So you’ve sent out 800 resumes and are still unemployed? You may actually be ahead of the curve. Employment is a buyer’s market right now, with each new publicly posted job listing attracting an avalanche of resumes. In some job categories, it isn’t unusual to get 1,000-plus applicants.
Create your job
If you can’t join existing businesses as an employee, consider beating them—or supplying or otherwise leveraging them—by starting your own business. In other words, create your own job.
Economic downturns are actually great times to start businesses. A majority of the Fortune 500 companies were started up during economic depressions or major recessions, including Alcoa, AT&T, Bristol Myers, Eli Lilly, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Merck, and Microsoft. It seems that necessity is indeed the mother of invention.
Pretty much everything you need for your startup—from office space and equipment to human resources—is cheaper in a downturn as people slash prices. The flip side of this is the opportunities created by businesses looking to change suppliers in an effort to get more for less.
You also have a much bigger pool of highly qualified people to choose from, and you don’t have to pay them as much. One startup here in Reno is getting most of its personnel for free—at least from a cash flow standpoint. Top people—the crème de la crème—are working for stock and stock options.
Entrepreneurship Workshops
While ProNet is focused on job search, ProNet members are encouraged to consider the entrepreneurship option. We even have entrepreneurship workshops run by serial entrepreneurs (and ProNet alumni) Matt Westfield and Rod Hosilyk.
Patrick Callahan
“I took the class in September and was amazed at the amount of information we covered in just 3 days,” said Patrick Callahan, a ProNet member looking for a position in manufacturing or R&D. “It was also quite an eye-opener to see how well the same set of entrepreneurship principals applied to such a wide mix of ideas.”
These ideas were in categories as diverse as manufacturing, hospitality, health care, senior living, financial services and business management.
Some found they didn’t have an appropriate business model, at least at present. They returned to the drawing board, using the feedback from the workshop to save themselves a lot of time and money.
“Rod and Matt were very good at getting us to examine our own strengths and weaknesses, target the right market, and focus on what we need to be doing to move our business forward.” Issues covered in the workshop include intellectual property, marketing and advertising, financing, networking, and defining and targeting the right customer base.
“Our instructors did a great job of making complex subjects understandable and enjoyable,” reports Callahan.
The Time Is Right
Callahan himself had come up with an idea for an offset bender for electrical conduits, and had gone as far as commissioning a machinist to build a high-quality prototype. The day he dropped off the blueprints, he was laid off and figured he would have to back-burner the project until he found another “day job.” The entrepreneurship workshop at ProNet re-galvanized him.
Matt Westfield teaches entrepreurship at ProNet
“I hauled out the product design and updated it, and I am now in the process of obtaining a patent for my invention, getting the prototype machined, and negotiating with a metal casting company to get sales samples produced. Then I can seek more feedback from industry experts. Networking with my ProNet workshop classmates and their contacts has helped me with these efforts considerably, by expanding my reach exponentially.”
Jobs are to be cherished in this economy, but jobs for the most part consist of trading hours for dollars. If you want to leverage your time and make money while you sleep, consider the entrepreneurship route. And look for local organizations like ProNet that can help you get started.
For more on why this is a great time to indulge any entrepreneurial urges you may have, read:
- “Top 10 Reasons to Start a Business in a Recession”
- “Why Great Companies Get Started During the Downturns”
- “Why a Bad Economy Is the Best Time to Start a Business”
Designed for and run by unemployed professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc. There is no cost to the members. If you are an unemployed professional or an employer, call (775) 674-5408 today.
Filed under: Career Transition, Job Search Tagged: | entrepreneurship
