construction has changed that much in the past decade," says Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and the Urban Institute in Washington. The skills needed to work at a grocery or clothing store—running the cash register, for instance—are "rudimentary," he says.

There are downsides to switching careers, because doing so can push workers into fields where their training isn't valuable, creating a less skilled workforce, says Daniel S. Hamermesh, a former Labor Dept. official who is now an economist at the University of Texas. "It's tremendously difficult [for workers] to decide when the skill is no longer valuable," he says.

When employers start hiring, they'll want to see prospective employees who have done more than pump out résumés trying to find a new job. Accenture (ACN), for example, will want to see "how the applicants used their time" to stay marketable, says Catherine S. Farley, a Seattle-based managing director at the consulting firm. "Did that person do something to keep their skills fresh?"

The bottom line: As more workers remain jobless for half a year or longer, they risk losing skills needed to get hired.

A sad situation that can cost this country dearly in the end. Solutions need to be proffered up and implemented as soon as possible. But will it be soon enough? 

The Art of Selling: B2B and More!

Most people are always striving to better themselves. For proof, check the sales figures on the number of self-improvement books sold each year. This is not a pitch for you to jump in and start selling these kinds of books, but it is an indication of people's awareness that in order to better themselves, they have to continue improving their personal selling tips abilities.

To excel in any selling situation, you must have confidence, and confidence comes, first and foremost, from knowledge. You have to know and understand yourself and your goals. You have to recognize and accept your weaknesses as well as your special talents. This requires a kind of personal honesty that not everyone is capable of exercising.

In addition to knowing yourself, you must continue learning about people. Just as with yourself, you must be caring, forgiving and laudatory with others. In any sales effort, you must accept other people as they are, not as you would like for them to be. One of the most common faults of sales people is impatience when the prospective customer is slow to understand or make a decision. The successful salesperson handles these situations the same as he would if he were asking a girl for a date, or even applying for a new job.

Learning your product, making a clear presentation to qualified prospects, and closing more sales will take a lot less time once you know your own capabilities and failings, and understand and care about the prospects you are calling upon.

Our society is predicated upon selling, and all of us are selling something all the time. We move up or stand still in direct relation to our sales efforts. Everyone is included, whether we're attempting to be a friend to a co-worker, a neighbor, or selling multi-million dollar real estate projects. Accepting these facts will enable you to understand that there is no such thing as a born salesman. Indeed, in selling, we all begin at the same starting line, and we all have the same finish line as the goal - a successful sale.

Most assuredly, anyone can sell anything to anybody. As a qualification to this statement, let us say that some things are easier to sell than others, and some people work harder at selling than others. But regardless of what you're selling, or even how you're attempting to sell it, the odds are in your favor. If you make your presentation to enough people, you'll find a buyer. The problem with most people seems to be in making contact - getting their sales presentation seen by, read by, or heard by enough people. But this really shouldn't be a problem, as we'll explain later. There is a problem of impatience, but this too can be harnessed to work in the salesperson's favor.

We have established that we're all salespeople in one way or another. So whether we're attempting to move up from forklift driver to warehouse manager, waitress to hostess, salesman to sales manager or from mail order dealer to president of the largest sales organization in the world, it's vitally important that we continue learning.

Getting up out of bed in the morning; doing what has to be done in order to sell more units of your product; keeping records, updating your materials; planning the direction of further sales efforts; and all the while increasing your own knowledge - all this very definitely requires a great deal of personal motivation, discipline, and energy. But then the rewards can be beyond your wildest dreams, for make no mistake about it, the selling profession is the highest paid occupation in the world!

Selling is challenging. It demands the utmost of your creativity and innovative thinking. The more success you want, and the more dedicated you are to achieving your goals, the more you'll sell. Hundreds of people the world over become millionaires each month through selling. Many of them were flat broke and unable to find a "regular" job when they began their selling careers. Yet they've done it, and you can do it too!

Remember, it's the surest way to all the wealth you could ever want. You get paid according to your own efforts, skill, and knowledge of people. If you're ready to become rich, then think seriously about selling a product or service (preferably something exclusively yours) - something that you "pull out of your brain;" something that you write, manufacture or produce for the benefit of other people. But failing this, the want ads are full of opportunities for ambitious sales people. You can start there, study, learn from experience, and watch for the chance that will allow you to move ahead by leaps and bounds.