This education model continued through the 1970s when high tech innovation, and the increasing shift of low level manufacturing overseas required that most US workers needed a college education to succeed. Simultaneously, workers began to have higher aspirations for themselves in their relationship with employers. An engineering degree was a ticket to success and long-term approbation.

Fast forward to 2011. Innovation and globalization are well-known phenomena. I think we all understand that the rate of both is accelerating. The average permanent job is lasting 2-3 years as business owners must constantly re-group to meet competitive threats. Yet, workers have become increasingly less engaged, crabby that the employer is not taking care of them, threatening to move on at the first opportunity.

•  69% of employees describe themselves as under-engaged or un-engaged.
• 30% of executives describe themselves as under-engaged or un-engaged.
• 47% of engaged high potentials say they will leave “at the first opportunity.”  (#)

I don’t understand the disconnect. I talk to folks every day who proudly threaten they will move on within the next 12 months to a “nicer” employer.

Why do you think the next employer will be radically better? The phenomenon we are caught in is happening to all of us, employer and employee alike. Yes, the employers could be nicer in many instances. CEOs should not make so much more than the rest of us. However, the bigger trend is that employers will have less and less choice to nurture the relationship with employees in the way you are all accustomed to. Companies are being pushed into decisions that will make the relationship with employees more and more transient.

So what are you doing about it? Showing disengagement to your current employer or a hiring manager is likely to put you high on the first-to-be-fired list. Feeling disengaged is counter-productive, a dead end. It won’t get you promoted.

Instead, you need to learn how to succeed and shine versus other employees in the future or work for yourself.

(#) http://www.workforce.com/section/hr-management/feature/special-report-employee-engagement-losing-lifeblood/

Some folks who are not finding jobs or promotions have set goals for years based on what they think they should be doing. But many do not want those results enough to remain fully committed to the goal. Hence they do not perform as well as those at top of the band. Or they may not know how they measure up against the most successful people in their band because they were promoted regularly in better economic times and didn’t spend much time thinking about emotional alignment as long as bigger paychecks continued to arrive. Men have been taught for hundreds of years that they are only successful if they can buy the family successively larger houses, cars, and boats. I can name a COO who is convinced he must be CEO to be deemed successful. (His co-workers all think CEO is entirely the wrong move.)

So however you got to the position you are in, if you are not being promoted and hired as often as you were, it is time to re-consider if your goals are in alignment with your priorities in life and your actual skill set. Maybe you would be MUCH happier as the owner of a Bread and Breakfast or as a woodcarver or at a non-profit. And much more successful.

On a simple level, a “Portfolio Career” means someone earns income from more than one simultaneous employer by choice or necessity. It is not a new concept. “Freelancers” in ad agencies and “Contractors” in IT have been doing it since the 1970’s as a means of gaining exposure to a wide variety of clients/technologies as quickly as possible. Folks with multiple jobs are easy to find in any industry in Europe.

Deliberately selecting unrelated simultaneous jobs spreads your risk if any one industry or skill area shrinks. Remember when the telecom industry shrunk by 70% in the 1990’s? Ad agency work has been shifting over 20 years from mass media like network TV and magazines to the Internet and other personal media. A Portfolio Career would protect you in similar transitions.

Consider implementing a modified form of a Portfolio Career for yourself immediately without leaving your full-time job. Take a part-time or short-term apprentice role in a very different professional arena – which you can execute evenings or weekends. Take on an 80-hour project to help someone you know with a market research study or engineering proof of concept test. Then look for more complementary projects to increase your depth of knowledge.

I have a client who has created an incremental income of $150K per year from the hobby of creating iPhone apps on Saturday afternoons in front of baseball and footballs games on TV. Another client consults with start-ups evenings to validate new product development concepts. Either person could escalate the new credentials to a full-time income stream overnight if necessary.

Or think retirement and avocation versus vocation. Maybe you have dreamt of retiring to run a bread and breakfast. The part-time apprenticeship you should choose now is as a hotel manager. If the title Director of a non-profit appeals, start volunteering in your off-hours now in an executive capacity – but let them know you will not be available for free indefinitely.

If you are over the age of 45 where the risk of not being able to re-enter your present industry if laid-off  is great, it is absolutely critical for you to be creating options for yourself.

Take charge of your destiny!

Do you have an unusual part-time idea to share with others?

I had a client who was a Customer Service Manager in a hospital. His job was to call patients after they had just had some test and tell them that, yup, a problem had been found and a visit with a doctor for follow-up needed to be scheduled ASAP. Since he was frequently calling people with very bad news, he was not sleeping well and asked me how he could find a job in a new industry given that he had been in the hospital role for the last 20 years.

I helped him see that his gifts included not only his knowledge of medical conditions, but his ability to “deliver bad news gracefully” and help people make thoughtful, well informed decisions when under a huge amount of stress. Together we identified a list of industries where those skills would make him a strong applicant. For example, in the mortgage, insurance and student loan industries he could counsel applicants who did not get the desired funds on other options. By demonstrating in his resume and interviews that the problems he had solved in the hospital world were, on the average, far more devastating and life-threatening than the customer problems in the financial industries, he was able to successfully sell himself as a Manager/Trainer who could handle the most awkward financial discussions with customers very effectively. He was hired over several candidates with financial industry backgrounds.

So if you are looking to change industries, focus your conversation and case histories on the processes and soft skills common to both industries. Secondly, target companies where the skills you own are most critical to business success. For instance, if you are a turn-around specialist, first target the companies in the new industry most in need of a turn-around.

Can you share other examples of how folks successfully changed industries?