Unemployment has topped 14.7% in the first week of May 2020, the highest it’s been since the great depression, the one in the 1920s, not 2008. More people lost their jobs in April than during the whole of 2008’s recession, but there is hope!
Shut down sheds light on new opportunities for service employees to grow out of the industry
In DFW alone, there are numerous job banks to help people connect with available opportunities. The Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce has one of the more robust sites sayyestodallas.com. They say on their website that they are working with partners across the DFW area to connect displaced workers with available jobs. They list hundreds of postings on their site from Caregiver LS for Disability Services of the Southwest in Lewisville to a Package Delivery Driver for UPS out of Dallas.
The key here is to know your resources. What industry are you looking for and what skills do you bring to the table? Try to look at the bright side if you were laid off from a job you were unhappy with, be glad and move on, said Dave Ramsey, who can be heard locally on DFW’s own KRLD-AM 1080.
New opportunities from a crummy old job
Before the Coronavirus, between a third and half of all employees said they were unhappy with their current job situation, so if you were in that situation, make the most of the new opportunity and find the job that you were really looking for. In Texas, one such resource is the Texas Workforce Commission. Yes, the one that is so overwhelmed that it is having a hard time issuing unemployment payments. The same group does a pretty good job of posting opportunities to explore with employers across the state. Texas Workforce Commission Job Search
In my opinion, when life hits its hardest point, we can learn the most. Hard times can mean breaking unsuccessful habits, trying out new skills, or remembering old ones. This is an opportunity to land the job of your dreams or at least to improve your current situation. So again, what skills are you bringing to the table? Not sure if you can quantify your skills, no problem, check out some of these online assessments, and see if they help. Now while it may seem weird, if you are still just not sure what you bring to the table, ask your friends, your parents, your spouse, they will remind you of your soft skills as well as all the time you spent learning X, Y or Z. So now that you have a clue, check out Indeed.com, warehousejobs.com, dfwcommunicators.com, theladders.com, and there are so many others as well.
Remember, you’re unemployed or unhappily employed, not broken, so if you want a new job, you have to work for it. There is competition, so instead of just browsing the internet for hours or playing video games all night, spend hours and hours perfecting your resume, filling out applications, and checking in with old friends to see what they can do to help you get back to work.
If you haven’t told all your friends that you are looking, you haven’t even gotten started. That’s right, your friends, you know those folks that you help all the time, yeah, it’s time for them to keep their eyes out for you! Don’t forget to use your social media sites, like LinkedIn, to see if you may have a connection that already works at the place where you want to apply.
New Collar Jobs
There is more too! Whether you have a degree or license of some sort, you may not want to rely on it going forward. Check out New Collar Jobs: “New Collar jobs are roles in some of the technology industry’s faster-growing fields – from cybersecurity and cloud computing to cognitive business and digital design – that do not always require a traditional degree. What they do require is the right mix of in-demand skill sets,” according to IBM’s website.
Right now, IBM is offering the training for these so-called New Collar Jobs for free! Ginni Rometty, executive chairman of IBM, was on Good Morning America Friday and shared, “Something that we learned, it isn’t just the hard skill of can I do coding, or do I know a certain way to fight cyber. It is much more about some of the soft skills.” IBM is one of 600 or more businesses right now training and hiring for these new jobs. Rometty identifies servers and baristas as having an excellent opportunity to move into the new industry.
Check out more about the New Collar Jobs at IBM and GMA.
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