A Survival Strategy
by Toddi Gutner (topic expert: balance)

There likely isn't one among us who hasn't been affected by this recession. At worst, you're a victim of a layoff and busy looking for a job; at best, business is down and you're working harder, faster and longer just to stay employed.

That's the case at my husband's firm, a small broker-dealer in Manhattan, where he manages the fixed income division. After surviving two rounds of layoffs, he feels grateful to still have a job even though he was asked to take a 15% cut in his base pay and do the work of those who were let go in his department.

This is a far cry from the last several years when one of the most popular strategies for achieving job advancement meant jumping jobs. Today, with unemployment higher than it has been in decades, that is no longer possible. Instead, you have to make the best of the job the you have and work toward the goal of where you want to be when this recession is over.

One way to do that is to use this time to acquire new skills at work. Sure, you're overworked, stressed out and underpaid but as a layoff survivor, you'll need to prove that you remain the person to keep if there are subsequent layoffs.

To do that, take stock of the workplace. Remember that there are two sides to a business: You're either a revenue-generator or an expense. Whichever side of that equation that you are on, make sure that you're doing work that is not only this closely aligned with the direction of your employer's business but also visible to your managers.

To that end, volunteer to take on projects that you may not have done in the past and that could lead to new and different types of projects in the future. Say you're a budget analyst, likely a highly-coveted job in this environment, and in a recent layoff the marketing department was decimated. Well, the marketing manager still needs to produce the same amount of work with less people. Why not offer to help on a project?

Of course, no one is indispensable in the this environment. But the more skills you have, the more valuable your are to management and the more likely they will be able to move you around if there is an additional retrenchment.

That is in effect what happened to my husband. After the first round of layoffs, his firm gave him responsibility for a division that he knew a little bit about, not a lot, but enough that the ceo figured he could take on that business. In a way, there really is opportunity even at the darkest times.