Job hunting tips for the distribution industry professional

For professionals in the distribution industry, leaving a job can put in bad taste in your mouth. Finding a job can be even more bitter. What are prospective employers looking for? Here are some tips for job hunters looking to maintain a career in the distribution industry. 

by Don Andersson

Almost every day, media headlines underscore what we already know. There is no job security. Recent studies say this will continue. On average, we will each hold at least seven to 10 different positions during our professional careers.

Why is it, then, so many people are unprepared for it?

Preparing ourselves to be successful in today’s changing marketplace does not occur automatically. It requires us to begin by answering some basic questions:

• Who is in charge of my career?

• What do I have to offer?

• What new criteria for success must I meet?

Who is in charge of my career
Individuals once labored under the assumption that hard work resulted in job security. Many organizations that promoted this belief no longer exist.  Mergers and acquisitions either vanquished or distorted them beyond recognition. Loyalty and security have vanished.

What do I have to offer?
To be prepared to accept personal accountability for your career, you must begin by answering this question: What do I have to offer? Whatever your level, you must avoid getting yourself positioned as a jobholder dependent upon an organizational structure. You must begin thinking of yourself as a sole proprietor of a resource business providing timely support to specific customers even though you may all be on the same payroll. That’s the way to distinguish yourself from others.

Several implications are bound to that shift. No longer do you understand yourself as working for others. You now work with them, exerting your capabilities for a shared success. Recognize and continue to accept accountability for the development of your own technical, interpersonal and team skills.

What new criteria for success must I meet?
Recognized or not, we are increasingly working as a collection of experts. We must know and continuously hone our unique insight and capabilities as well as our ability to work collaboratively with others.

To work successfully, you must have technical or operational skills, but they are not sufficient. You must also have the ability to listen, question and collaborate with others.

Ability to Listen
Most of us have been born with ability to hear. That’s different from the ability to listen. Listening is both a developed skill and an art. It requires concentration on what the other is saying and waiting until they have completed their thought before one responds. It’s not easy!

Initial words tend to evoke our response and encourage us to miss the emotional message that accompanies the verbal. They also tend to block us from attending to what is not spoken even though its absence may be speaking very loudly.

Ability to question
Most of us are better at commenting than we are at questioning. Questioning always runs the risk of putting others on the defensive. However, used appropriately it provides one with the ability to more clearly understand and benefit from another.

Ability to collaborate with others
Great technical capability alone isn’t enough because it builds a wall between collegues and impedes progress. Understood as a resource that can enhance decision-making, however, it makes an effective contribution.

There is often a tendency to shunt experts into the position of being individual contributors expected to implement decisions made by others. That’s not helpful. It’s more effective for them to work collaboratively with others. It also presumes an ability to do so.

Just because you have passed through previous career transitions is no guarantee you are ready for the next.  Preparedness doesn’t just happen. You may still respond by saying, “Oh, no, not again,” unless you’ve taken charge of your career, know precisely what kind of answer you can be to the challenges being confronted by others, and have polished the full range of skills necessary for success. 

Nationally recognized executive resource Don Andersson is a speaker, storyteller, team and executive coach, former CEO and founder of The Andersson Group, located in Cranford, N.J. He is the author of Hire for Fit. He can be reached at (908) 709-9267.

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